金石堂
PayPal共同創辦人彼得‧泰爾暢談創業成功心法
身為Facebook與SpaceX等百餘家新創公司的投資者的彼得‧泰爾重申，創業者模仿前人只是徒勞，新創公司唯有在眾人忽略的地方找到商業價值，才能擁有自己的一片天。若你有一件確認別人做不到，而且相信自己絕對可以做得比任何人都好的事，便算得上是搶得先機。
本書作者彼得‧泰爾 (Peter Thiel) 過去是Paypal與軟體公司Palantir的合夥人，現在身份則是Facebook與SpaceX等百餘家新創公司的投資者。他認為創業者模仿前人只是徒勞，新創公司唯有在眾人忽略的地方找到商業價值，才能擁有自己的一片天。
模仿比創新簡單許多，當我們去做一件已經熟悉的事務，就像不斷地複製貼上，同樣的東西一個變兩個，了無新意。但當我們嘗試去創造一些新東西，感覺像是從0變成1，這種無中生有的摸索過程很新鮮也很辛苦，最後成果則很有可能出乎意料。
若你有一件確認別人做不到，而且相信自己絕對可以做得比任何人都好的事，便算得上是搶得先機──這是許多新創公司的致勝關鍵。倘若進入的領域已經有許多競爭者分食市場，再踏進去只會被他們同化，甚至在不斷的比較下逐漸失去原來的初心與鬥志，最終黯然退場。所以，別再想馬克．祖克伯會怎麼做，要問自己還能創造什麼新價值？
文／博客來編譯
EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS HAPPENS ONLY ONCE.
The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them.
It's easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
PROGRESS COMES FROM MONOPOLY, NOT COMPETITION.
If you do what has never been done and you can do it better than anybody else, you have a monopoly -- and every business is successful exactly insofar as it is a monopoly. But the more you compete, the more you become similar to everyone else. From the tournament of formal schooling to the corporate obsession with outdoing rivals, competition destroys profits for individuals, companies, and society as a whole.
ZERO TO ONE
is about how to build companies that create new things. It draws on everything Peter Thiel has learned directly as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and then an investor in hundreds of startups, including Facebook and SpaceX.
The single most powerful pattern Thiel has noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. Ask not, what would Mark do? Ask:
WHAT VALUABLE COMPANY IS NOBODY BUILDING?
