"ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them"
About this Quote
The name-dropping is doing strategic work. Gates, Page/Brin, Zuckerberg aren’t just success stories; they’re shorthand for categories that went from frontier to utility. By declaring that the “next” versions won’t build the same thing, he’s reframing ambition away from cloning products and toward discovering new non-obvious problems that aren’t yet legible to the market. It’s a warning against mistaking pattern recognition for insight: copying the surface features of winners (a dorm-room origin myth, a growth hack, a platform play) is how you end up competing in the most crowded, least forgiving part of the map.
There’s also a subtle act of self-mythmaking here. Coming from Zuckerberg, it reads as both advice and a claim to uniqueness: Facebook’s rise wasn’t a formula you can replicate, because it was inseparable from its moment. The subtext is bracingly capitalist and a little ruthless: don’t honor the legends by building shrines; honor them by finding the next unoccupied terrain where “zero to one” can still happen.
Quote Details
| Topic | Entrepreneur |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Zuckerberg, Mark. (2026, January 18). ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/zero-to-one-every-moment-in-business-happens-only-184052/
Chicago Style
Zuckerberg, Mark. "ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/zero-to-one-every-moment-in-business-happens-only-184052/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/zero-to-one-every-moment-in-business-happens-only-184052/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.
