Zero to One

Notes copied from my notebook, which were written on 3/10/23.

The best businesses are monopolies

• Google owns search, Apple owns wearables/tech
• The small businesses try to look like a monopoly, but the giants try to hide their monopoly
• Monopolies can be achieved by doing something no one has done before: their secret
• They are also achieved when the product is 10x better than competitors'
• By definition, a company has a monopoly on its own products (ex. Apple ecosystem)

It's easy to go from 1 to n, but hard to go from 0 to 1

• Iterative products are less impressive
• To create something new, you must know a secret
• There are always more secrets, be careful who you tell your secrets to

A company needs an extreme leader and many very smart people

• Why do smart people want to work for you? It depends on your company, but it is an important question to answer. Otherwise, why not work at a higher-paying job like Google
• The leader needs to hire people smarter than himself
• The leader must take risks (calculated) and be bold; no great leader was mediocre

The top companies make more money than all other companies in their sector combined  

• In an investment portfolio, any one of your picks should have the potential to 10x all your other picks combined
• Follows a "power law"

Final Remarks (6/2/23)

It was interesting to see how monopolies are actually important for pushing the limits of technology and innovation, despite the bad connotation they usually get. Through this lens, we can see how companies like Apple and Google are so successful at delivering amazing products: they have a monopoly on their products. Another important idea that I like is that leaders need to hire people smarter than themselves. I heard the same thing from many other talks, I think Mark Zuckerberg even said that in a Harvard talk. Overall, this book was really interesting to read and easy to follow. I'm glad I picked this one up.