Notes #
- One of the main premises of this book is that startups should not seek to compete with incumbents but rather create something new
- My thoughts: This is a different path of innovation that has its pros and cons. I think most good ideas will have competition, but maybe not from incumbents
- “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
- 0-1: Doing new things
- 1-n: copying something existing that is already working
- Creative monopolies aren’t actually a bad thing
- They aren’t zero sum, they add more to the world from them existing
- e.g. apple + the iPhone
- monopoly profits give an incentive for people to innovate, and once achieved give companies a bankroll for more innovation
- Because of this, Thiel argues that the economic theory of competition being the ideal state of economics is a relic of the past
- Winning is better than losing, but everyone loses the war when the war isn’t one worth fighting for
- Most of your growth/cash flows as a tech business comes from the future
- Can you build a business that can endure? Not just grow in the short term?
- Paradoxically, network effect businesses must start in small markets (e.g. Facebook at Harvard) because you have to bootstrap the network
- Every startup should start with a small market and try to monopolize it
- It’s better to be the lasts mover and capture monopoly profits over time than it is to be the first mover and get unseated