Every moment in business happens only once. […] The next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network.
Copying an existing model takes us from 1 to n, but creating something new takes us from 0 to 1. To ensure success in the future, that act of creating something new is required, and humans are able to do so by creating new technologies. This book is about how to build companies that create new things, written by Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Paypal and early investor in companies such as Facebook and SpaceX.
When we think about the future, we envision progress, which can take one of two forms : horizontal or vertical.
- Horizontal, or extensive progress, means copying things that work. At a macro level, this is akin to globalization (take things that work somewhere and apply it everywhere).
- Vertical, or intensive progress, means doing new things. The word for this is technology. And any new and better way of doing things is technology.
Both kinds can co-exist and, while we tend to think of the future as an increase globalization, it is technology that will matter more. Spreading old ways of creating wealth in the future would be catastrophic.
In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.
