Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

By Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

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This book has 36 recommendations

Elon Musk (Founder/SpaceX)

Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how.

Mark Zuckerberg (Founder/Facebook)

This book delivers completely new and refreshing ideas on how to create value in the world.

Bogdan Iordache (Co-Founder/How to Web)

There are quite a few good business books on technology, and I'll list below some I find to be a good starting point. Personally, I like biographies a lot and I mostly read biographies of dead people, because those are the most honest ones. So because the computer age is still very young, there won't be a lot of biographies in my list.

Mircea Scarlatescu (Co-Founder/123flori.ro)

Many, but here’s a short list, for both entrepreneurs and team leaders:

The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Scrum and XP from the Trenches by Henrik Kniberg
ReWork – Jason Fried

Robert Hajnal (Founder/Trail Running Academy)

From it I learned that the best way to grow a business is by dominating a small niche and grow from there with an ambitious long-term vision.

Deepak Chhugani (Founder/The Lobby)

Zero to One really helped me understand that in order to do unique or extraordinary things, you have to think in a very unique way. By thinking like the rest of the world, it’s easy to follow what everyone else does or says and lose the ability to think individually and objectively.

John Craig (Owner/John Craig Media)

In Peter Thiel's book, he asks the question "What important truth do very few people agree with you on?" If you can answer that question it will give you the direction on how & where to grow your life & business to the next level.

Howard Marks (CEO/StartEngine)

I would say the one book for entrepreneurs, there's several books that I recently read. Peter Thiel has a book. Zero to One I read. It was good.

James Altucher (Founder/StockPickr)

There’s a lot of business books out there. 99% of them are BS. Read this one.

So many concepts really changed my attitude about not only business but capitalism.

Thiel, the founder of PayPal, and first investor in Facebook, is brilliant in how he simply shares his theories on building a billion dollar business.

I love his story on my podcast what exactly happened in the room when a 24 year old Mark Zuckerberg was offered $250,000,000 and refused it in two minutes.

Rupert Murdoch (CEO/News Corporation)

Enjoying brilliant, often provocative, Peter Thiel book, Zero to One. Will buy many and distribute to all senior execs.

Henry Medine (Co-Founder/Space Jam Data)

I promote range and diversity. Thus, I recommend readers to expose themselves to as many different topics as possible. I usually have 2-4 books I refer back to at any given time. They range in topics from management, art, spirituality and philosophy. Trying to get the engineering thing going but don't much of a mind for science.

Neal O'Gorman (Serial Entrepreneur)

[Currently reading] Peter Thiel's: Zero To One. Looking for some insight on how he sees things. Interesting to get his take on the fact that a VC is likely to need any one investment be able to return the size of that VC's fund.

Fabrice Grinda (Serial Entrepreneur, Investor)

I have lots of books to recommend, but they are not related to my career path. The only one that is remotely related is Peter Thiel’s Zero to One.

Marvin Liao (Partner/500 Startups)

My list would be (besides the ones I mentioned in answer to the previous question) both business & Fiction/Sci-Fi and ones I personally found helpful to myself. The business books explain just exactly how business, work & investing are in reality & how to think properly & differentiate yourself. On the non-business side, a mix of History & classic fiction to understand people, philosophy to make sense of life and Science fiction to picture what the future could be like (not always utopian).

Bill Earner (Founder/Connect Ventures)

Zero to One by Peter Thiel to understand power laws and why they apply to startups and startup investing.

Chris Oliver (Founder/GoRails)

For anyone interested in startups, this is a highly recommended book about what it takes to start a business.

John Doherty (Founder/Credo)

This book is by Peter Thiel, who while I completely disagree with his worldview has seen thousands of startups both grow and fail. They have some interesting takes on what it takes to make a startup successful and look towards changing the world.

Nelson Chu (Founder/High5.ai)

In his book, he talked about how competition is for losers, and that really changed my mindset. After reading this book, I am able to think strategically on how to build a company that does not need to avoid competition.

Dean Roller (Founder/Bliss Bean Bags)

I am paraphrasing here, however when he mentioned make something 10 times better than you competitors products or don't bother at all. It shifted the end result I was looking for in the business I currently run. I changed the whole approach about what the business would offer and how products would be delivered.

Liam Martin (Co-founder & CMO/Time Doctor & Staff.com)

Zero to One by Peter Thiel because the book perfectly encapsulates what makes a tech startup incredibly successful and I often find myself thinking of his thought process when looking at adding a feature or investing in a company.

Javed Khatri (Co-founder & Chief Everything Officer/Kustard)

This book is written by Peter Thiel and I admire him a lot. I was always curious to know about his journey, he clearly presents his views on businesses and startups in this book.

Marc Andreessen (Co-Founder/Andreessen Horowitz)

The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Lean Startup, and Zero To One are the defining trilogy of intellectual thought on the art and science of modern technology startups. Virtually every page of each is open to debate and yet as a whole they provide intellectual scaffolding for our endeavors that I wish had existed when I started in 1994!

Catrinel Hagivreta (Co-Founder & CEO/MEDIjobs)

Zero to One – Peter Thiel: clear, practical guide about what it takes to build the next successful start up.

Boban Dedovic (Serial Entrepreneur)

My favorite business book is Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters. It’s my favorite because it explains lots of important and consequential concepts in a way that makes sense for a normal person. Moreover, the concepts discussed challenge conventional wisdom taught in schools and enforced by society.

Andreas Zhou (Co-Founder/Askable)

Thiel's philosophy of "competition is for losers" rings very true. It's a book that will make you stop and think about what kind of business you're building and what kind of impact you're having before you start.

Tee-Ming Chew (Co-Founder/Seedly)

I would recommend Zero to One by Peter Thiel because it gives different perspectives on how to create value in this world.

Gilles Bernhard (Co-Founder/SCPlanner)

In the process of an acquisition of my business by a bigger company, I was reading Zero to One by Peter Thiel, and it helped me understand the meaning behind an acquisition, and what to expect from it. I really enjoyed this book because it is very easy and quick to read, but still has a lot of value. Still today its lessons are keys to how I chose to invest, how I see companies and how I tend to think when working on mine.

Casey Neistat (Founder/368 Creative Space)

There's a great book by Peter Thiel (I love the book but I don't endorse his political preference). In that book he addresses how hard it is to start a nothing and turn it into something. You start with zero and you get to one. That's the hardest thing you can do.

Dominic Steil (CTO/Dapps Inc)

[One of the five books Dominic Steil recommends to young people interested in his career path.]

Marie Denis (Creator/Women Make, Co-Founder/Threader & IP Man)

Although it’s not my favorite book it’s a good way to understand the mentality of this industry and get into the swings of things.

Ben Horowitz (Co-founder/Andreessen Horowitz)

Zero To One is a great book. I learned a lot reading it.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Author)

When a risk taker writes a book, read it. In the case of Peter Thiel, read it twice. Or, to be safe, three times. This is a classic.

Yuriy Zaremba (Co-Founder & CEO/AXDRAFT)

[One of the five books Yuriy recommends to young people interested in his career path.]

Alexandra Stroe (Co-CEO/Bookster)

[I'd recommend] The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur and Zero to One by Peter Thiel when they are in the starting phase of a business that needs to validate its business model.

Chandini Jain (CEO/Auquan)

[One of the five books Chandini would you recommend to young people interested in her career path.]

Mikhail Dubov (Founder & CEO/Chattermill)

A few books had affected how I run the company [...] Zero to One.

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Zero to one book summary

Amazon description

If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets. The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.

Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

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Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

This book has 36 recommendations

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