Zero to One Quotes

“Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can’t. In perfect competition, a business is so focused on today’s margins that it can’t possibly plan for a long-term future. Only one thing can allow a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival: monopoly profits.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“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.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Everybody has a product to sell—no”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“While a definitely optimistic future would need engineers to design underwater cities and settlements in space, an indefinitely optimistic future calls for more bankers and lawyers.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The strange history of the Baby Boom produced a generation of indefinite optimists so used to effortless progress that they feel entitled to it.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Every other country is afraid that China is going to take over the world; China is the only country afraid that it won’t.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, 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. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together. If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well—even in purely financial terms.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“if he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“real technologists wear T-shirts and jeans.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The most obvious market segment in email-based payments was the millions of emigrants still using Western Union to wire money to their families back home. Our product made that effortless, but the transactions were too infrequent.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“TV is a great big megaphone,” and when you can only afford to spend dozens of dollars acquiring a new customer, you need the biggest megaphone you can find.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“This is why so many small and medium-sized businesses don’t use tools that bigger firms take for granted. It’s not that small business proprietors are unusually backward or that good tools don’t exist: distribution is the hidden bottleneck.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“advertising doesn’t exist to make you buy a product right away; it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“high cash compensation teaches workers to claim value from the company as it already exists instead of investing their time to create new value in the future.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“cash-poor executive, by contrast, will focus on increasing the value of the company as a whole.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“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

“Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Now when I consider investing in a startup, I study the founding teams. Technical abilities and complementary skill sets matter, but how well the founders know each other and how well they work together matter just as much. Founders should share a prehistory before they start a company together—otherwise they’re just rolling dice.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“we know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition. It”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“monopolists downplay their monopoly status to avoid scrutiny, while competitive firms strategically exaggerate their uniqueness.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“This implies two very strange rules for VCs. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. (Even quite successful companies usually succeed on a more humble scale.) This leads to rule number two: because rule number one is so restrictive, there can’t be any other rules.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“leanness is a methodology, not a goal.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Technological advance seemed to accelerate automatically, so the Boomers grew up with great expectations but few specific plans for how to fulfill them.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future