Zero to One : Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future is a book written by Peter Thiel. Taken on its own merits, Zero to One is a well-written and provoking book. But it is a read that requires an open mind, because it challenges many common opinions.
Improving something that is already being done, takes the world from one to n, adding more of the same. But going from zero to one is going from nothing to something. This is the greatest improvement possible , greater than going from one to 10 or even from one to 100. To go from zero to one is to bring something into existence and therefore is the essence of true innovation.
Going from zero to one means to escape competition altogether, because the new businesses will be unique.
If leaders want to build a better future, they must believe in secrets, and the great secret of our time is that there are still undiscovered frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In order to do this, leaders need to master the most important skill: learn to think for themselves.
In Zero to One, Peter Thiel uses his own experience at PayPal and Palantir to present ideas and suggestions for technology startups entrepreneurs. In order to unlock the power of innovation, business leaders need to challenge conventional wisdom, and try to build a monopoly. According to Thiel, competition is not the social good we were all taught, because it engenders anti-social behavior and stifles innovation. However, when a company earns a monopoly (even if temporary) through patents or similar methods, it is then motivated to invent new technology, which benefits society. In other words, while monopolies can be misused, they can still benefit society.
In Zero to One, Thiel doesn’t discuss needed protections against the negative effects of monopolies, but this is not the purpose of his book. The flaws in this book don’t eliminate its value in giving advice to business leaders.
My Favorite 23 Quotes From Zero to One
“ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now).”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule,”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“If your goal is to never make a mistake in your life, you shouldn’t look for secrets. The prospect of being lonely but right—dedicating your life to something that no one else believes in—is already hard. The prospect of being lonely and wrong can be unbearable.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
“Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.”
“All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.”
“Most of a tech company’s value will come at least 10 to 15 years in the future.”
“Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this ethos when he wrote: “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances…. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
“CREATIVE MONOPOLY means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for the creator. Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.”
“When Yahoo! offered to buy Facebook for $1 billion in July 2006, I thought we should at least consider it. But Mark Zuckerberg walked into the board meeting and announced: “Okay, guys, this is just a formality, it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. We’re obviously not going to sell here.” Mark saw where he could take the company, and Yahoo! didn’t.”
“You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.”
“the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.”
“The best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd; the best problems to work on are often the ones nobody else even tries to solve.”
“If you’re less sensitive to social cues, you’re less likely to do the same things as everyone else around you.”
“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.”
