Zero to One Quotes

“Disruptive companies often pick fights they can’t win. Think of Napster:”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition,”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“In this sense, if nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Actually, if American business is going to succeed, we are going to need hundreds, or even thousands, of miracles.”
― 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. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Had I actually clerked on the Supreme Court, I probably would have spent my entire career taking depositions or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“WHENEVER I INTERVIEW someone for a job, I like to ask this question: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
― 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 (before he went mad). If”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer; instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Most answers to the contrarian question are different ways of seeing the present; good answers are as close as we can come to looking into the future.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can’t.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Loiseau killed himself anyway in 2003 when a competing French dining guide downgraded his restaurant.) The competitive ecosystem pushes people toward ruthlessness or death.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Google is a small fish in a big pond. We could be swallowed whole at any time. We are not the monopoly that the government is looking for.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Starting a new South Indian restaurant is a really hard way to make money. If you lose sight of competitive reality and focus on trivial differentiating factors—maybe you think your naan is superior because of your great-grandmother’s recipe—your business is unlikely to survive.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Social entrepreneurs aim to combine the best of both worlds and “do well by doing good.” Usually they end up doing neither.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Every entrepreneur should plan to be the last mover in her particular market. That starts with asking yourself: what will the world look like 10 and 20 years from now, and how will my business fit in?”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“You can achieve difficult things, but you can’t achieve the impossible.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos’s founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books—those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock—also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software. Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world’s general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company’s scaling strategy.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small. The reason is simple: it’s easier to dominate a small market than a large one. If you think your initial market might be too big, it almost certainly is.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Beginning with brand rather than substance is dangerous.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“This is why successful network businesses rarely get started by MBA types: the initial markets are so small that they often don’t even appear to be business opportunities at all.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“network effects businesses must start with especially small markets.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“You can also make a 10x improvement through superior integrated design.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“improvement is to invent something completely new.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer; instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future