Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them. It's easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange. Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things. It draws on everything the author learned directly as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and then an investor in hundreds of startups, including Facebook and SpaceX. The single most powerful pattern he has noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. Ask not, what would Mark do? Ask: what valuable company is no one building?

The challenge of the future -- Party like it's 1999 -- All happy companies are different -- The ideology of competition -- Last mover advantage -- You are not a lottery ticket -- Follow the money -- Secrets -- Foundations -- The mechanics of mafia -- If you build it, will they come? -- Man and machine -- Seeing green -- The founder's paradox -- Conclusion: Stagnation or singularity.