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The idea that a startup's end game should be to "build a monopoly" is one of the most profound insights in Thiel's excellent book, Zero to One. This move just
by waxman 12y ago
The idea that a startup's end game should be to "build a monopoly" is one of the most profound insights in Thiel's excellent book, Zero to One.
This move just deepens YC's monopoly in its domain, as sama would say, "in the Peter Thiel sense."
- foobarqux 12y agoThere's nothing profound about it, it's common sense in business though people use different words like "moats", "barriers to entry" and "pricing power".
- UmDieWelt 12y agoFor some reason every generation seems to rediscover the same things and think they've invented something new
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ianlevesque 12y agoPoor history education
- krschultz 12y agoWell it doesn't help that the startup world thumbs their nose at MBAs and seems to really want 26 year old founders. Inexperience + disdain for the very education that teaches that kind of thinking leads to a pretty obvious conclusion.
- jacques_chester 12y ago> one of the most profound insights in Thiel's excellent book, Zero to One. Which was an insight in Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim & Mauborgne, 2005). And before that, if you squint, in Competitive Strategy (Porter, 1980) and Competitive Advantage (Porter, 1980). And the B-school theorists basically got their ideas by peeking over the fence of the Economics dept at how monopolies are formed and abuse their power and saying "hey, let's teach that to our students".
- lancewiggs 12y agoAnd Drucker's Innovation and Entrepreneurship a bit latter that decade. I recommend all of them and also Porter's 5 forces update article in HBR.
- jacques_chester 12y agoAnd I won't be surprised if someone pops up with a Sun Tzu quote before long. (I'll leave Ecclesiastes 1:9 as an exercise for the reader.)
- bbcbasic 12y agoSupreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
- jsprogrammer 12y agoAnd before that, Morgan, Rockefeller, etc. And before that, George(s), Charles, Henry, James, Elizabeth, Kahn, Alexander, etc, etc.
- rokhayakebe 12y agoCorrect, all emperors had a clear goal of monopolizing all lands as far as their boats, camels, horses, feet would take them.
- xasos 12y agoThose were a different kind of monopoly - Rockefeller bought up a bunch of companies inp N already big oil market. Thiel suggests becoming a monopoly in a small market and vertically integrating