Zero to one Notes on Startups, or How to build the Future

By Peter Thiel with Blake Masters

- Ashok Jainani

In the struggles of life of an individual entrepreneur or an enterprise, “Zero to One” describes the process of creating something radically new and taking it to the first step. The phrase is used in contrast to the term “1 to n” (for extensive growth), which means creating incremental improvements to what is already familiar. Vast majority of human effort and predator corporations’ acquisitions are focused on scaling up from “1 to n” as it’s easier for most of the people than build from “zero to one.” Because most people act as if there were no secrets left to find.

If you do what has never been done and if you can do it better than anybody else, you have a monopoly. Most zero-to-one ideas have been inspired by standing on the shoulders of giants, like Facebook, which was built on ideas that were not incremental improvements over Friendster and Myspace.