A 20-minute Summary of Peter Thiel's Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

By: Instaread Summaries

Narrated by: Jason P. Hilton

Length: 32 mins

Publisher's summary

Please note: This is a summary of the book and not the original book.

Inside this Instaread Summary:

• Overview of the entire book
• Introduction to the important people in the book
• Summary and analysis of all the chapters in the book
• Key Takeaways of the book
• A Reader's Perspective

Preview of this summary:

Chapter 1

Progress is the goal of the future. Horizontal and vertical are the two kinds of progress. Horizontal progress means more of what is currently working. Another word for horizontal progress is globalization, the act of taking a product and integrating it world wide. Vertical progress comes from doing new things that have not been done before. Technology, the new and better way of doing something, is another word for vertical progress. In terms of the world's future, technology matters more than globalization.

New technology generally comes from startups. These small groups of people with a mission have improved the world one new idea at a time. Big organizations are bureaucracies that move too slowly. Individuals alone cannot develop new ideas. New thinking is a new company's strongest characteristic.

Chapter 2

When a person can recognize a popular belief that is delusional, that person can find the truth that few believe behind it. Traditional beliefs are seen as wrong only in retrospect.

Although the 1990s are remembered as being a prosperous decade, they were actually a time when the old economy could not withstand the challenges of globalization. The Internet boom and bust at the end of the decade was intense but lasted only 18 months. The most successful companies had what seemed to be an anti-business model where they lost money as they got larger. This is why the mania could not be sustained. At this time, globalization replaced technology as the best hope for the future.

©2014 Instaread Summaries (P)2014 Instaread Summaries

repetitive

Several of the chapters repeat the same sentences several times so your 20 minute summary is more like a 12 minutes summary that takes 20 minutes of your time.

Is it just me?

Would you try another book from Instaread Summaries and/or Jason P. Hilton?

If the summary of Zero to One is any indication of how all Instaread summaries are structured, I would not try another one. Perhaps I'm not seeing the underlying logic of the summary, but the (seemingly) random and frequent repetition of certain phrases is quickly annoying (like a TV advertisement that repeats the phone number 10 times in the span of 30 seconds, in order to drill it into your head)

Would you ever listen to anything by Instaread Summaries again?

This seems like the same question as above.

Did Jason P. Hilton do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

This is not a relevant question to ask me in a review of a non-fiction business book.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

It was inexpensive.

These summaries need exciting narrators

The narrator was a bit drab. He has good pace for a summary. I struggled to stay awake listening to this over my lunch break

Nothing New

If you are looking to learn something new, then this will certainly disappoint you. Save you time and money.

great info, annoying tones throughout book

great info, but the book had hundreds of annoying tones when highlighting a key piece of information.. it was very distracting.

Awkwardly repetitive?

I've enjoyed other titles from this collection, but this one felt awkward in that the chapter summaries and chapter-end "key points" were nearly identical, sometimes just repeating the exact sentences from 30s prior. The other titles are better at a succinct but informative summary contrasted with the bare bones key points to anchor understanding.

Quick and easy summary

Got a lot of value out of the summary for my time, but haven't read full length book to compare

Too repetitive

I understand the importance of reading the book in chapters, but repeating things that were said in previous chapters were unnecessary.

Way too repetitive!!!

The excerpts were way too repetitive nor did I appreciate the overview of who Peter Thiel was... Unfortunately I give this two thumbs down

Not the Original Book - Terrible Summary

I accidentally bought this book thinking it was the original. Being that it was a summary I gave it a try anyway. It is awfull! So bad it should be delisted. The book often repeats the same line again and again.