Zero to One

Knowledge taught in schools is often agreed upon by everyone. So it takes certain courage to believe in something which the whole world thinks is wrong. This courage is rarer than brilliant minds

The future cannot be exactly predicted, but two things are confirmed:

• It will be different from today (This is why contrarian thinking is important)
• It will be rooted from todays world

We know future will be different from today , but we consider it to be a progressed version of today’s world.

Progress is of 2 types:

• Horizontal : Copying things that work
• Vertical : Inventing new techniques and technologies

Horizontal Progress = Globalization

Vertical Progress = inventing new things rather than copying things that worked

Peter’s way of contrarian thinking : People think that world will be defined and progressed by globalization (horizontal progress) but technology matters more.

Because just copying USA’s version of progress around the world will be very catastrophic for Earth

Startups have played a key role in technology :

• Fairchild Semiconductors was founded by top 8 scientist of Shockley Semiconductor, who left the company in 1957 because they were not happy with management style. This resulted in great inventions like microchips, and resulted in creation of companies like Intel, AMD. It also laid foundations for VC ecosystem and tech revolution of Silicon Valley
• Large organisations have bureaucracy which makes things slower
• Alone work can create good art or literature but not entire industries.
• Startups are a good balance where like minded people come together to build a different future

“Madness is rare in individuals but in groups, parties and nations it’s common” — Nietzche

e.g. companies exist to make profit , this is basic logic. But with New thinking people accepted number of views or customers as a better financial metric than profit

So to know something or believe in something that everyone believes as wrong, first we should ask ourselves What does everybody believe in ?

Conventional beliefs only appear illogical and wrong in retrospect (when we look back as it)

We term these beliefs in business/financial world as a Bubble.

But the distortions caused by the bubble don’t disappear after it is popped, it still remain distorting the future thinking.

Internet Boom

• During 1990s people were depressed, stressed, pessimistic about the things happening in the world. Like recession, war, jobs moving out of USA, anxiety of globalization, politics
• People worried that Japan might take over silicon valley in semiconductors.
• Commercialization of internet changed everything. People started investing in tech internet companies and their stocks boomed.
• This was due to 2 things : investors’ exuberance in tech and currencies were falling, economies couldn’t handle globalization so people needed something to work in the world. People considered tech/internet industry as way forward.
• During that time money for flooding in tech, people were getting funding easily, going public, throwing parties etc. And many sketchy and greedy people started companies. Companies had anti-business models and lost money to grow.
• Then the bubble popped

After bursting of the bubble the distortion in thinking still remained.

People started thinking :

• tech optimism was morally wrong
• Earlier internet was a source of abundance and progress → now they viewed internet optimism as just greed / hype
• long term plans / grand visions as suspicious and unreal, and preferred short term results
• Hope of the future turned to Globalization instead of new technology (preferred 1→n over 0→1)

Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley started viewing:

• Grand visions or people saying they can build great things were suspected, as earlier these things inflated the bubble. Big plans were seen as overconfidence. So people started believing in keeping plans small and taking incremental steps while staying lean and flexible.
• Instead of trying to create new markets, try to capture an already existing market
• Work on product instead of sales. They thought if product is great it will sell itself.

the above ideas were considered rules for building a business (dogmas)

But the opposite of them seemed more true:

• It is better to take risks and be ambitious than to play it safe and boring
• A bad plan is better than having no plan
• Competitive markets destroy profits
• sales matter as much as product

So i would say, even though the bubble of 2000 saw peak of insanity but it was also peak of clarity. As every experiment was being funded so people could have a better peak into the future and discover new tech

So to create new technologies and going from 0→1, we must leave the dogmas created after the crash.

We must not blindly believe or opposing the crowd. We should stay away from forming conclusions.