Starting from zero opens your eyes to all that comes with doing everything on your own, working around people who may not be as experienced as you are. Helping and supporting people around you with the skills that you have acquired and sharing the same with them.
What a zero-to-one company does is lay claim to an uninhabited stretch of market space in order to create a monopoly. A monopoly, in Thiel’s vocabulary, is not the bad kind we associate with bullies. It’s the good kind that opens up valuable market territory by doing something new.