Two Paths to Discovery How to Find Secrets in Nature and People

If everyone already knows everything, there’s no room for new companies. Success in business requires building something unique, which means you must see a truth that others have missed. Knowing how to find secrets is the only way to escape the trap of competition and build a business that truly matters.

Most people act as if there’s nothing left to discover. They assume that if an idea was good, someone else would have already tried it. This belief in a "flat" world prevents talented people from even looking for the next breakthrough. In 2012, while the airline industry generated $160 billion in revenue, it made only 37 cents per passenger. Google, by contrast, captured massive profits because it was built on a search secret that differentiated it from every other firm.

Defining the Two Categories of Secrets

In the book Zero to One, Peter Thiel argues that every great business is built on a secret. These are truths about the world that are hard to find but fundamentally doable to achieve. Thiel explains that secrets fall into two distinct categories: those belonging to the natural world and those belonging to the human world. A secret is more than just a clever idea; it’s a foundational insight that allows you to go from 0 to 1.

If you don't believe in secrets, you'll end up working on incremental improvements to existing products. This leads to a world of "indefinite optimism" where people hope for progress but don't plan for it. Real progress comes from individuals who decide that the world still has mysteries left to solve. Founders who identify these hidden truths can build monopolies that provide lasting value to society.

This framework matters because it shifts your focus away from what everyone else is doing. Instead of fighting for a small share of a crowded market, you look for a niche that doesn't exist yet. Success isn't a matter of luck or timing alone. It's a result of having the courage to pursue a secret that others are too timid or too conventional to acknowledge.

Comparing Anthropology vs Physics in Discovery

Natural secrets are discovered by studying the physical world. These are the truths that scientists and engineers look for when they try to understand how the universe operates. Physics serves as the ultimate example here, as it involves uncovering the laws that govern everything from subatomic particles to galaxies. If you want to find a natural secret, you must look at a part of nature that hasn't been standardized or fully mapped yet.

Computing power has followed these natural secrets for decades, doubling in efficiency roughly every two years. Today's smartphones have thousands of times more processing power than the computers that guided the Apollo astronauts to the moon. This exponential growth was once a secret known only to those who understood the physics of semiconductors. Today, it’s a convention, but the next natural secret will likely come from fields like nutrition or longevity where the data is still messy and unrefined.

Finding a natural secret requires a deep technical understanding of your field. You have to ask what nature is hiding from you. It’s a difficult path because the physical world doesn't care about your feelings or your business plan. It only yields to rigorous experimentation and a refusal to accept that the current limits of science are final.

Finding Human Truths for Hidden Business Opportunities

Human secrets are different because they’re about people. These involve things that people don't know about themselves or things they hide from others. To find these hidden business opportunities, you have to look at what people are not allowed to talk about. This is the realm of anthropology and psychology rather than hard physics. These secrets are often hidden in plain sight because they’re protected by social taboos or conventional wisdom.

Identifying a human secret means looking for a gap between what people say and what they actually do. While 3.2 million Americans work in sales, many people still claim that they aren't influenced by advertising. This denial is a human secret that allows skilled marketers to influence behavior effectively. If you can see a social need that is being ignored because it’s unfashionable or controversial, you’ve found a potential human secret.

Human secrets are often easier to overlook than natural ones because we’re trained to be social. We want to agree with the crowd and avoid being the "lonely but right" person. However, the most valuable companies often solve human problems that others were too embarrassed or too conventional to touch. These opportunities require social courage as much as intellectual brilliance.

Mastering How to Find Secrets in Today’s Market

Finding a secret is the beginning of building a monopoly. Once you have a unique insight, you can start small and dominate a specific niche. This is much easier than trying to compete in a massive, established market where the secrets have already been mined. Modern technology often acts as a complement to these secrets, allowing humans to process data and find patterns that were previously invisible.

LinkedIn transformed the recruiting industry by recognizing a human secret. They didn't try to replace recruiters with software; they empowered them with a better way to search for candidates. Today, over 97% of recruiters use LinkedIn because the platform discovered a secret about how people want to manage their professional reputations. This combination of human insight and technical power creates a defensible market position that is hard for competitors to replicate.

Another way to look for secrets is to look for unused capacity. We are surrounded by resources that are being wasted because nobody has the right framework to use them. Whether it’s empty bedrooms or idle cars, these are human secrets about ownership and trust. Seeing these opportunities requires a shift in perspective that ignores how things "have always been done."

Harnessing Unused Capacity in the Real World

Airbnb is a classic example of a company built on a human secret. Before they launched, most people thought it was crazy or dangerous to let a stranger sleep in your spare bedroom. The conventional wisdom was that travelers only wanted to stay in hotels. Airbnb founders recognized that people had spare capacity in their homes and that travelers wanted a more authentic, affordable experience. They turned a social taboo into a multi-billion dollar business.

Uber followed a similar path by identifying a secret about transportation. They saw that millions of people were driving around in cars with empty seats while others struggled to find reliable taxis. The secret wasn't the app itself; it was the realization that the private car market could be turned into a professionalized transport network. Both companies looked at human behavior and saw an opportunity that the "experts" in the travel and taxi industries had completely missed.

These examples show that secrets don't have to be complex to be valuable. They just have to be true and unknown to most people. Once a company reveals a secret, it often looks obvious in retrospect. But before the discovery, the person who sees the truth must be willing to act against the consensus.

Three Steps to Master How to Find Secrets

1. Identify a Neglected Field of Study

Look for industries that have been stagnant for decades or fields where the "best practices" haven't changed since your parents were in school. Nutrition and energy are prime examples of areas where the data is often flawed or influenced by lobbying rather than truth. Avoid fields like high-energy physics where the brightest minds have been looking for decades. Focus instead on areas where you can apply a fresh perspective to old, messy problems.

2. Ask What People are Forbidden to Say

Pay attention to what is considered taboo or "unprofessional" in your social circle. These are often the areas where human secrets are hiding. If everyone agrees that something is a bad idea, ask yourself if they’re right or if they’re just following a convention. The most valuable truths are often the ones that make people uncomfortable because they challenge the status quo.

3. Turn Your Secret Into a Conspiracy

A secret is only valuable if you build a company around it. Share your insight with a small, dedicated team of co-conspirators who are as obsessed with the truth as you are. A great startup is essentially a group of people who are fanatically right about something that the rest of the world has missed. Keep your secret internal until you have the technical or market power to defend it.

Why the Search for Secrets Can Lead to Failure

Searching for secrets is inherently risky because you might be wrong. If you dedicate your life to a "secret" that turns out to be false, you've wasted your time and capital. This is why many people prefer incrementalism; it’s safer to be slightly better than the competition than to be completely different. There is also the danger of looking for secrets where none exist, which leads to the "crankery" seen in failed biotech startups.

In the pharmaceutical world, Eroom's Law shows that the cost of developing new drugs has doubled every nine years since 1950. This stagnation occurs because the "easy" secrets of nature have already been found. Critics argue that searching for new secrets in complex biological systems is becoming impossibly expensive. You must be careful to distinguish between a hard secret and an impossible mystery that no amount of effort can solve.

Finding secrets requires more than just thinking; it requires a specific, concrete action plan. Take one specific problem that you believe is solvable but remains ignored. Focus your energy on this singular niche until you have established a monopoly of one. Only after you have dominated that small space should you consider expanding into broader markets.