Mark Brandon

Seems Insightful Until You Think A Little Deeper

Revisado: 10-31-14

What made the experience of listening to Zero to One the most enjoyable?

I am a fan of Peter Thiel, and have read the notes from the Stanford course upon which this book is based. The course notes are better because they expound better on the broad concepts. In the end, the audiobook is certainly worth the price of purchase, but I fail to give it 5 stars because I know from these notes that Thiel can do better.

To summarize two broad concepts, businesses should pursue monopoly because that is where the lion's share of profit is made. Think about Google's monopoly in search (see my comment below about this), or Microsoft's former monopoly in operating systems. Thiel artfully demonstrates how profits flow in a Power Law to these types of firms. Good enough. I agree wholeheartedly with this concept, and Thiel does a better job of explaining it than a dry Econ 101 textbook, but at its heart, it's not new thinking.

The second broad concept is that a series of Power Laws dictate a range of commercialization activities, from the aforementioned profit flow to fundraising success to income to hollywood hits to you name it. This bears repeating because so many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking that markets they are entering are more linear.

Both of the concepts are intertwined, and this is where Thiel could do better (he does do better in the course notes).

First of all, monopolies don't become such until one is made, and until that point, it is utterly non-obvious to the vast majority of others. Google's search monopoly, which isn't really a search monopoly but an advertising monopoly, was so unapparent that at the time of Google's founding, most of the smart money had decided that portals were the wave of the future. Only Google decided that building a better search engine was the way to go, and even they did not conceive of their advertising monopoly until many years later. Today, it appears obvious, but it discounts the incredible risks, the incredible execution, and yes, an incredible dose of luck to make it happen.

Second, the book glosses over (again, the course notes don't) another startling fact, which is that there are more powers laws at work to execute the creation of a monopoly. Some of these are:

1) Raising money. I know from experience that raising money requires years of nurturing contacts, and just appearing on an investors' doorstep to say, "I have a vision for a monopoly I want to create" will get you thrown out more often than not. Only a small number of people who are starting out have the ability to cross the chasm between getting funded and not. I would contend that having money to build out your monopoly is one of the prime factors to creating a monopoly. It's a chicken and egg problem.

2) Talent. The best talent wants to work with the best team, but how do you become the best team without having the money (see #1) or the yet-unborn monopoly? Thiel mostly discounts the role of luck, and I found that disingenous. Just take Thiel's own experience. How lucky was it that the two most formidable competitors in payments in 1999, headed by transformational leaders (Thiel and Elon Musk) were located within a few blocks of each other, making them capable of merging and becoming Paypal? How many payments companies might have rivaled Paypal if they were located next door to Elon Musk (not to mention Reid Hoffman and the rest of the mafia)?

3) Geography. Expanding on the concept of #2, there is a Power Law at work for people who are able to get into and afford Stanford Law? Without this, would Thiel be where he is today? Not to mention the founders of Yahoo, Google, Cisco, et al?

4) Buzz. Another chicken and egg problem is that of building buzz. Journalists only want to cover hot companies, but how do you become hot without building buzz? Only a small number of companies are able to cross this chasm.

In the course notes (but not the book), Thiel talks about 11 facets of building a company. You can miss on two or three of them. Otherwise, you are toast. It's threading about 8 needles at a time. These are the concepts that should have been expanded upon. To be fair, this would probably require a multi-volume set.

Thiel discounts the Gladwellian notion that any outlier success can be traced to some fortuitous events. Though I agree that these events are only obvious in hindsight, I'm not convinced.

To me, instruction about crossing these multiple chasms would be more helpful to those of us outside of the valley bubble. Not even "Crossing the Chasm" does a good job of that.

What about Blake Masters’s performance did you like?

He did an admirable job for not being a trained voice actor

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

My review tells the story. I was unsatisfied.

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So Insightful I Was Moved To Tears

Revisado: 03-29-11

Never in my adult life have I listened (or read) a book that so beautifully blended prose and allegory with hard science and self-help. The synthesis is a unified theory of morality, motivation, love, character, politics, and meaning. I am not normally a person who can easily be moved to tears by a book, much less one that is really centered on discussions of Maslow's hierarchy of needs or countless studies of firing amygdala's.

Brooks has long been a favorite NYT Columnist, sharing a coherent and consistent world view without being either doctrinaire or an us-versus-them blowhard like Limbaugh on the right or Krugman on the left. This book follows two fictional characters, Harold and Erica, from birth, childhood, careers, marriage, retirement, and death, revealing how social connection (or lack thereof) drives most humanistic endeavors. This insight would not be so groundbreaking, but revealing the how and the why through the prism of the beautiful Harold and Erica love story is where Brooks excels.

As if all of this were not enough, the humor propels this book from being just "Really Good" to being "One for the Ages". A sampling:

"He’s just back from China and stopping by for a corporate board meeting on his way to a five-hundred-mile bike-a-thon to support the fight against lactose intolerance. He is asexually handsome, with a little less body fat than Michelangelo’s David. As he crosses his legs, you observe that they are immeasurably long and slender. He doesn’t really have thighs. Each leg is just one elegant calf on top of another. His voice is so calm and measured that he makes Barack Obama sound like Sam Kinison. He met his wife at the Clinton Global Initiative, where they happened to be wearing the same Doctors Without Borders support bracelets"


Buy this book! You will be immeasurably enriched.

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Terrible: Poorly disguised promotional fare

Revisado: 03-18-08

Usually, Audible's recommendations for me are spot on. Because I have purchased "Four Hour Work Week", which was a decent enough book, this book was recommended. This was a mistake. Since I only listen to audiobooks while doing something else, I am glad 7 hours of my life weren't wasted. Otherwise, I'd be very angry.

To borrow another reviewer's idea that it's for beginners, is understated. It's actually for suckers, the kind of people who fall for the one-page get-rich-quick websites promising internet riches with no effort. I avoid those like the plague. This audiobook is just the audio equivalent of those sites.

To O'Bryan's credit, he is able to spin a good yarn, and it was enough to make me think that something useful was coming up to the final minute. It never came. Here is the summary:

"Platitude Platitude Platitude. Poorly disguised promo for Joe Vitale. Blather, blather, blather. More Joe Vitale promos."

Clearly, Joe Vitale is behind this audiobook, because the author clearly has some kind of obsession. There is nothing original, and the advice proffered may have worked for some many years ago. Today, there has been such an explosion in e-books and newsletters that all but the most clueless are immune. They are the same people who fall for the late-night infomercial on real estate riches, weight loss, and other pie-in-the-sky promises.

The one bit of advice I would take from the author is to check and see if ANYBODY -- and I mean ANYBODY -- actually makes money from his advice anymore. Insist on proof because I don't think it exists.

I have found authors such as Seth Godin and Tim Ferriss to be much more insightful.

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