Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future

if you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business.

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

We have let ourselves become enchanted by big data only because we exoticize technology. We’re impressed with small feats accomplished by computers alone, but we ignore big achievements from complementarity because the human contribution makes them less uncanny. Watson, Deep Blue, and ever-better machine learning algorithms are cool. But the most v

New technology tends to come from new ventures—startups. From the Founding Fathers in politics to the Royal Society in science to Fairchild Semiconductor’s “traitorous eight” in business, small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to deve

4. Focus on product, not sales

Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world.

by “monopoly,” we mean the kind of company that’s so good at what it does that no other firm can offer a close substitute.

Whereas a competitive firm must sell at the market price, a monopoly owns its market, so it can set its own prices.

What important truth do very few people agree with you on?—is difficult to answer directly. It may be easier to start with a preliminary: what does everybody agree on? “Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule,” Nietzsche wrote (before he went mad).