The founder of Paypal, Peter Thiel has many lessons for entrepreneurs. And these are all actionable ideas. His book ‘Zero to One’, therefore, is a pearl to preserve in every entrepreneurship’s book shelf.

The book presents many invaluable insights that can help budding entrepreneurs to succeed in the business world.

The most adorable line in the book is ‘You are not a lottery Ticket’.

‘You are not a lottery ticket’:

Under this theme, Peter gives some old-world philosophy.

Quoting American philosopher & poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, the book says, ‘Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances…Strong men believe in cause and effect.’

‘Can you control your future: Here he writes, ‘You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it hazily uncertain. If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you will give up on trying to master it.’

‘Follow the money’:

The book gives the old world message of ‘Never underestimate exponential growth.

However, to reap the benefit of exponential growth, the entrepreneur should have the vision of predicting whether the services provided by his/her enterprise will be of value ten years from now or not.

There is scope for improvisation. However, demand for services that the enterprise offers should stay intact. Of course, some enterprises create new demands. It means they create demand for a product or service which was not there earlier. Whatever may be the case, the basic demand should persist, may be in an altered form.

“You should focus relentlessly on something you are good at doing, but before that, you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.”

‘If you build it, will they come’?

This is the million-dollar question that baffles every aspiring entrepreneur. Nobody really knows if you build it, whether somebody will buy it or not. But you have to take that leap of faith.

The book also points out that importance of ‘sales’ is normally undervalued by startups.

“Engineers are biased toward building cool stuff rather than selling it. But customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks.”

“The most fundamental reason that even businesspeople underestimate the importance of sales in the systematic effort to hide it at every level of every field in a world secretly driven by it.”

So the book emphasizes if you have invented something new but you have not invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business- no matter how good the product.