Thread by @MarcellusInvest

India’s booming start-up ecosystem birthed over 40 unicorns in 2021! Its thus a good time to revisit Peter Thiel’s ‘Zero to One’, which is our Marcellus Book of the Month. We ourselves have sought inspiration from the book in starting and building Marcellus.
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The book gives a fresh perspective on building a successful business. For this, companies must invest in the difficult task of creating new things (0 to 1) rather than trying to achieve just incremental progress or improvement on things already being done (1 to n).

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Going from Zero to 1 allows you to monopolize your markets and that is the only wat to build lasting success in a business. Thiel’s mantras of ‘start small’, ‘do not disrupt’ and ‘be the last mover’ are super counter-intuitive insights on building and scaling a business.

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Key idea #1: Power Law – Normal distr doesn’t work in investing, business, or life. Focus on a few things that can drive massive outcomes. In a portfolio, concentrate on fewer stocks, each of which can become hugely valuable. Effectively, diversification is for losers

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Key idea #2: Secret – There are still many unknowns (secrets) in the world. Things hard to do, but doable. Here lies the opportunity to start a biz that can monopolize. Our education trains us to think in increments and hence, we never think of making a 10x leap

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Thiel then tackles the imp aspects of building a biz. First is getting the right co-founders + the right people. This team is the mafia that will dominate the business. He also stresses the imp of ‘selling’ – superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly.

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To summarise it all, using the CleanTech space as an eg., Thiel lays down 7 key questions every business must ask to judge success/failure. He then uses Tesla’s example to show how it got answers to all these 7 questions right, and built a dominant business

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