Zero to One Quotes

“Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“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 Startups, or How to Build the Future

“successful people find value in unexpected places,”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“But the most valuable companies in the future won’t ask what problems can be solved with computers alone. Instead, they’ll ask: how can computers help humans solve hard problems?”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“But this “spray and pray” approach usually produces an entire portfolio of flops, with no hits at all. This is because venture returns don’t follow a normal distribution overall. Rather, they follow a power law: a small handful of companies radically outperform all others. If you focus on diversification instead of single-minded pursuit of the very few companies that can become overwhelmingly valuable, you’ll miss those rare companies in the first place.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, 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.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“From the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the mid-20th century, luck was something to be mastered, dominated, and controlled; everyone agreed that you should do what you could, not focus on what you couldn’t. Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this ethos when he wrote: “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances.… Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Anyone who has held an iDevice or a smoothly machined MacBook has felt the result of Steve Jobs’s obsession with visual and experiential perfection. But the most important lesson to learn from Jobs has nothing to do with aesthetics. The greatest thing Jobs designed was his business. Apple imagined and executed definite multi-year plans to create new products and distribute them effectively.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, 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? We’ve discussed these”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“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 Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Ever since Justin Timberlake portrayed him in The Social Network, Sean has been perceived as one of the coolest people in America. JT is still more famous, but when he visits Silicon Valley, people ask if he’s Sean Parker.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The most fundamental reason that even businesspeople underestimate the importance of sales is the systematic effort to hide it at every level of every field in a world secretly driven by it.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: 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

“In between personal sales (salespeople obviously required) and traditional advertising (no salespeople required) there is a dead zone. Suppose you create a software service that”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“General and undifferentiated pitches don’t say anything about why a recruit should join your company instead of many others.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“You would be dressed in fine clothes and feast royally until your brief reign ended and they cut your heart out.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“selling and delivering a product is at least as important as the product itself.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Most cleantech companies crashed because they neglected one or more of the 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 Startups, or How to Build the Future

“four big lessons from the dot-com crash that still guide business thinking today:”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Okay, guys, this is just a formality, it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. We’re obviously not going to sell here.” Mark saw where he could take the company, and Yahoo! didn’t.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

“Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Rivalry causes us to overemphasize old opportunities and slavishly copy what has worked in the past.”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

“Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― 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”
― Peter Thiel, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future