My Impressions: Zero to One

There are a few books that constantly hit my radar.  There are articles that recommend certain books.  My friends recommend me certain books.  Even Amazon’s algorithm recommends me… Among all these recommendations, some books keep on popping up, and this is one of them.  I don’t know why it took me a few years to finally get down to reading it, and why it took me so long to finish it. 

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

The idea of Zero to One is that, the breakthrough or the creation / first step is so much harder than scaling.  This reminds me of my recent dilemma, if you’re selling something…  0 sales the first 3 months, 6 months, or a year…  That first sale is infinitely more than all the prior 0-sale-months.  Once you hit 1, you can start having a baseline to measure progress and scale.  But before you sell 1 unit, you never know if anybody actually cares for your stuff or you just didn’t reach enough people.  Even 1 sale out of 1 million exposures/sales calls is infinitely more than 0 sales out of 10.   

In terms of technology and startups, once someone made the first mobile phone…  Suddenly everybody else can and does and scales.  Once someone does something difficult, like running a mile in 4 minutes (that was once thought impossible) or climbing Mt. Everest, then everybody else starts doing it really soon.  

There was an important discussion on whether or not successful people are “lucky” or self-made. The classical comparison is if anybody can beat the stock market?  

If you get 1 million people to flip a coin, around 500k people will flip heads.  

     2^nd round, around 250k. 

     3^rd round, 125k.

     4^th round, 62.5k.

     5^th round, 31.25k.

     6^th round, 15.65k.

     ……………..By the 20^th round, you will have one person that flipped heads 20 times in a row and beat out all the competition.  He could write books and book speaking engagements on how to flip heads.  Is it skill?  Did he practice?  Was it luck?  Was it just an expected occurrence from very large numbers?  He probably honestly thought he had the skill to toss heads like a professional when in reality his technique is insignificant cause to the outcome.

I’ve given this a lot of thought and don’t have a lot of conclusion.  Maybe there is more than just being “lucky” to succeed, though I think luck matters.  Some people will say Bill Gates and Warren Buffet won the gene pool lotto to be born in such smart/wealthy families with all the support they grew up with.  But going a step further, wouldn’t being born with the trait of working hard or the ability to see the next thing a kind of luck?  What about being born the “drive” to do something?  Some people are naturally not very driven.  Is it their fault for not trying?  Maybe they were born with lazy genes and they can’t fight it.  Is that luck?

I don’t know.  But say we don’t get the philosophical.  Broad term, I think the most important thing is we focus on what we can control and impact that as much as we can.  The rest will take care of itself (or not).  We will either have succeeded, or died without regret (or, less regret).