Even the government recognizes value in certain monopolies, by enforcing patents and copyrights. The word “monopoly” is usually seen as something negative (and possibly illegal!) But the truth is not so black-and-white. Learn more in our summary of The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing That’s why “it’s better to be first than it is to be better”! Can you see the pattern? The first brand to offer a product in each category or market is the one that continues to be number one today. It’s much easier to get into the mind first than to try to convince someone you have a better product than the one that did get there first.”įor example, the first university in the US was… Harvard, the first safety razor was… Gillette and the first imported beer was… Heineken. It’s the law of leadership: It’s better to be first than it is to be better. They wrote, “The basic issue in marketing is creating a category you can be first in. A far more effective strategy is if we can create a brand new category for our product. They say when a new startup tries to directly compete against an established market leader, then it almost always fails. The marketing experts Al Ries and Jack Trout also talk about a similar idea, in their book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.

His largest recent company is Palantir, which helps large organizations including governments use their data to make decisions. He invested early in other leading startups like SpaceX, Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yelp and Spotify.Several years later, he sold most of these shares for over ONE BILLION dollars! He bought 10% of the company for half a million dollars. In 2004, he was Facebook’s first outside investor.(You can also read our summary of Elon Musk’s biography here!) Four years later, it was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion. In 1998, he co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk.

He has a net worth between 4 and 7 billion dollars, depending where you look. Peter Thiel (official site) is an entrepreneur and investor. And why AVOIDING competition is the key to winning in business.Ĭurious? Then let’s go! Who is Peter Thiel?.The #1 question he asks when hiring someone new,.How to choose a target market in the beginning,.Students loved the course so much that he decided to turn the lectures into this book. For a good reason-Zero to One contains countless fascinating ideas that can change how we view technology, business, and the future.Īt Stanford University, the billionaire Peter Thiel gave a series of lectures about entrepreneurship. If you’re interested in startups and entrepreneurship, than you’ll hear this book recommended over and over again. Do you want to build the next billion-dollar tech startup? Then few people are better to learn from than Peter Thiel.

Peter thiel zero to one