zero to one: notes on startups, or how to build the future

i read this book almost five years ago back when i was still living in peru, didn't know how to code and haven't done anything meaningful in life yet.

the first time i read it, i downloaded ilegally from libgen.is. yeah, i was broke.

i've read a lot of books this way and i promised myself that when i had money i would buy them all and make a crazy library.

last year was the first time i experienced having money and being able to buy things without looking at the price tag. i was making 10k a month at my job.

i'm beginning with that goal. so i bought it back in december of last year along with almost ten other books.

one of my goals for this year is to read 24 books.

one of my biggest strenghts is that when i do something i'll devote myself to it 100%.

i can read 300 pages in a day if i'm commited to it.

so here are the notes and ideas that came to me while reading the book.

tasks:

• [ ] what are first principles?
• [ ] what happened in the 1990s?

notes:

chapter 1: the challenge of the future

• every moment in business happens only once.

• successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.

• what important truth do very few people agree with you on? a good answer takes the following form: "most people believe in x, but the truth is the opposite of x".

• what makes the future distinctive and important isn't that it hasn't happened yet, but rather that it will be a time when the world looks different from today.

• globalization is horizontal progress (copying things that work). technology is vertical progress (doing new things).

• new technology has never been an automatic feature of history. we must never take progress for granted. else we will repeat the dotcom crisis.

• our surroundings are strangely old: only computers and communications have improved dramatically since midcentury.

• a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.

chapter 2: party like it's 1999

• the frist step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about hte past.

• the most contrarian thing is not to oppose to the crowd but to think for yourself.