Zero to One Quotes

“Brand, scale, network effects, and technology in some combination define a monopoly; but to get them to work, you need to choose your market carefully and expand deliberately.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“In economics, disbelief in secrets leads to faith in efficient markets. But the existence of financial bubbles shows that markets can have extraordinary inefficiencies. (And the more people believe in efficiency, the bigger the bubbles get.)”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“A veces tienes que luchar. Y si es el caso, debes luchar y ganar. No hay término medio; o no asestas ningún golpe o golpeas fuerte y terminas rápido.”
― Peter Thiel, De cero a uno: Cómo inventar el futuro

“La lección para los emprendedores es clara: si quieres crear y capturar valor perdurable, no crees un negocio indiferenciado de productos básicos.”
― Peter Thiel, De cero a uno: Cómo inventar el futuro

“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.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Unless you have perfectly conventional beliefs, it's rarely a good idea to tell everybody that you know.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“If you think something hard is impossible, you'll never even start trying to achieve it. Belief in secrets is an effective truth.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The single word for vertical, 0 to 1 progress is technology. The rapid progress of information technology in recent decades has made Silicon Valley the capital of “technology” in general. But there is no reason why technology should be limited to computers. Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Whether we achieve the Singularity on a cosmic scale is perhaps less important than whether we seize the unique opportunities we have to do new things in our own working lives. Everything important to us—the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment—is singular. Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better—to go from 0 to 1.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Jobs’s return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business—the creation of new value—cannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“But a valuable business must start by finding a niche and dominating a small market.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“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.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Doing something different is what’s truly good for society—and it’s also what allows a business to profit by monopolizing a new market. The best projects are”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“The challenge here isn’t about how to make any particular sale, but how to establish a process by which a sales team of modest size can move the product to a wide audience.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“It might take months to develop the right relationships. You might make a sale only once every year or two. Then you’ll usually have to follow up during installation and service the product long after the deal is done. It’s hard to do, but this kind of “complex sales” is the only way to sell some of the most valuable products.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Like acting, sales works best when hidden.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“also about relationships between employees. The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“On the inside, every individual should be sharply distinguished by her work.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Just cover the basics like health insurance and then promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people. You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“. If you want that kind of free rein from your board, blow it up to giant size. If you want an effective board, keep it small.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“A board of three is ideal. Your board should never exceed five people, unless your company is publicly held.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“business with a good definite plan will always be underrated in a world where people see the future as random.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Only one thing can allow a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival: monopoly profits.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“The fatal temptation is to describe your market extremely narrowly so that you dominate it by definition.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Of course, this customer acquisition strategy was unsustainable on its own—when you pay people to be your customers, exponential growth means an exponentially growing cost structure.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“But I don’t think that’s true. My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology. Because globalization and technology are different modes of progress, it’s possible to have both, either, or neither at the same time.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future