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Zero to One
The internet craze of the ’90s was the biggest bubble since the crash of 1929, and the lessons learned afterward define and distort almost all thinking about technology today. The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters • Zero to One
This implies two very strange rules for VCs. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. (Even quite successful companies usually succeed on a more humble scale.) This leads to rule number two: because rule... See more
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters • Zero to One
Professors downplay the cutthroat culture of academia, but managers never tire of comparing business to war.
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters • Zero to One
OF THE SIX PEOPLE who started PayPal, four had built bombs in high school. Five were just 23 years old—or younger. Four of us had been born outside the United States. Three had escaped here from communist countries: Yu Pan from China, Luke Nosek from Poland, and Max Levchin from Soviet Ukraine. Building bombs was not what kids normally did in those
... See morePeter Thiel, Blake Masters • Zero to One
You could build the best version of an app that lets people order toilet paper from their iPhone. But iteration without a bold plan won’t take you from 0 to 1. A company is the strangest place of all for an indefinite optimist: why should you expect your own business to succeed without a plan to make it happen? Darwinism may be a fine theory in... See more
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters • Zero to One
The lesson for entrepreneurs is clear: if you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business.
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters • Zero to One
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. Forget “minimum viable products”—ever since he started Apple in 1976, Jobs saw that you can change the
... See morePeter Thiel, Blake Masters • Zero to One
Selling to Non-Customers
Peter Thiel, Blake Masters • Zero to One
BEYOND PROFESSIONALISM