If you read Peter Theil's Zero to One (which you should, check out my reasons why here), you will come across a short section where he tells budding entrepreneurs how to market, sell, and distribute their new idea. He's trying to tell them why so many entrepreneurial products/services tend to fail: not because of a bad idea but because of inappropriate sales channels. Are You Selling in the Dead Zone? The book is focused on entrepreneurs, but there's one graph that stood out to me because it made all of my sales receptors tingle. While it's unintentional, it clearly lays out how sales has changed in the world of the internet, and why … [Read more...]
Zero to One – Peter Thiel
There was a book written about entrepreneurial success by Bo Peabody called Lucky or Smart? that springs to mind whenever I read books by "successful" CEOs and entrepreneurs. Peter Thiel obviously has some pretty good credentials, and it's easy to conflate that success with wisdom. Too often celebrity professionals don't back up their ideas because they don't have to - we just assume that because they are successful they must be right. I think Zero to One skirts this nebulous zone. I wouldn't read this as a "how-to" book, but rather as a way to meditate on what it means to create in the business world. Big Thought Building a start-up … [Read more...]