The following is a summary of Zero to One: Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future. I do not claim to own any of the book's original work, the following is simply a bulleted summarization with a few direct quotes. All copyrights and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Chapter 6 - You are not a Lottery Ticket:

• Does success in business come from luck or skill?
  • If success were determined by luck single people could not create multiple billion dollar companies (Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, etc.)
  • No way to actually conclude this unless we start the same businesses in multiple worlds (impossible)
  • Thiel says: If everything is up to luck, why try to improve your chances (by reading this book).
• Can you control your future?
  • Future is treatable as definite (can understand it and work to shape it)
    • Can determine the best thing to do and do it
    • Thiel strongly advocates that this mindset is needed for success as an entrepreneur
  • Can also think of it is indefinite and ruled by randomness
    • This thinking explains what’s wrong with the world
    • No plans means nothing to carry out (always preparing for nothing in particular)
    • Well-roundedness (pursuing many things to compensate for an unknown future)
  • Indefinitism - Thiel takes this part of this chapter to examine indefiniteness in many aspects of current society (finance, politics, philosophy, life, and more)
    • In finance:
      • People accrue money and give it to large banks because they don’t know what to do with it
      • Banks give it to a portfolio of investors because they don’t know what to do with it
      • Investors diversify it in companies because they don’t know what to do with it
      • Companies try to increase share price, when they do they buy back shares or issue dividends and the cycle repeats
    • Indefinitism prefers optionality; thus favoring the accumulation of cash
    • In reality Thiel thinks money should be definite, or used as a means to an end (aka a start of something new)
  • “Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum.
  • The Return of Design
    • I’ve excluded examples until now, but I feel this one is important enough to include
      • Steve Job’s iDevices are greatly designed, but Apple was designed better
      • Jobs saw you can change the world with careful planning
      • Introduced the iPod in 2001
        • People saw it as a nice, small thing
      • Jobs planned the iPod to be the first in a post PC world
      • Then came iPhone, iPad, etc.
      • Apple is now a 740 billion dollar company (2/15/15)
  • You are not a lottery ticket:
    • A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of chance.
• Main takeaway from this chapter is to be definite in your approach; have a well developed plan and stick to it.

  If you've liked this summary, I highly recommend you get the full book here: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future < Previous Chapter | Overview | Next Chapter > - Alec Kriebel