Zero to One

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Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future is a 2014 book by venture capitalist, PayPal co-founder, and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel along with Blake Masters. It is a condensed and updated version of a highly popular set of online notes taken by Masters for the CS183 class on startups taught by Thiel at Stanford University in Spring 2012.

Video Zero to One

Promotion

To promote the book, Peter Thiel sent out his first tweet ever on September 8, 2014, from a Twitter account that had been dormant for years. He was also interviewed by Alexia Tsotsis of TechCrunch. On September 9, Thiel did a podcast with Timothy Ferriss for the latter's show. On September 11, Thiel did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit.

On September 13, Thiel appeared on NPR with host Wade Goodwyn to discuss the book.

Maps Zero to One

Reception

Book reviews

Publishers Weekly wrote of the book: "Thiel touches on how to build a successful business, but the discussion is too abstract to offer much to the next Steve Jobs--or Peter Thiel."

Jason Shen reviewed the book, issuing a strong recommendation to readers to buy it. According to Shen, the best part of the book was the idea that successful startups are based around secrets, whereas the worst part of the book was Thiel's favoring startups that have a grand plan upfront.

In November 2014, Timothy B. Lee reviewed the book for Vox.com, writing that although Thiel's book contained some good advice, he made the advice sound more contrarian than it really was, did not provide sufficiently concrete advice, and made some questionable claims.

In The New Atlantis, James Poulos compares Thiel to Frederich Nietzsche and argues Thiel, "the most political and theoretical of the supernerds," writes esoterically in Zero to One, when he "raises the prospect of a remarkably comprehensive failure among our best and brightest."