Other editions of book By Peter Thiel Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

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. It's easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange. Progress comes from monopoly, not competition. If you do what has never been done and you can do it better than anybody else, you have a monopoly - and every business is successful exactly insofar as it is a monopoly. But the more you compete, the more you become similar to everyone else. From the tournament of formal schooling to the corporate obsession with outdoing rivals, competition destroys profits for individuals, companies, and society as a whole. Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things. It draws on everything Peter Thiel has learned directly as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and then an investor in hundreds of startups, including Facebook and SpaceX. The single most powerful pattern Thiel has noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. Ask not, what would Mark do? Ask: What valuable company is nobody building?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets. The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we're too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself. Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. Tomorrow's champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today's marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERIf you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets.The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

The book Zero To One is about nurturing the next big idea to build a valuable global company. If you are only following in the steps known entrepreneurs, then the authors believe that you are headed nowhere. The book recalls how certain innovative ideas were incubated and how people behind them dared to dream big and even did realize some of them. But trying to replicate or improvise what Bill Gates achieved with developing an operating system or what Large Page got out of making a user friendly search engine is not going to help in realizing the dream for building the next global business empire. This book also compiles the startups culture as discussed by Peter Thiel in his lecture for Stanford University students in 2012 with details about various other aspects of entrepreneurship. The authors encourage to think out of the box, without delving too much into the lives of the great entrepreneurs for there are already many books on that. Thiel, himself a successful serial entrepreneur, instead motivates for chalking out ones own course, breaking conventions, changing the rules and about disruptive technologies that revolutionize the way business is conducted.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERIf you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets.The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

What valuable company is nobody building? The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them. It's easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. Every new creation goes from 0 to 1. This book is about how to get there.

Zero to One : Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future is a book on entrepreneurship, based on a lecture Peter Thiel delivered at Stanford in 2012. Summary of the Book In 2012, Peter Thiel spoke to software engineers at Stanford, inspiring them to think boldly and try to carve out the future. He spoke of his own experiences, explaining the world of entrepreneurship from a personal point of view. Blake Masters was among the audience, and he recorded the lecture through detailed notes and posted them online. The posts went viral, and soon there was a need for a book which spoke more about Thiel's ideas on entrepreneurship. In the current age, technology is beginning to stagnate. Information technology has grown at a rapid pace, but progress must not be limited to computers. Thiel explains that the next big entrepreneur will not have built an operating system or a search engine. Instead, tomorrow's champions are going to be those who look at a unique business, roads which have not been taken. In doing so, they will discover that the roads which have been less travelled by will make all the difference between a zero and a one. About the Authors Peter Andreas Thiel is a German venture capitalist, hedge fund manager and entrepreneur. He is known for co-founding PayPal with Max Levchin and Elon Musk. He is currently the chairman of Palantir, which he also co-founded. Thiel has co-written The Diversity Myth: 'Multiculturalism' and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford. Blake Masters is an American entrepreneur and lawyer. Masters co-founded Judicata and is a graduate of Stanford.