THE ZERO-TO-ONE TEST Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist and founder of PayPal, proposed a model for understanding the key to massive business growth, especially among technology companies. He calls this “Zero-to-One,” and distinguishes a Zero-to-One business from other kinds of businesses: “Horizontal progress means copying things that work—going from 1 to n. It’s easy to imagine because we already know what it looks like. Vertical progress means doing new things—going from 0 to 1. It’s harder to imagine because it requires doing something that nobody else has ever done. If you take one typewriter and build 100, you have made horizontal progress. If you have a typewriter and build a word processor, you have made vertical progress.” This illustration may be helpful in understanding the difference:
Most people who read this book aren’t setting out to build a massive technology business (although perhaps some of you will). Even so, the Zero-toOne test is interest ing to consider when you are deciding whether to move from