Weekly Highlights #19
5 things I found interesting, fun or useful this week.
📚 Book
When stuck between different markets and niches, remember that Amazon started out as a bookstore before it became the online retail monster it is today. Pick one thing, become really good at it and then expand.
"Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos's founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books-those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock-also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software.
Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world's general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company's scaling strategy. The biodiversity of the Amazon rain forest reflected Amazon's first goal of cataloging every book in the world, and now it stands for every kind of thing in the world, period."
- Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, Zero to One
You can grab a copy of the book here (I will receive a small commission).
📜 Article
If you read one thing today make sure it’s this. With all the unrest going on around the world Gurwinder is yet again a voice of calm and reason.
Every child begins life throwing tantrums. And every good parent learns to ignore them, because they know that acknowledging attention-seeking behaviors validates them, and prevents their kids from outgrowing them. If we wish to stop seeing good causes ruined by bad actors, we must stop rewarding immaturity. If we wish to usher in an age of post-toddlerism, we must stop making neotoddlers famous.
🎧 Podcast
More common sense from Gurwinder on Modern Wisdom.
💭 Quote
A particularly pertinent quote this week from Peter Thiel.
"The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself."
-Peter Thiel
❓ Question
What book or essays would you like me to provide you with the best insights from? Comment below :)
Until next time, Karl (The School of Knowledge).
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📚I read and share about history’s greatest minds, leaders and achievers, distilling their insights into actionable advice for everyday life.💡
Photo by Maurício Mascaro: https://www.pexels.com/photo/anonymous-people-standing-on-street-among-smoke-during-protests-at-night-4636148/
I greatly enjoy your posts. I would become a paid subscriber but my wife is pathologically opposed to and paid subscription. Even magazines I have to get through my Apple One that I share with my adult son.
Speaking to the main point, I a an inveterate book collector ( many topics but predominantly aviation nonfiction). Although I dearly love going to bookstores and do even in countries where I don’t read the language, I learned early to utilize mail-order resources and then online. Amazon first eliminated its new book sales competition and now has come to dominate used book sales mainly due to the seamless integration of used books and third-party sellers into its platform. Other online used book engines like ABE ( American Book Exchange) have held on and offer a great service but Amazon is hard to beat, especially as their reach is worldwide. It happens that one of my special interests is WW II aviation ( my father was a B17 bomber pilot based in England) and British aviation is an important subset. Amazon sources through Amazon UK perfectly seamlessly.