Zero to One_ Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ( PDFDrive )

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would show them the Way. Very few people take unorthodox ideas seriouslytoday, and the mainstream sees that as a sign of progress. We can be glad thatthere are fewer crazy cults now, yet that gain has come at great cost: we havegiven up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered.
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO CONVENTIONHow must you see the world if you don’t believe in secrets? You’d have tobelieve we’ve already solved all great questions. If today’s conventions arecorrect, we can afford to be smug and complacent: “God’s in His heaven, All’sright with the world.”For example, a world without secrets would enjoy a perfect understanding ofjustice. Every injustice necessarily involves a moral truth that very few peoplerecognize early on: in a democratic society, a wrongful practice persists onlywhen most people don’t perceive it to be unjust. At first, only a small minority ofabolitionists knew that slavery was evil; that view has rightly becomeconventional, but it was still a secret in the early 19th century. To say that thereare no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hiddeninjustices.In economics, disbelief in secrets leads to faith in efficient markets. But theexistence of financial bubbles shows that markets can have extraordinaryinefficiencies. (And the more people believe in efficiency, the bigger the bubblesget.) In 1999, nobody wanted to believe that the internet was irrationallyovervalued. The same was true of housing in 2005: Fed chairman AlanGreenspan had to acknowledge some “signs of froth in local markets” but statedthat “a bubble in home prices for the nation as a whole does not appear likely.”The market reflected all knowable information and couldn’t be questioned. Thenhome prices fell across the country, and the financial crisis of 2008 wiped outtrillions. The future turned out to hold many secrets that economists could notmake vanish simply by ignoring them.What happens when a company stops believing in secrets? The sad decline ofHewlett-Packard provides a cautionary tale. In 1990, the company was worth $9billion. Then came a decade of invention. In 1991, HP released the DeskJet500C, the world’s first affordable color printer. In 1993, it launched theOmniBook, one of the first “superportable” laptops. The next year, HP releasedthe OfficeJet, the world’s first all-in-one printer/fax/copier. This relentlessproduct expansion paid off: by mid-2000, HP was worth $135 billion.But starting in late 1999, when HP introduced a new branding campaignaround the imperative to “invent,” it stopped inventing things. In 2001, thecompany launched HP Services, a glorified consulting and support shop. In
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Copyright © 2014 by Peter ThielAll
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PrefaceZERO TO ONEEVERY MOMENT IN B
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THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTUREWHENEVER
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century air conditioning, and even
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STARTUP THINKINGNew technology tend
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A QUICK HISTORY OF THE ’90SThe 19
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MANIA: SEPTEMBER 1998-MARCH 2000Dot
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hurry. A South Korean firm wired us
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The entrepreneurs who stuck with Si
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dogmatically rejecting them. Instea
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In this book, we’re not intereste
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Think about how Google talks about
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between Hackers and Jaws: rap star
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RUTHLESS PEOPLEThe problem with a c
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monopoly profits provides a powerfu
Page 33 and 34: competed even harder for the standa
Page 35 and 36: Office vs. Docs, and Surface vs. Ne
Page 37 and 38: If you can’t beat a rival, it may
Page 39 and 40: In March 2001, PayPal had yet to ma
Page 41 and 42: CHARACTERISTICS OF MONOPOLYWhat doe
Page 43 and 44: 3. Economies of ScaleA monopoly bus
Page 45 and 46: BUILDING A MONOPOLYBrand, scale, ne
Page 47 and 48: Silicon Valley has become obsessed
Page 49 and 50: YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKETTHE MOS
Page 51 and 52: CAN YOU CONTROL YOUR FUTURE?You can
Page 53 and 54: merry in the meantime: hence Europe
Page 55 and 56: hubris. You can still visit the Bay
Page 57 and 58: businessman, but actually his own a
Page 59 and 60: opinion exactly, so for the most pa
Page 61 and 62: Francis Bacon wrote that “the pro
Page 63 and 64: American households were saving, at
Page 65 and 66: THE RETURN OF DESIGNWhat would it m
Page 67 and 68: YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKETWe have
Page 69 and 70: to understand: we don’t live in a
Page 71 and 72: The error lies in expecting that ve
Page 73 and 74: of companies that will successfully
Page 75 and 76: After 10 years, however, the portfo
Page 77 and 78: WHAT TO DO WITH THE POWER LAWThe po
Page 79 and 80: SECRETSEVERY ONE OF TODAY’S most
Page 81 and 82: WHY AREN’T PEOPLE LOOKING FOR SEC
Page 83: are found mostly in history books a
Page 87 and 88: THE CASE FOR SECRETSYou can’t fin
Page 89 and 90: HOW TO FIND SECRETSThere are two ki
Page 91 and 92: WHAT TO DO WITH SECRETSIf you find
Page 93 and 94: FOUNDING MATRIMONYWhen you start so
Page 95 and 96: To see misalignment at its most ext
Page 97 and 98: ON THE BUS OR OFF THE BUSAs a gener
Page 99 and 100: VESTED INTERESTSStartups don’t ne
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Page 103 and 104: BEYOND PROFESSIONALISMThe first tea
Page 105 and 106: compensation or perks, but you can
Page 107 and 108: DO ONE THINGOn the inside, every in
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Page 111 and 112: NERDS VS. SALESMENThe U.S. advertis
Page 113 and 114: himself). The polar opposite busine
Page 115 and 116: The traditional U.S. aerospace indu
Page 117 and 118: mass appeal but lack any method of
Page 119 and 120: One of these methods is likely to b
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Page 123 and 124: SUBSTITUTION VS. COMPLEMENTARITYFif
Page 125 and 126: people. We don’t trade with compu
Page 127 and 128: computer hybrid approach from PayPa
Page 129: generalized artificial intelligence
Page 132 and 133: SEEING GREENAT THE START of the 21s
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5. The Distribution QuestionDo you
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THE TIMING QUESTIONCleantech entrep
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THE MONOPOLY QUESTIONIn 2006, billi
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Cleantech entrepreneurs’ thinking
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THE DISTRIBUTION QUESTIONCleantech
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gas, and gas prices had fallen more
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THE MYTH OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
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broader markets in the future.TEAM.
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world needs energy, only a firm tha
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THE FOUNDER’S PARADOXOF THE SIX P
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THE DIFFERENCE ENGINESome people ar
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Where does this strange and extreme
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Another example is Sean Parker, who
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WHERE KINGS COME FROMExtreme founde
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For some fallen stars, death brings
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distinctive persona? Or, in his inc
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the impeccably credentialed executi
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future will look a lot like the pre
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Singularity, an attempt to name the
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Illustration CreditsThe illustratio
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Boyle, RobertbrandingBranson, Richa
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Earnhardt, Dale, Jr.East Asian fina
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housing bubble, 2.1, 8.1Howery, Ken
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dynamism of newlies ofprofits ofpro
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Q-CellsRand, AynRawls, John, 6.1, 6
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globalization andproprietarytechnol
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About the AuthorsPeter Thiel is an
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