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You should read Zero to One if you really want to unlock Thiel's thinking re: business. It's both the best business book I've ever read and the perfect distillation of the core soullessness at the root of the matter. The goal is positive cash flows that can't be successfully attacked by competitors. That's the game, that's all everyone here is working for.

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I will never, ever understand the praise for that book.

It can be summarized in one sentence: ‘Get a monopoly if you can.’ Brilliant insight there - thanks captain obvious!

If the author wasn’t famous it wouldn’t have even been published, and certainly wouldn’t have appeared as a ‘best business book.’

Well for myself it broke things down clearly in terms of the framework to operate in (zero to one, one to infinity) and what types of products you should even strive to build. I recall not seeing a lot of the ideas put so down so clearly and cleanly before, and as far as I know a lot of the book's framing became conventional wisdom in this industry after publication, or after many took his course at Stanford. So maybe it's nothing new to you because the lessons have been internalized already.

Maybe, arguably, true when he wrote it. But it is clear now that Thiel absolutely has values-based motivations behind his business goals.

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