Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

by Blake Masters

Every monopoly is unique, but they usually share some combination of the following characteristics: proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding.

Network effects can be powerful, but you’ll never reap them unless your product is valuable to its very first users when the network is necessarily small.

the initial markets are so small that they often don’t even appear to be business opportunities at all.

working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day.

Good enterprise sales strategy starts small, as it must: a new customer might agree to become your biggest customer, but they’ll rarely be comfortable signing a deal completely out of scale with what you’ve sold before.

As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements.