Chapter 1: future challenges (questions)
First of all, ask a question that is often asked in an interview: What important issues do you have different opinions from others? It guides us to pay attention to the future. There are two ways to make progress in the future: one is from 1 to N, which is a hierarchical progress and is synonymous with globalization and replication, such as the development of China. The other is the progress from 0 to 1, which is vertical progress and synonymous with technology, such as the rise of Silicon Valley. Peter thiel believes that most people think that the future of the world is determined by globalization, but the fact is that technology is more influential. At present, the challenge we are facing is to create new technologies to make 2 1 more harmonious and prosperous than in the 20th century. Start-ups are usually the birthplace of new technologies. Startups are the largest number of people you can convince to plan and build a new future together. The most important strength of a new company is new ideas, so this book is not a guide or simply providing knowledge, but a thinking movement-questioning existing ideas and re-examining your business from scratch.
Chapter 2: Carnival, such as 1999 (historical explanation)
Reading history is enlightening. Reviewing the rise and fall of the Internet boom in the 1990s together and summing up the experience and lessons can help us to be more clear about the future direction. In the late 1990s, the Internet craze reached its peak in 18 months (199865438+September-March 2000). Netscape occupied 20% to 80% of the browser market in less than a year, and its stock soared from $28 to 174 in five months. Yahoo just went public with a valuation of $848 million; Amazon's listing valuation is 438 million US dollars; The market is crazy, and the development of science and technology has produced a bubble. In the late 1990s, people were arrogant and thought that they could leap from 0 to 1. As a result, only a few start-ups have achieved this leap, and many companies are just talking about it. A financial crisis in 2000 brought Silicon Valley back to its original shape.
Entrepreneurs who have been robbed in Silicon Valley have learned four lessons from it:
1. Step by step, don't indulge in HTC's vision, or it will blow a big bubble.
2. Keep it simple and flexible, practice it repeatedly, and treat entrepreneurship as an unknown experiment.
3. Competition in improvement.
4. Focus on products, not marketing.
But peter thiel believes that the opposite of these laws may be more correct:
1. A bold attempt is better than mediocrity and conservatism.
A bad plan is better than no plan.
It is difficult to make money in the competitive market.
4. Marketing and products are equally important.
We still need new technologies, and we may even need to seek new technologies with the enthusiasm of 1999. Ask yourself: How much of what you know about the enterprise is based on the wrong reaction to past mistakes? The most counter-mainstream action is not to resist the trend, but to abandon your independent thinking in the trend!
Chapter 3: All successful enterprises are different (introduction topic)
In the commercial society, there are two kinds of successful enterprises, one is a monopoly enterprise, such as Google. The other is a non-monopoly enterprise (competitive enterprise), such as American Airlines. However, it is also a successful enterprise. American airlines receive millions of passengers every year, creating hundreds of billions of dollars in value, but they can only earn 37 cents from each passenger per flight. Google, on the other hand, created relatively little value (in 20 12 years, Google only created $50 billion, while American airlines created16 billion), but it made a profit of 2 1%, which was more than 100 times that of the aviation industry in that year, making its market value more than 3 of the sum of all American airlines.
Americans mythologize competition and praise it for avoiding the dilemma of queuing to buy bread, but in fact, capitalism and competition are just the opposite. If capitalism is in perfect competition, profits will disappear. So, if you want to create and gain lasting value, don't just follow the trend to build a nondescript enterprise.
In addition, it is interesting that competitors and monopolists are willing to distort the facts to protect their own interests-so they all make up all kinds of lies.
Monopolists lie to protect themselves. They know that showing off monopoly will lead to inspection, review and even blow. Therefore, in order to continue to obtain monopoly profits without interference, they will try their best to conceal the fact of monopoly. The usual method is to exaggerate (non-existent) competition. For example, Google does not position itself in the search engine market (because it occupies 68% market share), but positions itself as an advertising company. The US search engine advertising market is $654.38+07 billion per year, and the online advertising market is $37 billion. The entire American advertising market is $6543.8+$050 billion, and the global advertising market is $495 billion. Even if Google monopolizes the American search engine advertising market, if Google is positioned as a multi-technology company (because in addition to search engines, Google also has self-driving cars, Android phones, wearable devices and so on. ), its share in the global technology consumer goods market only accounts for less than 0.24%-a distance of 108,000 miles from monopoly.
On the other hand, non-monopolists will not exaggerate their competitors, but will exaggerate their uniqueness by defining their markets as the intersection of various smaller markets.
However, in the face of the ruthless market, monopoly enterprises are often more dynamic, and monopoly enterprises promote social progress, because monopoly profits for several years or decades are a powerful driving force for innovation, and creative monopolists constantly create new things and give consumers more choices.
There are different reasons for the success of enterprises: each monopoly enterprise obtains its monopoly position by solving a unique problem; It is the same as the failure of enterprises, and they can't escape the competition!
Chapter four: Competitive consciousness (dialectical analysis)
We preach competition, internalize the necessity of competition, and promulgate the laws of competition: as a result, despite the increasingly fierce competition, we actually get less and less, and we are trapped in the competition. This is a simple fact, but we have all learned to turn a blind eye.
In the education system, young people learn the same content in the same way, regardless of their personal talents and hobbies. The more we reach the stage of higher education, the fiercer the competition and the more similar it becomes. Everyone is fighting for a homogeneous privilege, but gradually burying their dreams and pursuits.
In the business circle, more people think that the business circle, like the battlefield, must have competition if it wants to beat its competitors, and with the development of business, the focus will be more on competitors: Microsoft Windows meets Google Chrome OS, Bing meets Google Search, Explorer browser is tit for tat with Chrome, Office software and Docs office software compete with each other, and Surface tablet competes with Google Nexus tablet. At this time, Apple appeared, with a market value of 20 13 of 500 billion US dollars, and Google and Microsoft added up to 467 billion US dollars.
Competition makes us pay too much attention to past opportunities and blindly repeat past patterns. Competition can be a distraction. Instead of paying attention to others, it is better to pay attention to yourself and your initial dreams! If you can't beat your competitors, then talk about cooperation. If you can see that competition does not bring value enhancement, but is full of destructive power, then you are more rational than most people.
Chapter five: advantages of backwardness (depth theme)
If you want to become a monopoly enterprise, or want to break the monopoly, you need to understand the characteristics of monopoly enterprises first.
Why some start-ups such as Twitter have been losing money at first, but the valuation is still astronomical, because of its future cash flow. Investors believe that Twitter can gain monopoly profits in the next 10 year! It takes time to create something of value, so the benefits are delayed. Most of the value of a technology company will be reflected at least in the next 10- 15 years.
Characteristics of monopoly enterprises:
1. Patented technology, generally speaking, patented technology must be 10 times better than its nearest substitute in some aspects in order to have a real monopoly advantage. The most obvious way to improve 10 times is to create something new.
2. Network effect. As more and more people use a product, the network effect should make it more useful.
3. Economies of scale. Monopoly enterprises are getting stronger and stronger, and the fixed cost of developing a product (design, management, office location, etc. ) Need higher sales to share. Good start-ups should consider the potential of large-scale development at the beginning of design.
4. Brand advantage. The most obvious monopoly of a company is its own brand, so building a strong brand is a powerful way to form a monopoly.
Methods of establishing monopoly enterprises:
1. It is much easier to occupy a small market and occupy a dominant position in a small market than in a big market. The perfect target market for start-ups is a specific small group of people, and few other competitors compete with you.
2. Expand the scale. Once you have successfully created or dominated a niche market, you should gradually enter a slightly larger related market.
3. Destructive innovation. "Destruction" means that a company can launch a low-end product at a low price through scientific and technological innovation, and then gradually make such progress, and finally replace the high-quality products produced by existing companies with old technologies.
Chapter VI Success is not winning the lottery (I)
Can you control your future? Success is unpredictable, and everyone has a different attitude towards the future.
Pessimism about the uncertainty of the future
Obvious pessimism about the future
Optimism about the Uncertain Future-Today's World (Uncertain Finance/Politics/Philosophy/Life)
Clear optimism about the future
Progress without a plan is called "evolution"
Long-term planning is still the most important. In a world where everyone is confused about the future, companies with clear goals are always underestimated.
You are not a lottery ticket. Entrepreneurship is an opportunity for you to clearly grasp your best efforts. You have not only the right of agency in your own life, but also the right of agency in an important corner of the world. And all this starts with resisting unfair probability domination, because you are not a lottery whose fate is determined by probability.
Chapter 7: Looking at money (on law)
This chapter mainly explains how the power law is reflected when you look at money: in venture capital, investors are trying to profit from the exponential growth since the establishment of the company, and only a few companies have gained the value of exponential growth compared with other companies.
The return of venture capital is not normal distribution, but power law. The best investment return of a successful fund is equal to or greater than the sum of all other investment objects.
If you have started to run your own company, you must keep in mind the law of power and run the company well. The most important thing is unique-one market may be better than all other markets! One distribution strategy is usually superior to all other strategies!
Chapter 8: Secrets (Talking about Direction)
Counter-mainstream question: What valuable companies have not yet been established? Every correct answer must be a secret: some things are important but no one knows, and some things are difficult but can be done. If there are still many secrets in the world, there may be many enterprises that are expected to change the world.
Why don't many people believe that there are secrets to be discovered? Probably because of the development of geography. There is no blank on the map of the world. With the weakening of regional barriers, four social trends have combined to disintegrate people's belief that secrets still exist: gradualism, risk aversion, complacency and flattening (anyone with ambition will ask himself a question before exploring secrets: If it is possible to discover new things, haven't smarter and more creative people in the global talent pool discovered them yet? The voice of doubt prevented people from exploring the secret.
You can't find the secret without exploring. The fact is that there are still many secrets waiting for us to explore. Successful enterprises are built on open but unknown secrets, which are related to how the world works. Think of start-ups in Silicon Valley, which take advantage of idle capacity that is often overlooked around us. The best place to explore secrets is where no one pays attention.
When you find a secret, do you tell others or keep it a secret? It depends on the secret itself. Some secrets are more dangerous than others. The advice is, no matter who you have to talk to, don't talk too much. The best entrepreneurs know this well: all successful enterprises are built on little-known secrets. A good enterprise is a schemer who changes the world. When you share secrets with others, the audience becomes your advisor.
Chapter 9: Foundation decides fate (on team and starting)
Just like the Constitution of the United States, no matter what you think of the agreement reached in Philadelphia that summer more than 200 years ago, it is hard to change afterwards! So is the company. Once an earlier wrong decision is made (such as choosing the wrong partner or choosing the wrong employee), it is difficult to correct it afterwards. So as a founder, your first job is to lay a good foundation, because you can't create a great enterprise on the basis of defects.
In the initial "marriage", the understanding between founders is as important as their tacit understanding of cooperation and the complementarity of ability and talent! The founder should have a deep friendship before starting a business, otherwise he is taking a chance. Moreover, generally speaking, the employees you hire should be full-time, because if you don't go to work at the same time and place every day, differences between colleagues will arise and cannot be resolved in time.
The difference between ownership, management right and control right. If you want to operate efficiently, try to reduce the board size.
Cash reward is not king, stock reward can make employees go all out.
Foundation determines fate, but the most valuable companies always encourage invention and creation. As long as the company innovates, entrepreneurship is not over. Once innovation stops, entrepreneurship is over. If you start your business at the right time, you can do more than just create a valuable company. You can grasp its future development direction and let it develop towards the road of innovation, instead of being limited by the existing success.
Chapter 10: Establishing Gang Culture (Corporate Culture)
Corporate culture and team spirit!
Providing irreplaceable job opportunities, why not give up the opportunity to gain high technology and prestige from Google and become the 20th engineer of your company? There are two good answers: one is about the company's mission, and the other is about the team. If you can explain why the company's mission is exciting, then you can attract the employees you need. Not to explain the importance of work, but to explain why you are doing something important that others never thought of doing! You also need to explain why your company is suitable for him. In short, don't fight welfare wars.
Every employee has a different personality, but make sure that every employee is working hard in one direction. You must agree with what the company wants to do!
Chapter 11: Customers will not automatically come to the door (about marketing)
Even if you have advanced and high-quality products, customers will not come to your door automatically. Instead, you have to sell them, and sales play a role as a link.
Different products and cost components need to match different sales strategies.
Complex sales: It may take you months to build a good relationship with customers, and it may take a year or two to complete a transaction.
Personnel sales: it is how to establish a process to let the lean sales team sell products to customers as much as possible.
Blind area of sales: the bottleneck of sales, and the income obtained is not proportional to the cost input.
Marketing and advertising: advertising is also suitable for start-ups, but only if the customer acquisition cost and customer lifetime value are uneconomical in any other promotion channel.
Viral marketing: If the core function of a product can encourage users to invite other friends to become users, then this product can be viral marketing.
Power Law of Sales: There must be effective sales channels.
Sell to people other than customers: The company needs to sell not only its products to employees and investors, but also your company to them.
Everyone has something to sell-whether employees, founders or investors (personal brands).
Chapter 12: Man and Machine: (About Tool Application)
Technology should be a supplement, not a substitute.
Chapter 13: Green Energy and Tesla (Case Study)
Most energy companies fail because they ignore at least one of the following seven problems:
1. engineering question: is there a breakthrough in technology? Not just a slight improvement.
2. Timing:
3. Monopoly: Did you grab a large share in a small market at the beginning?
4. Personnel issues: Do you have the right team?
5. Sales Question: Besides creating products, do you have any other methods to sell products?
6. persistent question: can you keep your market position in the future 10 or 20 years?
7. Secret question: Have you found a unique opportunity that others have not found?
Chapter 14: the founder's paradox (talking about himself and the future)
The maverick personality is the engine to promote the company's progress, and the ultimate trait of the founder is the personal brand.
The lesson to be learned by the company is that the company cannot do without the founder. To be more tolerant of the seemingly bizarre behavior of the founder, we need to rely on extraordinary people to lead the company to make great strides, not limited to small progress.
Philosopher Nick bostrom described four possible modes of human future:
Mode 1: The ancients believed that history was a constantly changing rise and fall.
Mode 2: However, we often suppress our doubts.
Mode 3: Considering the closely connected geographical environment in today's world and the unprecedented destructive power of modern weapons, it is necessary to ask whether large-scale social disasters can be prevented.
Mode 4: The last one may be the hardest to imagine, speeding up the take-off and heading for a better future.
We can't take it for granted that the future will be better, but we should strive to create a better future today!
Perhaps whether we realize that the singularity in the whole universe is not important, what matters is whether we can seize the unique innovation opportunity in our daily work! The most important thing for us-the whole universe, the whole country, the whole company, the whole life and even this moment-is unique! Let the future be different and better, from 0 to 1! The most important first step is to think independently!
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