Zero to One review

- 작은 곳부터 monopoly하여 확장해 나간다.

- 재무적 분석, hedging, diversifying 등은 start-up에게는 useless.

- 철저히 창업자의 관점에서 쓰여진 책. 0 to 1이라는 보다는 다수의 0이 모여 1이 된다는 표현이 더 정확할 것 같다. Completely zero에서 1이 바로 될 수는 없다. 작은 것이 모여 하나를 만든다.

- 이 책에서 monopoly에 대한 새로운 정의는 매우 신선하다. 그러나 과연 excessive한 가격의 새로운 물품을 강요하는 사회는 과연 올바른가? 에 대해 논의가 필요하다.

- 책에서는 몇몇의 founder에만 집중해 그들의 일반적이지 않은 요소에 집중한다. 그러나 Founder는 굳이 그럴 필요는 없다고 생각한다. 평범한 사람도 충분히 CEO가 될 수 있다.

- 창업하고싶다.

 

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The challenge of the Future

Party Like It`s 1999

All Happy Companies Are Different

- Framing itself as just another tech company allows Google to escape all sorts of unwanted attention

- The competitive ecosystem pushes people toward ruthless-ness or death. A monopoly like Google is different. Since it doesn`t have to worry about competing with anyone, it has wider latitude to care about its workers, its products, and its impact on the wider world.

- The world we live in is dynamic: Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world.

The Ideology of Competition

- Competition is an ideology that pervades our society and distorts our thinking. Even though the more we compete, the less we gain.

Last Mover Advantage

- For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth

- Barnes & Nobel: Amazon was unfairly calling itself a 'bookstore' when really it was a 'book broker.'

- Moving first is a tactic, not a goal. What really matters is generating cash flows in the future, so being the first mover doesn`t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you.

You Are Not a Lottery Ticket

- Progress without planning is what we call 'evolution.'

- But leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Iteration without a bold plan won`t take you from 0 to 1. Why should you expect your own business to succeed without a plan to make it happen?

- Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning. Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world.

 

Follow the Money

- We live under a power law

 

Secrets

- If you think something hard is impossible, you`ll never even start trying to achieve it. Belief in secrets is an effective truth. The actual truth is that there are many more secrets left to find, but they will yield only to relentless searches.

- Secrets of nature and secrets about people.

 

Foundations

- A startup messed up at its foundation cannot be fixed.

- At the margin, they`ll be biased to claim value in the near term, not help you create more in the future. That`s why hiring consultants doesn`t work.

 

The Mechanics of Mafia

- You`ll attract the employees you need if you can explain why your mission is compelling: not why it`s important in general, but why you`re doing something important that no one else is going to get done.

- You probably can`t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team : 1999년에 근무하던 구글 청소부가 2004년에 입사한 엔지니어박사보다 돈을 더 많이 벌었다.

 

If You Build It, Will They Come?

- Advertising doesn`t exist to make you buy a product right away; it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later. Anyone who can`t acknowledge its likely effect on himself is doubly deceived.

- Every entrepreneur envies a recognizable ad campaign, but startups should resist the temptation to compete with bigger companies.

- A product is viral if its core functionality encourages users to invite their friends to become users too.

- Poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure.

 

Man and Machine

- The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.

 

Seeing Green

- Start-ups should have 10x improvements.

- The lab result won`t begin to compensate for the expenses and risks faced by any new product in the real world.

- Social entrepreneurs aim to combine the best of both worlds and 'Do well by doing good.' Usually they end up doing neither. <-예외: 테슬라

- Tesla: its ability to integrate many components into one superior product. Tesla built a unique brand around the secret that cleantech was even more of a social phenomenon than an environmental imperative. <- 전기차가 cool하다는 branding을 하여, 고소득층에게 cool한 이미지를 내세울 수 있는 차라는 점을 강조함.

- An entrepreneur can`t benefit from macro-scale insight unless his own plans begin at the micro-scale.

 

The Founder`s Paradox

- Founders` traits appear to follow an inverse normal distribution.

- Lady Gag: Her real name isn`t a secret, but almost no one knows or ares what it is. She is a self-manufactured myth.

- Founder as a scapegoat.

- For some fallen stars, death brings resurrection. "27 Club"

 

Stagnation or Singularity?

- Singularity: Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better-to go from 0 to 1.