Books Read This Month: February ‘23

Building startups and using the Third Door

Short month but no shortage of reading, especially with a 5 day vacation I was able to get a couple in.

Reading at least 1–2 books a month for $10–20 lets you learn from decades of experiences, both mundane and life-changing. By utilizing this knowledge you can apply it to your own life and journey, so it would be very wise to get on it.

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel is a billionaire venture capitalist bet known for being one of the cofounders of PayPal, and the first outside investor into Facebook. The main argument of this book is that when you are considering starting a business, do so in a way that takes the number of businesses in your niche from 0 to 1, instead of 1 to n (where n is any other number of similar and competitive businesses).

In this fashion, you can have a monopoly on your market and provide a valuable service over time. For example, Google was the first company to create a monopoly on searching the internet. Of course, if you are going to be the main player in a space then you have a responsibility to provide a both valuable and ethical service.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

• “In business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death. If your industry is in a competitive equilibrium, the death of your business won’t matter to the world; some other undifferentiated competitor will always be ready to take your place.”
• The hazards of imitative competition may explain why individuals with an Asperger’s-like social ineptitude seem to be at an advantage in Silicon Valley today. If you’re less-sensitive to social cues, your less likely to do the same things as everyone else around you. If you’re interested in programming computers, you’ll be less afraid to pursue those activities single-mindedly and thereby become incredibly good at them.
• “Most venture backed companies don’t IPO or get acquired; most fail, usually soon after they start. Due to these early failures, a venture fund typically loses money at first. VCs hope the value of a fund will increase dramatically in a few years’ time when the small portion of successful companies in their portfolio hit their exponential growth spurts and start to scale.

The Third Door by Alex Banayan

As the author puts it, he came out of the womb with MD stamped on his forehead. His entire life up until the start of his college career his parents pushed him to get into the medical field and that would be considered successful.

However after a couple semesters he started to question who he was doing this for. Was he living life for his parents or for himself? After this epiphany, he set out on a quest to interview the world’s most successful people to see how they moved forward when they were starting out and in a simialr position. The hope is that by compiling this advice it will inspire a generation to remain optimistic and work hard to accomplish great things.

As he says, “99% of people wait outside the first door to success, similar to waiting in line at the club hoping someone lets you in eventually. The second door is the VIP section where the billionaires and celebrities slip through. The third door though, is rarely talked about, and you have to run down the alley, bang on the back door a hundred times, crack open the window, and sneak through the kitchen.

Here are some great quotes from this book:

• “Luck is like a bus. If you miss one, there’s always the next one. But if you’re not prepared, you won’t be able to jump on.”
• “You have to make a calculated judgement that the amount of money you’re going to put in is going to either pay off way bigger in the long term or enough in the short term to offset your costs. Aside from the money you live on, the rest is your money to play the game.”
• “Maybe the hardest part about taking a risk isn’t whether to take it, its when to take it. It’s never clear how much momentum is enough to justify leaving school. It’s never clear when it’s the right time to quit your job. Big decisions are rarely clear when you’re making them — they’re only clear looking back. The best you can do is take one careful step at a time”.
• ““The secret is: there is no secret,” Larry (King) added. “There’s no trick to being yourself”.”

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