Showing posts with label Zero to One. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zero to One. Show all posts

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Peter Thiel -- Zero to One

I've begun delving into Peter Thiel's book "Zero to One".

Perhaps I will share more snippets as time goes on, but for t'day I'd just like to share one unique
chunkette from pages 23-24

"But in 2012, when the average airfare each way was 178, the airlines made only 37 cents per passenger trip. Compare them to Google, which creates less value but captures far more. Google brought in $50 billion in 2012 (versus $160 billion for the airlines), but it kept 21% of those revenues as profits---more than 100 times the airline industry's profit margin that year."


And then permit me to quote one more unique sentence from the first paragraph of page 23

"Creating value is not enough---you also need to capture some of the value you create."

This brief glimpse into some of the profound entrepreneurial truths that this book explores, will compel me to read further.

I feel, as a creative person myself, that creating is my "home base" but marketing and promoting those creative works, are still largely an unknown country....a mystical industry that will require untold years of further study and focus to master. Must an artist always figure out how to market and advertise her own work? Or can she focus 100% of her efforts on creating and outsource the "tedius" marketing aspects? If an artist outsources the marketing and advertising of her work, will she capture more value than if she tries to master the marketing and advertising herself? Or will she be spreading herself too thin and diluting her creative focus?

I think of famous artists such as Vangogh or Davinci, and how their works now fetch millions or billions of dollars per original painted canvas......now so many years after the original artist's passing.
Is it possible that now artists, or entrepreneurs will be able to reap in the same lifetime 
 some of the value that their works have created?

Is it going to become easier, in our Information Age, to be able to
"Capture Value" in a shorter time frame?

I look forward to your thoughts and comments as always,

Thinkfully yours,
Carla