Quick Bite: Zero to One

By Peter Thiel

The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors.

• it’s better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi happy.

• Every startup should start with a very small market, small does not mean nonexistent.

  • E.g. Amazon

A definitive person determines the one Best thing to do and then does it.

• They do not pursue many-sided mediocrity. “calling it well-roundedness”

• She does not work tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable.

• She strives to be great at something substantive— to be a monopoly of one.

Long term planning is undervalued.

A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definitive mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but of a small and important part of the world.

The first step is thinking for yourself.

+ See also: What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett, Barnett Helzberg

• Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs

  • It’s your alternatives that matter, that’s how we make all our decisions.

Focus is your lever to success. Do not underestimate the incredible amount of mental discipline it takes to focus yourself and your teammates. Wonderful alternatives and seductive opportunities abound, and temptations to go in multiple directions are unlimited.

– Helzberg, 2003 (!)