Zero to One Quotes

“A great technology company should have proprietary technology an order of magnitude better than its nearest substitute.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Today’s companies have an insatiable appetite for data, mistakenly believing that more data always creates more value. But big data is usually dumb data.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Recruiting is a core competency for any company. It should never be outsourced.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“he who is not busy being born is busy dying.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“startup messed up at its foundation cannot be fixed.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“you cannot run dozens of companies at the same time and then hope that one of them works out well. Less obvious but just as important, an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers in ready reserve.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Every individual is unavoidably an investor, too. When you choose a career, you act on your belief that the kind of work you do will be valuable decades from now.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“The biggest secret in venture capital is that the best investment in a successful fund equals or outperforms the entire rest of the fund combined.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying others’ successes.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“in exchange for better insurance contracts, we seem to have given up the search for secrets about longevity.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“To an indefinite optimist, the future will be better, but he doesn’t know how exactly, so he won’t make any specific plans.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“moving first is a tactic, not a goal. What really matters is generating cash flows in the future,”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Inside a firm, people become obsessed with their competitors for career advancement. Then the firms themselves become obsessed with their competitors in the marketplace. Amid all the human drama, people lose sight of what matters and focus on their rivals instead.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Professors downplay the cutthroat culture of academia, but managers never tire of comparing business to war.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Hamlet: Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honor’s at the stake. For Hamlet, greatness means willingness to fight for reasons as thin as an eggshell: anyone would fight for things that matter; true heroes take their personal honor so seriously they will fight for things that don’t matter. This twisted logic is part of human nature, but it’s disastrous in business. 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

“Hamlet: Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honor’s at the stake.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Under perfect competition, in the long run no company makes an economic profit.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“The smartphones that distract us from our surroundings also distract us from the fact that our surroundings are strangely old:”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better—to”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“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. The essential first step is to think for yourself.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“the future is simply the set of all moments yet to come. But what makes the future distinctive and important isn’t that it hasn’t happened yet, but rather that it will be a time when the world looks different from today.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Todas las compañías felices son distintas: cada una gana un monopolio resolviendo un problema único. Todas las compañías fracasadas son iguales: fracasaron por no poder escapar de la competencia.”
― Peter Thiel, De cero a uno: Cómo inventar el futuro

“To anticipate likely sources of misalignment in any company, it’s useful to distinguish between three concepts: • Ownership: who legally owns a company’s equity? • Possession: who actually runs the company on a day-to-day basis? • Control: who formally governs the company’s affairs?”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“In practice, there’s always a golden mean between telling nobody and telling everybody—and that’s a company. The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Consider the monopoly secret again: competition and capitalism are opposites. If you didn’t already know it, you could discover it the natural, empirical way: do a quantitative study of corporate profits and you’ll see they’re eliminated by competition.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“seven questions that every business must answer: 1. 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?”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“This book is about the questions you must ask and answer to succeed in the business of doing new things: what follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule,” Nietzsche wrote”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Everybody should have known that the mania was unsustainable; the most “successful” companies seemed to embrace a sort of anti-business model where they lost money as they grew.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future