BookYol

Concept

Vertical Progress

Vertical progress is doing something that has never been done before, such as a new capability or a new way of solving a problem, which Peter Thiel calls going from 0 to 1, as opposed to horizontal progress, which copies what already works and spreads it from 1 to n.

In Zero to One, written with Blake Masters and built from Masters' notes on Thiel's 2012 Stanford startup course, Thiel splits progress into two kinds. Horizontal progress takes a working model and makes more copies of it in more cities and more countries. He ties this to globalization. Vertical progress creates something that did not exist before. He ties this to technology in the broad sense: any new and better way of doing things. Horizontal is not a lesser path, and plenty of good businesses spread proven ideas. But the two demand different plans. A copy competes from day one against rivals who can see the same model, so execution and cost decide who wins. A genuinely new thing rests on an insight others missed and has to prove that it works at all. Calling your idea vertical doesn't make it so.

A real-life example

Two friends in Austin are planning ventures. Dana wants to open the city's sixth meal-kit service with better packaging. That is 1 to n. The model exists, rivals already run it, and margins and delivery speed will decide her fate. Leo is building software that tells small bakeries each morning how much bread to bake, using the weather and past sales. Owners couldn't buy that before. Both can work, but they need different plans.

How to use it

  1. 1Write one sentence describing what your idea does that no existing product or service does. If you can't write it honestly, you are doing horizontal progress, which is fine, so plan for competition from day one.
  2. 2List the three alternatives your future customers use today. If you are offering a better copy, put your effort into cost, speed and execution. If you are offering a new capability, put it into proving the thing works.
  3. 3Decide where the next six months of time and money go based on that answer, not on which label sounds more impressive.