---
# System prepended metadata

title: daily blog-20190725-properly defined
tags: [zero to one, peter thiel, daily blog]

---

# daily blog-20190725-properly defined
###### tags: `daily blog` `peter thiel` `zero to one`

"Properly defined: a startup is the smallest group of people you can convince to build a difference future with you." So goes a line in Peter Thiel's fantastic Zero to One. I'll highlight the first two words, *properly defined*. 

The book raises excellent questions, and declarations that are not immediately clear as brilliant insights because they follow so logically from the questions posed as to seem elementary. That's the brilliance, Peter properly defined his questions with uncanny perception and so illuminated a new path of reasoning. 

Years from now, many billion-dollar ideas will have bloomed, they will be called obvious, with the benefit of hindsight. But when their creators are talking to venture capitalists, editors and other gate-keepers now, their theses will seem fanciful because the question has not been *properly defined*. 