Zero to One Quotes

“For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them” (Matthew 25:29).”
― 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.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The graffiti artist who painted Facebook’s office walls in 2005 got stock that turned out to be worth $200 million, while a talented engineer who joined in 2010 might have made only $2 million.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as hazily uncertain. If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The few who knew what might be learned, Foolish enough to put their whole heart on show, And reveal their feelings to the crowd below, Mankind has always crucified and burned.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“From the outside, everyone in your company should be different in the same way.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“The best place to look for secrets is where no one else is looking. Most people think only in terms of what they’ve been taught; schooling itself aims to impart conventional wisdom. So you might ask: are there any fields that matter but haven’t been standardized and institutionalized? Physics, for example, is a real major at all major universities, and it’s set in its ways. The opposite of physics might be astrology, but astrology doesn’t matter. What about something like nutrition? Nutrition matters for everybody, but you can’t major in it at Harvard. Most top scientists go into other fields. Most of the big studies were done 30 or 40 years ago, and most are seriously flawed. The food pyramid that told us to eat low fat and enormous amounts of grains was probably more a product of lobbying by Big Food than real science; its chief impact has been to aggravate our obesity epidemic. There’s plenty more to learn: we know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition. It won’t be easy, but it’s not obviously impossible: exactly the kind of field that could yield secrets.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

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

“planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out,”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“he discovered penicillin by accident. Scientists have sought to harness the power of chance ever since.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“We are more fascinated today by statistical predictions of what the country will be thinking in a few weeks’ time than by visionary predictions of what the country will look like 10 or 20 years from now.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The rest of their generation was left behind, but the wealthy Boomers who shape public opinion today see little reason to question their naïve optimism.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Think about how Google talks about its business. It certainly doesn’t claim to be a monopoly.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Computers already have enough power to outperform people in activities we used to think of as distinctively human. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Jeopardy!’s best-ever contestant, Ken Jennings, succumbed to IBM’s Watson in 2011. And Google’s self-driving cars are already on California roads today. Dale Earnhardt Jr. needn’t feel threatened by them, but the Guardian worries (on behalf of the millions of chauffeurs and cabbies in the world) that self-driving cars “could drive the next wave of unemployment.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“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

“In this one particular at least, business is like chess. Grandmaster José Raúl Capablanca put it well: to succeed, “you must study the endgame before everything else.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Statistics doesn’t work when the sample size is one.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Grandmaster José Raúl Capablanca put it well: to succeed, “you must study the endgame before everything else.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“But moving first is a tactic, not a goal.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“De-escalating the rivalry post-merger wasn’t easy, but as far as problems go, it was a good one to have.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“So why are economists obsessed with competition as an ideal state? It’s a relic of history.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Entrepreneurs are always biased to understate the scale of competition, but that is the biggest mistake a startup can make.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“By indirect proof, the New Economy of the internet was the only way forward. MANIA: SEPTEMBER 1998–MARCH 2000 Dot-com mania was intense but short—18 months of insanity from September 1998 to March 2000.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future