Zero to One Quotes

“Before execution, scapegoats were often worshipped like deities.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The famous and infamous have always served as vessels for public sentiment: they’re praised amid prosperity and blamed for misfortune.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Is a lukewarm attitude to one’s work a sign of mental health? Is a merely professional attitude the only sane approach?”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“In a democratic society, a wrongful practice persists only when most people don’t perceive it to be unjust. At first, only a small minority of abolitionists knew that slavery was evil; that view has rightly become conventional, but it was still a secret in the early 19th century. To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“But in a power law world, you can’t afford not to think hard about where your actions will fall on the curve.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Time and decision-making themselves follow a power law, and some moments matter far more than others”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.” That is completely false. It does matter what you do. 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.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Every startup is small at the start. Every monopoly dominates a large share of its market. Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“If you can recognize competition as a destructive force instead of a sign of value, you’re already more sane than most.”
― 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,” Nietzsche wrote (before he went mad)”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“New technology has never been an automatic feature of history. Our ancestors lived in static, zero-sum societies where success meant seizing things from others.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The division of the world into the so-called developed and developing nations implies that the “developed” world has already achieved the achievable, and that poorer nations just need to catch up.
But I don’t think that’s true.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Winning is better than losing, but everybody loses when the war isn't one worth fighting.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“As a good rule of thumb, proprietary technology must be at least 10 times better than its closest substitute in some important dimension to lead to a real monopolistic advantage.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, 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). At”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“call these miracles technology. Technology is miraculous because it allows us to do more with less, ratcheting up our fundamental capabilities to a higher level.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Every new creation goes from 0 to 1.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? 2. The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business? 3. The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market? 4. The People Question Do you have the right team? 5. The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? 6. The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future? 7. The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see? We”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Company culture” doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Bob Dylan has said that he who is not busy being born is busy dying.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances…. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Paradoxically, the challenge for the entrepreneurs who will create Energy 2.0 is to think small.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build 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.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Every injustice necessarily involves a moral truth that very few people recognize early on: in a democratic society, a wrongful practice persists only when most people don’t perceive it to be unjust.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“The indefiniteness of finance can be bizarre. Think about what happens when successful entrepreneurs sell their company. What do they do with the money? In a financialized world, it unfolds like this: • The founders don’t know what to do with it, so they give it to a large bank. • The bankers don’t know what to do with it, so they diversify by spreading it across a portfolio of institutional investors. • Institutional investors don’t know what to do with their managed capital, so they diversify by amassing a portfolio of stocks. • Companies try to increase their share price by generating free cash flows. If they do, they issue dividends or buy back shares and the cycle repeats. At no point does anyone in the chain know what to do with money in the real economy. But in an indefinite world, people actually prefer unlimited optionality; money is more valuable than anything you could possibly do with it. Only in a definite future is money a means to an end, not the end itself.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“In the real world outside economic theory, every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot. Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business. Tolstoy”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one.”
― Blake Masters, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future