CTech’s Book Review: How to Hit a Tech Industry Home-Run

Yifat Oron is the CEO of Leumitech, a subsidiary of Israeli Bank Leumi focused on serving tech companies. This is her pick for the best technology book she has read recently.

Title: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Authors: Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

Format: audiobook

Where: on the plane

One-liner: entrepreneurs who want to make it big, this book will teach you how to think.

Summary: What are the secret ingredients of a startup destined to become a category leader? This book attempts to find out. It touches on key factors entrepreneurs should consider when developing their companies by exploring market leaders such as PayPal.

Bottom line: to borrow from Tolstoy, all happy companies are different, each one earning big by solving a unique problem. All failed companies, however, are the same: they fail to escape competition.

What I’ve learned:

You are not going to make it big by adopting a copycat strategy. There is only one search engine leader in the world, one OS lead, and one social media leader.

Stay small for as long as you can, so you can do crazy things and act quickly.

Don’t look for a manual, rethink everything (this is a bit of a paradox considering the book’s main theme).

Focus mainly on the product. Marketing, distribution, and sales are secondary. A good product sells itself and spreads virally.

Critique: great tips aside, adopting a “no-strategy” strategy is easier said than done.

Who should read this book: any entrepreneur (tech or otherwise), and anyone interested in technology-based businesses