Zero to One

By Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

Categories: Business & Money

Copying what already works takes the world from 1 to n. Creating something new takes it from 0 to 1. Peter Thiel argues that tomorrow's great companies won't win by competing in today's markets. They'll escape competition altogether by being unique. Born from the startup course Thiel taught at Stanford in 2012, with notes by his student Blake Masters, the book is an optimistic case for progress and a guide to asking the questions that uncover value in unexpected places.

Recommended by 26 people

• Sam Altman
• Max Levchin
• Matt Mullenweg
• Luis von Ahn
• Lee Stranahan
• Kishore Biyani
• Keith Rabois
• Eric Weinstein
• Dustin Moskovitz
• Chris Dixon
• Bryan Johnson
• Andrew Ng
• Ryan Holiday
• David Sacks: “That's what Peter's whole book, Zero to One, is about: there's two kinds of companies.”
• Mark Zuckerberg: “This book delivers completely new and refreshing ideas on how to create value in the world.”
• Andrew Ross Sorkin: “I’ve read it several times and each time I learn something new from Thiel”
• Tom Bilyeu: “Zero to One by Peter Thiel. This is an incredible book about business.”
• Jeff Immelt: “Zero to One is an important handbook to relentless improvement for big companies and beginning entrepreneurs alike. Read it, accept Peter’s challenge, and build a business beyond expectations.”
• Patrick Collison: “just released a very good book”
• Elon Musk: “Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how.”
• Marc Andreessen: “Zero to One is the first book any working or aspiring entrepreneur must read—period.”
• Nassim Nicholas Taleb: “When a risk taker writes a book, read it. In the case of Peter Thiel, read it twice. Or, to be safe, three times. This is a classic.”
• Tyler Cowen: “Peter Thiel, in addition to being an accomplished entrepreneur and investor, is also one of the leading public intellectuals of our time. Read this book to get your first glimpse of how and why that is true.”
• Neal Stephenson: “The first and last business book anyone needs to read; a one in a world of zeroes.”
• Derek Thompson: “Might be the best business book I’ve read…Barely 200 pages long and well lit by clear prose and pithy aphorisms, Thiel has written a perfectly tweetable treatise and a relentlessly thought-provoking handbook.”
• Shane Parrish: “Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal (as well as an early investor in Facebook and Palantir), considers power laws to be a crucial concept for all businesspeople to understand. In his fantastic book, Zero to One, Thiel writes:”