Zero To One

Yay! I finished another book again, my second book for this year. 💙

It’s a book similar to the first one I read early this year (Winning). Both focus on company success however, instead of giving you tips on how to pan your life in the corporate world, Zero To One gives you some guidance and lessons on how to build a startup or founding your own (tech) company.

I am not sure if you are interested on that but five to six years ago, I was super fascinated with the idea of startups. I still am now, it’s just that I can’t entertain the idea much because the workload has been crazy so maybe one day, someday.

Around that time also, I chanced upon a book title in a magazine article that says it’s one of Mark Zuckerberg’s book recos for startups (hope I am remembering it correctly), so I looked for it immediately at National Bookstore and I was happy as it was available/on-hand. But after I bought it but I haven’t really finished reading it. 🥺 At first glance, you’d thought it’s a quick read (big text size, not too thick) but apparently, there are a lot of stuff to digest and unfamiliar topics to pay attention to chapter after chapter. Maybe that’s why I stopped reading it before, maybe I got overwhelmed because it’s truly overwhelming but phew, I am glad that I finally finished it now, and I really learned a lot.

Before, I thought startup ventures are easy, fascinating. It lets you appear cool, working in jeans and shirt. You spend your time doing the things you want to do that might be the next big thing of the world. But, it does make me realize that both startup fashion and passion are just the tip of the iceberg on how startups work. I’ve learned and realized through this book that to be the next Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, the next big zero to one, you must also recognize the need to have a good understanding on laws, economy, finance, advertising, funding, partnership to name a few to be the next biggest / most valuable (tech) company.

What I also love in this book is that it also feeds my interest in branding and company founding though there are some references (Star Wars, sorry, loser) that I don’t understand, but I do love the startup journey and success stories that Peter Thiel, the author, shares in this book…like his own startup story as a co-founder of Paypal and some of the successful tech companies (Facebook, LinkedIn, SpaceX) he helps/ed fund.

All of these are inside Zero To One, so if you are quite interested to put up a startup then I recommend you to read the book. It’s truly informative and inspirational, and hoping that the next successful startup to dominate the world is one from home.

Next book to read, Paper Towns.