A Joosr Guide to Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Shape your own future by making a plan and focusing in on your goals early. Then you will be able to hone the specific skillset you need, gather the right people, find the right market for a monopoly, and protect that monopoly with careful planning and effective action. Success is the result of intention, and if any luck is involved it is the luck that you make for yourself.

What should be most important to you is the growth and profit you will make in the future, and there are four things you need to stay on the right track: branding, proprietary technology, economies of scale, and network effects.

The whole purpose of creating new ideas and technology is to take yourself out of the competition. When you compete, you can’t make as much profit.

Success is intentional, not the result of luck
Another conventional idea that is detrimental to any startup is that success is based on luck. If you are working on the premise that luck has anything to do with whether or not you will succeed, you may be hurting your chances in the future. Consider the numerous people, past and present, who established more than one million-dollar companies. There are even some who have started several billion-dollar companies in their lifetime! It is very unlikely that luck played much of a factor. The truth is that we shape our own future and chances through careful planning

Protect your monopoly by looking to the future
Establishing your monopoly is only half the battle. You need to be ready to endure the long run rather than getting caught up in a rush to grow at the start. This is a mistake that many entrepreneurs make, and the result is someone else swooping into your market and overtaking your success. What should be most important to you is the growth and profit you will make in the future, and there are four things you need to stay on the right track: branding, proprietary technology, economies of scale, and network effects.

The best way to become a monopoly is to do something completely new. By offering customers a new and better way to do something, you take yourself out of any competition until someone tries to do what you do.

Successful startups strive for and achieve monopolies
If you think that seeking your own market in which you have no competition and therefore own all the profits sounds like a monopoly, then you are correct. You have probably always been taught that monopolies are wrong and illegal, and that is indeed the conventional idea. But as we have learned, in order to be a successful startup, you need to think contrarily and seek things that other businesses don’t.

The problem was that instead of continuing to explore new ideas and make new innovations that might improve the experience of their customers, they focused on getting a share of a competitive market by doing exactly what another company was already doing. In fighting a constant battle with each other, Microsoft and Google both lost the war to Apple. Even combined, the two companies’ market capitalizations fell billions of dollars short of Apple’s.

Competitive business cuts profits and kills innovation
Most of us are taught that in order for business to be fair and successful, there should always be competition. With competition, prices are regulated as companies fight for consumer business, and each company is always trying to imitate and outdo its competitors. This is why many startups seek to jump in on an existing market and get a cut of the profit, such as it is. While this may be good for consumer pockets in the short term, it is bad for business and the future as a whole.

Successful technology is a tool for people, not a replacement for them
One of the alarming ideas we face when it comes to new technology is the fear that one day machines will replace humans. After all, the technology we have now seems quite advanced, and in our imaginations we can clearly see it evolving into robots who can do everything better than people. But the fact is such technology will probably never be created or mass-produced. The reason is that successful technology is not that which is made to replace people, but that which is made to complement them.