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

Published in 2014, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters, advocates for creating businesses that offer inspiring new products that lead their markets rather than slightly improved copies of other firm’s merchandise. Aimed at a general audience, the book is based on Masters’s notes on a Stanford business class taught by Thiel. It derides copycat thinking and encourages entrepreneurs to re-imagine the businesses they’re in, develop products that capture people’s attention with unique benefits, and reap the reward of big profits.

Multi-billionaire Thiel earned his bachelor’s and law degrees at Stanford University. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, a founding partner in PayPal, and he also helped fund Airbnb and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Thiel built Palantir Technologies into a leading data analysis company, started the Founders Fund venture capital firm, and oversees the Thiel Foundation, which supports research into anti-aging, artificial intelligence, and other fields.

Blake Masters is a protégé of Thiel’s. He has led some of Thiel’s business ventures and founded the legal research company, Judicata. He has also run for political office.