“Notes on startups, or how to build the future” – The phrase on the cover is somewhat misleading. As “K” carries a unique weight for Krispy Kreme (the stock symbol is DNUT which seems should have been reserved for Dunkin, but is not the case) or NIKE, when “startup” is thrown in it has the effect of overwhelming other themes. But when your worldview is that companies are the unit where packets of progress emerge, “startup” takes a subservient role to “build the future” in the aforementioned phrase. Hence, the book being a compilation of thoughts of a successful creator / founder / entrepreneur / just another middle-aged man, this book is a reflection of worldviews than a guide to a great business. Meaning, if I were to have a conversation with Thiel on anything, I think we’ll inevitably wind up in the topics of the book because they seem to be so spinal to his views on everything. Chapter 6: You are not a Lottery Ticket, demonstrates that definite optimism, the pioneering spirit that induces one to actually be the harbinger of a better world, has given way to indefinite optimism, a passive view that the world will change for the better but the savior and timing is left dubious. Elon Musk said a while back people expect everything to advance so they think space technology must have advanced too. But it is not true. Since the space race of the cold-war, space technology has retreated, if not stagnated. On a separate note on AI, Thiel says “even if strong AI is a real possibility rather than an ponderable mystery, it won’t happen anytime soon: replacement by computers is a word for the 22nd century.” It’s interesting. Just 10 years ago (2014), someone like Thiel didn’t see it coming. Points on green technology is incredibly interesting too. So is his conclusion that Singularity – a world where new technologies are so powerful that transcends the limits of our current understanding – is the future, and our task today is to find singular ways to create new things that will get us from zero to one. Some key notions were consistent to ones in The Technological Republic by Alex karp – written 10 years later. I thought how great it would have been to know of AI, definite optimism, Palantir 10 years ago. I find peace in the fact that I at least know of it now.

• 1 to many is globalization, 0 to 1 is technology
• What important truth do very people agree with you on? His favored contrarian question is synonymous with to what business opportunity can you spot? It’s less a question on a philosophical /cultural take (e.g. I believe the education system is flawed), but a pragmatical dissonance one is able to notice (e.g. I believe we need a new currency). Thiel says “The business version of our contrarian question is: What valuable company is nobody building?”
• Monopoly, not competition, is what companies should strive for in a capitalist, liberal, market economy. Competition sucks all profit out of the company, keeping it swamped just keeping the lights on. Companies that have a monopoly preach the competitive landscape, and companies that don’t have a clear edge preach the company’s uniqueness. – “We preach competition, internalize its necessity, and enact its commandments; and as a result, we trap ourselves within it – even though the more we compete, the less we gain.”
• “Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high schools get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart Pierce over conventional careers, like management consulting, and investment banking.”
• “Every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small. The reason is simple: it’s easier to dominate a small market than a large one. If you think your initial market might be too big, it’s almost certainly is.”
• Lots of reference to classics(e.g. Romeo and Juliet”, philosophers(e.g. John Rawls), real world company cases(e.g. eBay, Amazon)
• “By the time a student gets to college, he spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready for nothing in particular.”
• “We have to find our way back to a definite future, and the Western world needs nothing short of a cultural revolution to do it. … a startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important parts of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.”
• “the biggest secret of venture capital is that the best investment in a successful fund equals or outperforms the entire rest of the fund combined. This implies two very strange rules for VC. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. … every single company in a good venture portfolio must have the potential to succeed at vast scale. … investors who understand the power law make as few investments as possible.”
• “an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers and ready reserve.”
• “every university believes in excellence and hundred page course catalogs, arranged alphabetically, according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well. That is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.”
• “If anything, too many people are starting their own companies today. People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast. The power law means that differences between companies will dwarf the differences in roles inside companies.”
• “the best place to look for secrets is where no one else is looking.”
• “Unless you have perfectly conventional beliefs, it’s rarely a good idea to tell everybody everything that you know. So who do you tell? Whoever you need to, and no more. In practice, there’s always a golden mean between telling nobody and telling everybody – and that’s a company. The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.”
• “clean tech gave people a way to be optimistic about the future of energy. But indefinitely, optimistic, investors betting on the general idea of green energy funded to clean tech companies that lacked specific business plans, the result was a bubble.