> <i>Progress comes from monopoly, not competition.</i><p>Okay, that was a surprise. I get the idea that one should work on new things, that merely trying to out-compete is counter-productive (competition is a zero-sum game after all).<p>On the other hand, some benefits may only come when there's enough players that compete with each other. Take Virtual Reality, for instance. There's the Occulus Rift, Now Sony is working on it, there was valve… at one point, there will be enough player to make a market for low-latency, low-persistence, high-frequency, ridiculous-resolution flat panels. The smartphone industry pushed in that direction of course, but the limit of what's useful for this industry is clearly not enough for VR. Anyway, with this new market, VR will improve as a whole. Without the competition that is currently forming, I think those miraculous flat panels wouldn't come out as fast as they will. That said, those folks are still working on something new…<p>---<p>Now that I think of it, maybe he was talking about maximizing one's marginal impact? Like, let the Occulus people work on their Rift alone, and try and work on something <i>different</i>. Even if that slows the VR revolution down, we may now have <i>two</i> revolutions. Hmm…
I would suggest he finishes his other book, "The Blueprint", first, since it is "pre-ordered" on Amazon for two years now... Talk about a slow launch.
"ZERO TO ONE is about how to build companies that create new things.", but then as an example uses: "The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine."<p>Maybe my history is not that good, but as far as I know Bill gates didn't build the first operating system, and when he bought 86-DOS, its success was mainly thanks to IBM. Same for Google, it wasn't the first search engine, it just improved on an existing concept.
>And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network.<p>Unless they are creating Twitter. And an article written before Facebook started would probably have said "The next Tom Anderson won't create a social network"<p>Yes, every successful business will need to find what their particular unique niche is, and it certainly helps to be the first major player in a whole new area, but the reality is that at this macro level "Every moment in business" doesn't happen "only once". Most markets have plenty of space for multiple innovators making relatively minor tweaks to existing industries.<p>For instance, you could easily present Steve Jobs being "the next Bill Gates", and he certainly did well out of a company creating OSs (and the hardware to run them on, but at least with Macs, and potentially with iPhones/iPads, the OS was almost certainly the more important part).
See also: <a href="http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup" rel="nofollow">http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup</a> (notes from Peter Thiel’s CS183)
I think a number of people here may be misinterpreting what Thiel means by "monopoly". Here is the likely backbone of that chapter[0].<p>I personally believe each company should do <i>one thing</i>, and do that <i>one thing</i> better than anyone else in the world <i>possibly</i> could. Companies should therefore be constantly perfecting that one thing to the degree that no competitor could possibly catch up. I may be wrong, but I hope that's the kind of monopoly Thiel is talking about.<p>[0] <a href="http://blakemasters.com/post/21169325300/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-4-notes-essay" rel="nofollow">http://blakemasters.com/post/21169325300/peter-thiels-cs183-...</a>
Peter Thiel's writings are often thought-provoking and insightful. They frequently think several steps deeper than the usual blog posts that we read on the topics... The CS183 notes bear that out.<p>I've pre-ordered the book. Looking forward to it.
"Progress comes from monopoly, not competition."<p>Seems rich coming from the guy who founded Paypal, which was widely loathed and seen as pretty stagnant in the payments space after it achieved dominance over that market.
Some of his ideas are elaborated in his public speaking, and the book sounds to be very interesting. I just hope he sticks to the release date and it doesn't get canceled like the previous one.
I don't think that "there can be only one" Bill Gates for any given category. I don't even think he's saying that there won't be any new OS or Social Network billionaires.<p>I think he's drawing new types of businesses making new kinds of products for a new market vs businesses "competing in the __ space.<p>A good litmus test might be the words that were used early on to describe the company/product. Twitter used to be "micro-blogging" or "like SMS but everyone can see it".<p>MSFT may have had some early users who switched to DOS from Apple II Unix but most learned the words Operating System & DOS in the same instant. Investor's hadn't invested in an operating system company before. etc.
"... competition destroys profits for ... society as a whole."<p>What is meant by "profits"?<p>"Progress comes from monopoly..."<p>What is meant by "progress"?<p>Does the Antitrust Division at the DOJ do Book Reviews?<p>I would enjoy reading their review of this one.
I have recently been reading blake masters notes on the class and I find them extremely valuable. They are written so well I feel like I am reading a transcript of the real lecture. It feels like I am getting the source material even though they are a students notes.<p>I bet the book will be even better since it is revised by Peter himself. I can't wait to read it as well.
> Progress comes from monopoly, not competition.<p>> ... competition destroys profits for individuals, companies, and society as a whole.<p>Profits != progress.
This blurb makes it sound like a repackaged Blue Ocean Strategy. Don't try to fight entrenched players in mature markets? This doesn't sound novel at all.
Everyone in the comments here are getting caught up in the examples of Gates, Zuck, etc. But the vast majority of people who are even interested in creating something new are creating an app that riffs off an existing concept and are looking for a (quick) exit. I see this book as an evolution of The Blueprint and the Founders Fund manifesto, where Thiel is calling on people to stop squandering creative energy and build something truly great.