I would like to share some quotations from Thiel’s book about startup’s journey:

As a good rule of thumb, proprietary technology must be at least 10 times better than its closest substitute in some important dimension to lead to a real monopolistic adventure.

The perfect market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and big market already served by competing companies is even worse.

The most successful companies make the core progression — to first dominate a specific niche and then scale to adjacent markets — a part of their founding narrative.

As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.

In this one particular at least. business is like chess. Grandmaster Jose Raul Capablanca put it well: to succeed, “you must study the endgame before everything else”.

Far more important are questions about the future: is it a matter of chance or design?

To a difinite optimist, the future will be better than the present if he plans and works to make it better.

What is more, in one of chapters, you can find an interesting moment about gender of founder: “An entrepreneur makes a major investment just by spending her time working on startup.”