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Line 2: \| {{Zero to One/random quote}} }} {{section separator}} == Introduction == Line 25 ⟶ 26: 📘 '''''{{Tooltip\|Zero to One}}''''' is a 2014 business book by entrepreneur-investor Peter Thiel, co-written with {{Tooltip\|Blake Masters}}, that argues founders create durable value by building unique “zero-to-one” innovations rather than copying existing models.<ref name="PRH2014" /> The project grew out of Thiel’s 2012 {{Tooltip\|Stanford}} course on startups, with Masters’s widely read class notes providing the scaffold for the finished chapters.<ref name="OCLC889206859">{{cite web \|title=Zero to one : notes on startups, or how to build the future \|url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/Zero-to-one-%3A-notes-on-startups-or-how-to-build-the-future/oclc/889206859 \|website=WorldCat \|publisher=OCLC \|access-date=10 November 2025}}</ref> In concise, aphoristic chapters, Thiel advances themes such as escaping competition through distinctive “creative monopolies,” hunting for overlooked secrets, and thinking for the long term in plain, polemical prose.<ref name="TNR2014">{{cite news \|title=Peter Thiel Is a Closet Humanist \|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/119532/peter-thiels-zero-one-review \|work=The New Republic \|date=23 September 2014 \|access-date=10 November 2025 \|last=Winkler \|first=Elizabeth}}</ref> {{Tooltip\|Crown Business}} published the hardcover on 16 September 2014, and the publisher bills the title as a #1 {{Tooltip\|New York Times}} bestseller.<ref name="PRH2014" /> {{Tooltip\|Publishers Weekly}} reported 15,637 U.S. first-week print sales.<ref name="PW2014Sales">{{cite news \|title=PW Online and On Air: Week of October 6, 2014 \|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/Apps/article/64272-pw-online-and-on-air-week-of-october-6-2014.html \|work=Publishers Weekly \|date=3 October 2014 \|access-date=10 November 2025}}</ref> It also entered PW’s Hardcover Nonfiction list at #4 for the week of 29 September 2014.<ref name="PWBestseller20141013">{{cite news \|title=Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lists: Hardcover Nonfiction (13 October 2014) \|url=https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/nielsen/HardcoverNonfiction/20141013.html \|work=Publishers Weekly \|date=13 October 2014 \|access-date=10 November 2025}}</ref> {{section separator}} == Chapters == === Chapter 1 – Challenge of the future === 🚀🧠 Technology—not globalization—is the real engine of progress, and since 1971 we’ve mostly spread existing tools rather than inventing enough new ones. A “catch-up” view of development is misleading because scaling today’s technology worldwide would multiply pollution and resource damage. The way forward is new invention, and startups—small, mission-driven teams executing definite plans—are the most reliable vehicle for building that different future. {{Expand summary \| inline=yes \| text = Because globalization and technology are different modes of progress, history shows stretches of both together (roughly 1815–1914), of technology without much globalization (1914–1971), and—since 1971—of intensive globalization alongside relatively narrow technological advance centered on IT. Everyday language about “developed” and “developing” countries implies a technological finish line that others must simply reach, but that framing hides the need for invention. The more useful answer to the future’s central question is that technology matters more than globalization: if China merely doubles energy output with today’s tools, it doubles pollution, and if hundreds of millions of Indian households adopt U.S.-style living with current technology, the environmental damage is catastrophic. For most of human history, societies were static and zero-sum; then, from the steam engine in the 1760s until about 1970, sustained technological progress made the modern world far richer. Expectations in the late 1960s—four-day workweeks, energy too cheap to meter, holidays on the moon—did not arrive; outside computing and communications, our surroundings look surprisingly familiar. The task now is to imagine and build new technologies that make the twenty-first century more peaceful and prosperous than the twentieth. Such breakthroughs usually come from startups—small, mission-driven groups that can do what lone geniuses and large bureaucracies cannot—whether in politics, science, or business. A practical definition follows: a startup is a group you can persuade to pursue a concrete plan to build a different future. In this view, progress is a choice: definite people crafting specific plans that create new value, not an impersonal convergence of global averages. Building those plans inside tight-knit teams is how new technology compounds over decades. ''Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.'' }} {{section separator}} === Chapter 2 – Party like it's 1999 === 🎉 The cleanest way to find a contrarian truth is to start with what everyone believed during the late-1990s internet boom and then examine how those beliefs went wrong; even a basic proposition—companies exist to make money—was suspended as losses were relabeled “investment” and page views trumped profit. The distortions of that bubble didn’t vanish after the crash; they still shape how people think about technology. The wider 1990s were less shiny than nostalgia suggests: the U.S. recession ended in March 1991, unemployment kept rising until July 1992, and the slow shift from manufacturing to services fed public anxiety. The internet’s takeoff began with {{Tooltip\|Mosaic}}’s public release in November 1993, then {{Tooltip\|Netscape Navigator}} in late 1994; Navigator’s share jumped from ~20% in January 1995 to nearly 80% within a year, enabling an August 1995 IPO. Within five months, Netscape’s stock ran from $28 to $174; {{Tooltip\|Yahoo!}} went public in April 1996 at an $848 million valuation, {{Tooltip\|Amazon}} in May 1997 at $438 million, and by spring 1998 both had more than quadrupled. The result was a culture where fashion eclipsed fundamentals, and “growth at any cost” felt rational. The antidote is not cynicism but clarity: examine which lessons from the crash became reflexes, and replace them with deliberate plans and sound metrics. Thinking about markets begins by retelling the past accurately so current choices aren’t guided by myths. ''The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.'' Line 74 ⟶ 76: ''—Note: The above summary follows the {{Tooltip\|Crown Business}} hardcover first edition (2014), 210 pages, ISBN 978-0-8041-3929-8; chapter titles per library catalog records.''<ref name="DCPL2014">{{cite web \|title=Zero to one, notes on startups, or how to build the future (hardback) \|url=https://link.dclibrary.org/resource/9T8BSByl6ak \|website=DC Public Library \|publisher=DC Public Library \|access-date=10 November 2025}}</ref><ref name="CMC505">{{cite web \|title=Zero to one: notes on startups, or how to build the future \|url=https://cmc.marmot.org/Record/.b43079428 \|website=Marmot Library Network \|publisher=Marmot Library Network \|access-date=10 November 2025}}</ref><ref name="PRH2014">{{cite web \|title=Zero to One by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters: 9780804139298 \|url=https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/234730/zero-to-one-by-peter-thiel-with-blake-masters/ \|website=Penguin Random House \|publisher=Penguin Random House \|date=16 September 2014 \|access-date=10 November 2025}}</ref> {{section separator}} == Background & reception == Line 87 ⟶ 89: 🌍 '''Impact & adoption'''. Beyond general readership, the book has been assigned or recommended in university entrepreneurship courses, including the {{Tooltip\|University of Washington}}’s “Entrepreneurship” (Winter 2020), where discussion of ''{{Tooltip\|Zero to One}}'' anchors early sessions; {{Tooltip\|New York University}}’s Global Programs tech-strategy syllabus (2024 sample); and the {{Tooltip\|University of Florida}}’s “Entrepreneurship in New Media” (2015).<ref name="UW2020">{{cite web \|title=Entrepreneurship — Winter 2020 Syllabus \|url=https://courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse599a1/20wi/Entrepreneurship_Syllabus_2020.pdf \|website=University of Washington \|date=8 January 2020 \|access-date=10 November 2025}}</ref><ref name="NYU2024">{{cite web \|title=MGMT-UB.9087 — Tech Strategy (sample syllabus) \|url=https://www.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu/globalPrgms/documents/telaviv/academics/Syllabi/summer-2024/Syl_TelAviv_MGMT-UB9087_Lev_Summer2023.pdf \|website=New York University \|date=2024 \|access-date=10 November 2025}}</ref><ref name="UF2015">{{cite web \|title=DIG 4097 — Entrepreneurship in New Media (syllabus) \|url=https://arts.ufl.edu/site/assets/files/75768/dig4097_syllabus_new_media_entrepreneurship_v1_ms.pdf \|website=University of Florida \|access-date=10 November 2025}}</ref> {{section separator}} == See also ==▼ ▲== See also == {{The Almanack of Naval Ravikant/thumbnail}} {{The Lean Startup/thumbnail}} Line 96 ⟶ 99: {{CS/Self-improvement book summaries/thumbnail}} {{Insert before References}} {{section separator}} == References == {{reflist}} [[Category:biz/books]] [[Category:biz/articles]]