He co-founded PayPal in 1999, and was on the CEO on the team that sold the Internet payment company to eBay for $1.5 billion 3 years later. After PayPal, he went on to build a macro hedge fund that invests in public equity, fixed income and hedging markets. In 2004, he started Palantir Technologies, a Palo Alto software services and consulting company which uses big data to fight terrorism, financial fraud, and cyber crimes. In 2005, he launched, alongside two others, Founders Fund, a venture capital firm with over $3 billion in current aggregate capital. Through Founders Fund, he has invested in startup successes like Facebook, Airbnb, Lyft, Knewton, Spotify, Stripe, SpaceX and ZocDoc. ¹

He also started the Thiel Fellowship (erstwhile known as 20 under 20) to help students under the age of 23 conduct scientific research, create a startup or arouse a social movement. Selected fellows get $100 000 spread over two years, mentorship, connection network and resources, in exchange for dropping out of school to pursue their startup dreams.

Meet Peter Thiel. With a net worth of $2.2 billion and ranking No. 246 on the Forbes 400 in 2016 with a net worth of $2.7 billion, Peter Thiel has built multiple successful startups and then more.

¹ Read more on his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel

In 2012, Peter taught a course about startups at Stanford. During those classes, he made the case that the future should not "happen only at Stanford, or in college, or in Silicon Valley." He, alongside one of his students, added flesh to the class notes and published a major staples among startup entrepreneurs everywhere. Zero to One.

This thread is about studying what Peter shared in Zero to One, and sharing what we can learn from it.

In the book, Peter makes the case that the next Seun Osewa will not build a Nairaland. The next Linda Ikeji will not build a successful celebrity blog. And the next Ife 3 won't create Jobberman. To learn from them, he points out, we need to find value in unexpected places, by "thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas."

While Peter focuses on the need to create more breakthrough technologies (Intensive Growth) especially for "developed" economies, there are many lessons that could be adapted to "developing" economies like Nigeria, so that existing technologies can be improved to reach more people in a faster, cheaper and better manner (Extensive Growth).

Peter compares the former to growing from Zero to One, and the latter to moving from 1 to N.

I'm learning how to build sustainable technologies, and spread them to more people, at a cheaper, faster and better rate. And this thread is my means of sharing what I'm learning.

Feel free to chime in, as you see fit.

Thanks!

Images: Google Images

Interesting thread. Following.

following

I hope u find the time to continue what you have started. The introduction has done really well to wet my appetite.

Preface (pages 1 - 3):

Quotes from Zero to One:

- "Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. . . . And the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network. If you're copying these guys, you aren't learning from them."

- "Today's 'best practices' lead to dead ends; the best paths are new and untried."

- ". . . this book offers no formula for success. The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative."

Even though 24/7 electricity is familiar in developed climes, maintaining constant power supply in Nigeria represents a classic case of going from Zero to One. The nation, simply put, does not know how to do it. I blame you, you blame me, we blame the government. We keep passing the buck around, until we realize that nothing gets done without stable electricity.

Solving Nigeria's power problem will not come by fixing transformers, electric poles, and distribution lines. It will happen by creating a supply network that doesn't depend on most of those.

Constant power will not come from a lone genius or a saintly Nigerian vanishing into a jungle, and emerging with a fresh and strange innovation that changes the face of electricity usage in Nigeria.

Rather, it will happen when we think small. A single person, as you are, cannot solve Nigeria's power problem. Think small. Think one state at a time. Go even smaller.

Large power generating stations have long failed to produce the needed power in Nigeria. Why? From a technical view, the generated energy cannot be stored, flows in only one direction, and reduces in quantity along transmission lines. Which leaves us with the option of generating and distributing power locally.

How do we then produce and distribute the needed power in our localities. Better put, what would it take to power a state like Lagos?

To start with, we need to know how much power the city uses. Obviously, factories and industrial areas would need more power than say a residential estate. If New York with ~ 19.8 million people has an average power demand of 5.5 GW, we can estimate Lagos's to be about 2.5 GW (with 9.1 million residents)¹. The 'normal' ceiling lamp uses about 60 W of energy, so think of the 2.5GW power as 42 million of those light bulbs all shining at once!

On the flip side, however, producing 2.5GW doesn't cost a lot; when you consider that a large coal power plant can produce about 2 GW of electricity. Two of those power plants, or at best 3 to account for losses, can help solve the power quagmire in Lagos.

Except it's not that simple.

If the 3 power plants produce (at the minimum) 4 GW of electricity, the power is useless if they don't get to the desired destination in the needed amounts. With enormous losses incurred during production, transmission and distribution - not to talk of vandalism - it's easy to see why we need "miracles" to tackle this challenge.

If we are to succeed, we are going to need hundreds, or even thousands, of miracles. "This would be depressing but for one crucial fact: humans are distinguished from other species by our ability to work miracles. We call these miracles technology."

You shouldn't even think state-wise. Come to your city. To your street. To your neighborhood. Even to your apartment. Find a way to power your residence without depending on PHCN. And we can worry about building to scale later.

Quotes from Zero to One:

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

- "There's no reason why the future should happen only at Stanford, or in college, or in Silicon Valley."

What do you think?

^1. Explain That Stuff - http://www.explainthatstuff.com/renewableenergy.html

Exactly my thoughts! If an idea that works can start from a household then move further a community, then I believe we are getting somewhere.

"Constant power will not come from a lone genius or a saintly Nigerian vanishing into a jungle, and emerging with a fresh and strange innovation that changes the face of electricity usage in Nigeria.

Rather, it will happen when we think small. A single person, as you are, cannot solve Nigeria's power problem. Think small. Think one state at a time. Go even smaller."

i have thought of a way but 80+ plants will only generate the same 2.5GW that 3 coal plants can generate so why will investors invest in it?

This thread is full of powerful insights. Thaats Mr HappyDay for sharing.

Sweeny:
Exactly my thoughts! If an idea that works can start from a household then move further a community, then I believe we are getting somewhere.

"Constant power will not come from a lone genius or a saintly Nigerian vanishing into a jungle, and emerging with a fresh and strange innovation that changes the face of electricity usage in Nigeria.

Rather, it will happen when we think small. A single person, as you are, cannot solve Nigeria's power problem. Think small. Think one state at a time. Go even smaller."

Nice insights, Sweeny! We are always tempted to grind away at big projects, when we start comparing someone's Day 500 with our Day one. Good things take time, and Rome definitely wasn't built in a day.

Thanks for weighing in!

supergata:
i have thought of a way but 80+ plants will only generate the same 2.5GW that 3 coal plants can generate so why will investors invest in it?

The truth is that those 3 coal plants won't be of much value to us in Nigeria, for the simple reason that they are highly inefficient. So, if you can find a way to generate 2.5 GW from 80 small-sized, nimble plants, that's a job well done. Unfortunately, venture capitalism hasn't taken deep root in Nigeria's business climate, so you'll need to make some economic sense of it.

Why don't you find a way to start charging for the 2.5 GW yourself? I'm sure people and businesses around you will be willing to pay, even if they can get 5 hours of constant power a day. In so far, it's guaranteed and constant. Way better than PHCN's.

Thanks for sharing!

Bobugee:
This thread is full of powerful insights. Thaats Mr HappyDay for sharing.

I'm glad those insights resonated with you. Thanks for following!

I have read Zero to One and I know quite a bit about Peter Thiel.
Yours is an interesting article but the conclusions and subsequent discussions are slightly off.
The problems in Nigeria are not technical but political to use a pun : we have a problem of power not power.
People often try to reinvent the wheel in Africa and label theirs 'African' solutions. Electricity has been solved long ago and world wide. It is not a technical problem. We do not have electricity in Nigeria because the system is broken. No amount of 'innovation' can change that.

Hi everyone! Thanks to Sweeny, supergata, Bobugee, and everyone out there. Today, we move on to Chapter 1, starting on page 5.

Chapter 1 - The Challenge of the Future page 5 - 7

Quotes from Zero to One:
- "Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius."
- "Vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has ever done."

Peter started the first chapter in the book by asking the reader one of his most deep-diving questions he asks in a job interview. The question? "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?"

As with many interview questions, it appears simple and straightforward to answer. Probably not. Your answer needs be something you believe in - an ideal, a principle, a policy - that isn't popular. In other words, the following answers won't make the cut:

"Building a company that solves Nigeria's power problem would amount to billions of dollars"
"Nigeria is a under developing state, not a developing one"
"Nigerians are happy people"

The first is an obvious statement, which might be true. And depending on who you ask, a lot of people share the sentiments in the second and third examples. Like with a lot of open-ended questions, there're no clear-cut right answers. Take time to come up with a good answer. (Mine's at the end of this article).¹

So, you're asking what does opposing a popular opinion have to do with building a start up? Good question! To answer the question, you'd need to take a candid look at the future, and connect the dots backward to where you're today. Truth is, "no one can predict the future exactly", but two things are certain: the future will be different, and it must continue from where we are today.

How do you compare the future and the present, so you can figure out what is missing?

Enters the start up!

Let's have some brief definitions of a startup, real quick.

A startup is an entrepreneurial venture which is typically a newly emerged, fast-growing business that aims to meet a marketplace need by developing or offering an innovative product, process or service, so says Wikipedia². Paul Graham takes it further, a startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit."³ The only essential thing is growth.

In other words, the missing link to take us from here to there is growth. Or "progress", according to Peter. Turns out there are two forms of progress - horizontal progress and vertical progress.

Horizontal progress is when you build a jobs site, like Jobberman. You know what a jobs site looks like, and it's easy to imagine. Even though it might be ridiculously hard to make a decent profit, if any at all. Or starting a "college prep" program, that organizes extra lessons for secondary-school leavers who couldn't make their WASSCE papers, or get into a decent university. You know what to expect, and the competition is neck-breaking. On the flip side, what does vertical progress look like?

"Vertical progress means doing new things - going from 0 to 1". It's harder to imagine what success would look like because it hasn't been done before. The good news is, you can build "0 to 1" businesses in Nigeria, even if you're not a genius. Choose one thing and become a master of it. Choose another field and become a master at that, too. When you become a master of two fields, (say education and entrepreneurship), you can carve out a special niche for yourself because you can speak the language of both worlds, connect the two markets, build "un-stealable" products that blow your competition out of the water. You can generate ideas from both fields, create "idea sex" and make unconventional idea babies that would be hard to shun.

If you start a school that turns average students into good, and make good students great, you have made vertical progress. You know each student's ability coming in, and then your program actually helps to improve your students. You're not playing guess work. You know your onions, and have established best practices to adopt. You keep testing the norms of education practices in Nigeria, refining what works, and doing away with what doesn't.

It's harder to do than say, start the next secondary school. But you could be the one to prepare Nigerian kids for the most competitive schools in the world (every parent wants this), arm youths with market-ready skill set to start their own real, profit-generating businesses, be adept in programming or emerge as top-notch Mathematicians.

And quality trumps quantity. Graduating 25 Nigerian youths who can hold their own in building growth startups will have more effect, ceteris paribus, than teaching kids to pass WASSCE and JAMB. The former helps the kids to create, the latter encourages them to consume.

Quotes from Zero to One:
- "If you take one typewriter and build 100, you have made horizontal progress. If you have a typewriter and build a word processor, you have made vertical progress."
- "The rapid progress of information technology in recent decades has made Silicon Valley the capital of 'technology' in general. But there is no reason why technology should be limited to computers. Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology."

What do you think?

^1. My answer: Don't build software or "apps" for the Nigerian market: to make progress, we need to build service businesses that treats customers excellently well. Don't build the next "PayPal for Nigerians", help people make cheaper, faster, and easier-to-use online payments. Be consistent and customer-centric.
^2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company
^3. http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

If I am correct, horizontal progress is somewhat like being on same level but moving on a slower pace?
On the question Graham asked, my response will be; look out for something that works, for everyone, especially now and give it a good brand. It isn't about starting up but having same quality 10-20 years to come.

Sweeny:
If I am correct, horizontal progress is somewhat like being on same level but moving on a slower pace?
On the question Graham asked, my response will be; look out for something that works, for everyone, especially now and give it a good brand. It isn't about starting up but having same quality 10-20 years to come.

Horizontal progress means copying what others have done. So, yes, it's moving at a slower pace.

Century 21 Freedom Group Int'l is a business development and empowerment group. Currently, we are running a campaign tagged "OWN YOUR LIFE" Own your life is a business campaign that enables people who are interested to raise capital for their personal projects without paying interest rates or dropping collateral and you don't have to pay the money back.

If you want to know more, you can follow this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSefobvfAA42y2UE8TxOOnCyg2bfP7LMHSmSXEFVafaqe0aPEg/viewform and indicate your interest. Should you be considered eligible to partner with us, you will be contacted shortly. Only persons resident Lagos and Abuja should take the survey.

Chapter 1 - The Challenge of the Future page 8 - 11

Quotes from Zero to One:
- In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable"
- A lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry".

It's great to be able to copy ideas from developed nations, and try to adopt same in Nigeria. Which is the whole focus of globalization. But, without considering new and better ways of doing things, we'd just be blindly copying whatever has worked somewhere else, without recourse to our culture, norms, and peculiarities.

By focusing on technology, we can re-imagine globalization in ways that even the original ideas were never implemented. We can think for ourselves. We can re-think businesses from scratch. China might be able to create its own WhatsApp, Google, YouTube, and Amazon, but the country won't be able to stay competitive by simply copying and reverse engineering existing successful products. "Without technological change, if China doubles its energy production over the next two decades, it will also double its air pollution."

The same applies to India. "If every one of India's hundreds of millions of households were to live the way Americans already do - using only today's tools - the result would be environmentally catastrophic.

If a Nigerian city would be competitive, it would require that it does not expect technological change to take place by default. Such a city needs nimble research centers to rethink how businesses should be done, pursue business knowledge and sharing it with the world, an adventurous business culture which, ostensibly, would be built up over a long period of time, sustainable capital base to support daring entrepreneurs to build businesses, and steady business and contract laws.

Each of these four critical supports of a thriving city are better built by "small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission." Why small groups? Peter explained that it's hard to build new things in traditional organizations, and on the flip side, even harder to do it all alone. By staying small, startups can avoid the innovation bottlenecks replete in big companies, and at the same time unite motivated people bonded by a mission to tackle tough problems.

One of the hardest parts of being an entrepreneur is the uncertainty. There are no clear-cut formulas, no syllabus, no teacher to grade your tests. And you can't exactly Google your way through some of the toughest decisions you have to make. And days unending, you'll have to trust your guts that you're on the right path. For the simple fact that the problem you're tackling hasn't been solved, the way you want.

As an entrepreneur, you're essentially building a different future, and a startup is the "largest group of people you can convince of a plan" to help you do that. Peter argues that the most valuable capital a startup has is the diversity of ideas. The ability to think. Starting from what we know, we'll need to "question received ideas and rethink business from scratch."

Quotes from Zero to One:
- "My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more"
- "The smartphones that distract us from our surroundings also distract us from the fact that our surroundings are strangely old: only computers and communications have improved dramatically since mid century."

Chapter 2 - Party like it's 1999! Page 12 - 18

Quote from the book:

- "The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past."

Digging deep into our contrarian question, we could identify a patter to generate many smart answers.

By questioning the various delusional popular beliefs among us. On the flip side of those false notions is the contrarian truth. A good example of a delusion was the Internet bubble of the 90's, which was the biggest since the recession of 1929 in the US. What happened in 1929? What started as a recession ended in a painful economic shift from manufacturing to a service economy. Silicon Valley was just getting started in a somber mood. The Internet won't be made available commercially until '92 and most web browsers were nothing like what we have today.

With the advent of the Internet, everything changed. Between '93 and '97, industry pioneers including Mosaic (later Netscape), Yahoo! and Amazon. September '98 heralded 18 months of dot-com frenzy. There were gobs of cash everywhere looking for people to chase it! People quit their jobs to found or work at startups. Launch parties for newly found companies was the order of the day. Instead of making money, people were losing it. All for the hopes of listing their companies on Wall Street and ending up as millionaires on paper.

PayPal started around this time. In late 1999. The mission was to "create a new currency to replace the U.S. dollar." To start with, the founders built a system to send and receive payments via email. But the transfer volume was too low to justify the continued existence of the company. Not even advertising could help.

Just as Seun canvassed for early Nairaland users by paying people to post, PayPal founders had to pay people to sign up. $10 when you join, an extra $10 for each friend you invite. Even though this was unsustainable, it showed new customers (and hence new business) could be racked up this way. Quickly.

Turns out investors were taking note. By March 2000, Peter and other team members had raised about $100 million, enough to ride PayPal to success.

Building most Internet companies today is no different. The success of most rely on attracting the starting critical mass of users. And if those first set of users like what they see, it becomes easier to convince them to invite their friends. Think Nairaland. Facebook. Google. Think Instagram. WhatsApp.

The early days are usually quiet and painful. Most companies fail at this stage; the ones that survive build something that people actually want.

Quote from the book:
- "The Old Economy couldn't handle the challenges of globalization. Something needed to work - and work in a big way - if the future was going to be better at all. By indirect proof, the New Economy of the internet was the only way forward."

What do you think?

3 FACTS ABOUT FINANCIAL FREEDOM
1) The guarantee way to financial freedom is not through savings but through investing in systems that pay you........

2) You don't attain financial freedom by living below your means but by increasing your means.

3) You make a living by what you do..but you attain financial freedom by building a system that will eventually work for you ..

DO YOU WANT TO BE YOUR OWN BOSS ?
DO YOU WANT TO BE FINANCIALLY FREE?
DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO GRAB THIS OPPORTUNITY DURING THIS RECESSION PERIOD?
ARE YOU WILLING TO EARN MORE THAN YOUR REGULAR 9-5 PAY JOB ?

LISTEN TO THIS SHORT MONOLOGUE >>>>> www.10yearsleft.net
After you listen to that ,now make a decision if you want to own your life today !!

get to know more about our group on http://c21fg.com/

If you're forward thinking enough and you want to create your own future, kindly indicate your interest by filling out our eligibility form below:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSefobvfAA42y2UE8TxOOnCyg2bfP7LMHSmSXEFVafaqe0aPEg/viewform