Silicon Valley legend Peter Thiels vision for building the companies of the future.

In Spring 2012, students at Stanford University packed a lecture hall to hear Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel teach a course called Computer Science 183: Startup. Thiel told the class everything he knows about starting a company, going beyond the basics of running a business to answer the much harder question of how to find value where other people do not see it.

Now Thiel and former student Blake Masters, whose notes on the class became an internet sensation, have revised, updated, and expanded on the best parts of the lectures. The result is this unique book: simultaneously an insiders view of Silicon Valley, a practical guide for thinking about business, and a contrarian vision of the future.

Thiel starts from the bold premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if were too distracted by our new mobile devices to notice. Progress has stalled in every industry except computers, and globalization is hardly the revolution people think it is. Its true that the world can get marginally richer by building new copies of old inventions, making horizontal progress from 1 to n. But true innovators have nothing to copy. The most valuable companies of the future will make vertical progress from 0 to 1, creating entirely new industries and products that have never existed before. Zero to One is about how to build these companies.

Tomorrows champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in todays marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. In todays post-internet bubble world, conventional wisdom dictates that all the good ideas are taken, and the economy becomes a tournament in which everyone competes to reach the top. Zero to One shows how to quit the zero-sum tournament by finding an untapped market, creating a new product, and quickly scaling up a monopoly business that captures lasting value.

Planning an escape from competition is essential for every business and every individual, not just for technology startups. The greatest secret of the modern era is that there are still unique frontiers to explore and new problems to solve. Zero to One shows how to pursue them using the most important, most difficult, and most underrated skill in every job or industry: thinking for yourself.

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"In his first book, PayPal cofounder Thiel presents a series of musings for example,'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' rather than a cohesive narrative. He begins with promise, drawing a strict distinction between horizontal progress making more of what already exists in the world and vertical progress creating something entirely new. To accomplish the latter, he proposes, more businesses need to think like startups. From there, the text sprawls wildly from one subject to the next, with periodic references to PayPal's evolution as the main recurring motif. His provocative central premise is that successful businesses should strive to be monopolies that readers should build something singular and exciting enough that it will be the only one of its kind. Though the book is presented as an instructional guide, it gives the reader little to take away. A brief meditation on the lessons of the dot-com bust ('make incremental advances,' 'stay lean and flexible,' 'improve on the competition,' 'focus on product, not sales') offers standard truisms rather than practical insights. 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. (Sept.) " Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Peter Thiel is a technology entrepreneur and investor best known for co-founding PayPal. Since then he has co-founded the data analytics firm Palantir Technologies, made the first outside investment in Facebook, provided early funding for companies like SpaceX and LinkedIn and established and funds the Thiel Foundation, which nurtures tomorrows tech visionaries.

Blake Masters is co-founder of Judicata, a technology startup that builds tools for legal research and analysis. Like Peter, Blake received undergraduate and law degrees from Stanford.

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EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS HAPPENS ONLY ONCE.

The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin wont make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg wont create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you arent learning from them.

Its 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.

PROGRESS COMES FROM MONOPOLY, NOT COMPETITION.

If you do what has never been done and you can do it better than anybody else, you have a monopoly -- and every business is successful exactly insofar as it is a monopoly. But the more you compete, the more you become similar to everyone else.From the tournament of formal schooling to the corporate obsession with outdoing rivals, competition destroys profits for individuals, companies, and society as a whole.

ZERO TO ONE

is about how to build companies that create new things. It draws on everything Peter Thiel haslearned 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 patternThiel hasnoticed 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 NOBODY BUILDING?

Peter Thiel is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. He first gained attention for co-founding PayPal, which he sold to eBay in 2002. Since then Peter co-founded the data analytics firm Palantir Technologies, made the first outside investment in Facebook, and funded companies like SpaceX, LinkedIn, and Yelp through Founders Fund, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that he manages and co-founded. Peter also established and funds the Thiel Foundation, which nurtures tomorrows tech visionaries through the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship program and supports radically ambitious scientists and inventors through Breakout Labs. Peter earned a BA in Philosophy from Stanford University and a JD from Stanford Law School.

Blake Masters co-founded Judicata, a technology startup that makes research and analytics software for lawyers. Blake was an early employee at Box and, like Peter, received his undergraduate and law degrees from Stanford.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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 were 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 wont make a search engine. Tomorrows champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in todays 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.