Zero to One: Summary in English

By Joel Shiral

Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things. Peter Thiel calls on entrepreneurs to build valuable businesses around such opportunities – to build a better future for everyone. This summary book is for entrepreneurs, founders, or investors that want to build or invest in valuable businesses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joel Shiral
• Release date: Apr 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005167929

Joel Shiral

A Millenial thinker, startupper, writer, and IT geek. I am usually writing summaries for non-fiction books related to self-help and financial advice.

Book preview

Preface: from zero to one

Successful people know how to create value where it is most unexpected, by thinking their activity from fundamental principles and not from a few formulas.

Zero to One author  Peter Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir. He is also an investor in hundreds of start-ups, including Facebook and SpaceX.

Chapter 1 – From zero to one, the future of progress

1.1 – Horizontal progress and vertical progress

For Peter Thiel, progress can take two forms:

Horizontal or extensive progress -> globalization

We copy what works, to go, in the words of the author, from 1 to n. Thus, globalization is horizontal progress. We take, in fact, what works somewhere to make it work everywhere. Example: China which, in the next twenty years, plans to become what the United States is today.

Vertical or intensive progress -> technology

We create something new, and we go, in the words of the author, from 0 to 1. This progress is more complex to imagine because it requires doing what no one else has ever done.

Example: If we take a typewriter to build a hundred, we are making horizontal progress. If, starting from a typewriter, we design a word processor, we achieve vertical progress.

Globalization and technology being two different modes of progress, it is possible to rely on both, or on one of the two, or on neither. But according to Peter Thiel, in a world of scarce resources, globalization without technology is neither viable nor sustainable.

In general, it is start-ups that create new technologies. These small start-ups achieve this because they know how to challenge conventional wisdom and redesign the business from the ground up.

Chapter 2 – The 90s and the internet crash

2.1 – The dot.com craze of the 1990s

In this part, Peter Thiel looks back on the history of the 90s. This decade was happy and optimistic. However, he reminds us that it was not all good news and ended with the Internet boom and