Zero to One (by Peter Thiel) Summary - Chapter 11

The following is a summary of Zero to One: Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future. I do not claim to own any of the book's original work, the following is simply a bulleted summarization with a few direct quotes. All copyrights and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Chapter 11 - If You Build it, will they Come?:
  • People underestimate sales
    • engineers are biased towards building things rather than selling them
  • Nerds VS. Salesmen
    • Advertising Works
      • Does not make anything work right away
      • Subtle impressions that build sales later
    • Nerds think sales is useless
      • In engineering a solution works or it doesn’t
      • sales is different, so its looked down upon
  • Sales is hidden
    • Salesmen don't call themselves salesmen
    • The best salesmen are hidden
    • If you’ve created something new and have no way to sell it, its worthless
  • How to Sell a Product
    • Great sales can create a monopoly, but a great product without some sales/distribution will no
    • To make money the Customer Lifetime Value must overtake the Customer Acquisition Cost
      • the higher the product price, the higher the CAC
    • Complex sales involve product around seven figures
      • might take months to sell
      • Might only sell one or two a year
      • At this price point, the CEO is the salesman
    • Personal Sales
      • around $10k to $100k
      • Challenge is to establish a moderately sized sales team to efficiently move product
    • Distribution Doldrums
      • $1000 pricepoint
      • Advertising is too broad or inefficient
      • Don’t have the resources to send actual people out to talk
      • This is a dead zone
    • Marketing and Advertising
      • Low priced products used for mass appeal
      • CAC is lower
    • Viral Marketing
      • A product is viral if it encourages users to make others users too
      • This is cheap and fast
      • At Paypal, users were paid to sign up, and paid when others they referred signed up.
    • One of these methods is exponentially more effective than another
  • Your company also needs to sell [itself] to investors and employees
  • Every product needs sales
  If you've liked this summary, I highly recommend you get the full book here: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future < Previous Chapter | Overview | Next Chapter > - Alec Kriebel