About ZeroOne Terminal
You have $100k. Can you predict which startups will become the next Google, Uber, or Snapchat?
ZeroOne Terminal drops you into tech history (2000-2020) where you interview founders at their starting point—before anyone knows who will win. Your job: identify the companies that will change everything.
Use Peter Thiel's 7 investment lenses—Timing, Engineering, Monopoly, Distribution, People, Durability, Secret—to interrogate founders and predict outcomes. Then see what actually happened and why.
The goal isn't realism. It's pattern recognition: building the intuition to spot which ideas have breakthrough potential and which will fail.
The 7 Investment Questions
Every startup interview in ZeroOne Terminal revolves around these critical questions from Peter Thiel's framework:
1. The Engineering Question
Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? You need 10x better, not 10% better.
2. The Timing Question
Is now the right time? Too early means the market isn't ready; too late means competitors have won.
3. The Monopoly Question
Are you starting with a small market you can dominate? Better to own 100% of a small market than 1% of a large one.
4. The Distribution Question
Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? Great products don't sell themselves.
5. The Durability Question
Will your market position be defensible 10-20 years into the future?
6. The People Question
Do you have the right team? Not just talented, but aligned and capable of Zero to One thinking.
7. The Secret Question
What important truth do very few people agree with you on? Every great company is built on a secret.
What You Gain
Brain upgrade for aspiring founders:
- • Internalize how successful founders think
- • Recognize patterns in what makes startups succeed or fail
- • Develop intuition for evaluating startup ideas (including your own)
- • Master the questions that reveal whether an idea has potential
How It Works
Each era (dot-com boom, Web 2.0, mobile revolution) introduces you to founders inspired by companies that either broke out or disappeared. Every startup is grounded in historical markets and real outcomes.
A Thiel-like mentor explains each era's environment and helps you understand what you missed or got right. You're not just collecting facts—you're developing judgment about what separates winners from losers.
Who This Is For
- • CS/tech students considering starting their own company
- • Startup employees wanting to evaluate ideas and opportunities
- • Aspiring founders who want to understand what makes companies win
- • Anyone ambitious who wants to master tech startup patterns
Why This Works
Reading about successful startups teaches you what worked. Playing ZeroOne Terminal teaches you how to predict what will work—a much rarer and more valuable skill.
You make 100+ decisions across two decades of tech history, building pattern recognition that transfers to evaluating real opportunities.
The Developer
Created by Patrik Cihal and built entirely in Rust with Dioxus. The goal is simple: let you learn from two decades of startups by making predictions, not reading theory.
Contact: [email protected]