Zero to One: Peter Thiel - 2014

Zero to One, written by serial entrepreneur Peter Thiel and Blake Masters, provides an intellectual framework that can be used to identify progressive and innovative business opportunities. 

One of the original leaders of the prolific value-creating “PayPal Mafia”, Thiel has emerged as a thought leader in a wide range of areas, including: entrepreneurship, venture capital, and innovation, due to his successful $1.5 billion sale of PayPal to eBay in 2002.

In Zero to One, Thiel places great emphasis on learning how to think for yourself to achieve your goals and aspirations:

"The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator."

Thiel presents an optimistic view of the future and a different way of thinking about innovation. He encourages readers to learn from the traits and actions of successful entrepreneurs, but not copy them:

"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."

Published in 2014 and written in plain language, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future provides readers with a shrewd way of thinking about business, and empowers them to create a more prosperous future for themselves and those around them by applying successful “outside the box” methodology.