Create a new capability
Creating a new capability is a different kind of progress from making an existing model more widespread.
Perimeter Books
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Perimeter Books / Business
Zero to One
Peter Thiel with Blake Masters
An argument for building distinctive companies and thinking independently about the future.
2014 · 224 pages · Hardcover
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Make it part of your reading
4–6 hoursEstimated reading time, at 40–60 pages an hour
Crown Currency2014 · selected edition
Explore Peter Thiel ↗Books, writing & collected mentions
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Inside the book
What you’ll find inside.
Zero to One asks what it takes to create a business that adds something new to the world. Thiel and Masters distinguish invention from the replication of an existing model, then examine the choices that let an original company retain the value it creates. The book challenges founders to question fashionable assumptions, identify opportunities other people overlook, and develop a position that competitors cannot easily copy. Its short chapters make strong, sometimes provocative claims about progress and competition. The useful exercise is to test those claims against a particular market: what is distinctive about the product, and why should that distinctiveness last?
Who it’s for
Aspiring founders, early-stage investors, and product leaders testing whether an idea has a durable reason to exist.
Ideas to examine
Take these into your reading.
Capture part of the value
A company needs to retain part of the value it creates if it is to become an enduring business.
Question crowded opportunities
Popular startup trends can attract so many similar companies that apparent opportunity becomes destructive rivalry.
Look for overlooked truths
Search for valuable truths that remain overlooked, and test whether they could support a distinctive business.
Your research notebook
Questions worth keeping.
- What important customer problem could your idea solve in a way that an established competitor would struggle to reproduce?
- When does a strong market position encourage further invention, and when might it weaken the pressure to improve?
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The ideas, in conversation
Hear from the author.
Conversations are produced by the linked publishers and may cover the author’s broader work.
Go back to the evidence
Connect the book to your research.
Connect a company’s story to its economics: competition, customer behavior, capital requirements, and financial disclosures.
Ben Thompson analyzes the business models and competitive strategies of technology and media companies, explaining how their choices reshape markets and society.
Newsletter
The Diff
Company analysis and financial ideas that connect technology, market behavior, and economic incentives, with an emphasis on changes whose consequences emerge over years.
The SEC’s public filing search for company disclosures and offering documents.
A different way into the subject
Continue the conversation.
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