The Next Bill Gates will not build an operating system, The next Larry Page will not build a search engine, The next Mark Zukerberg will not build Social network.
If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them
Doing what we already know how to do take the world from 1 to n
But
Every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1, the act of creation is singular and the result is something fresh and strange
The Best Paths are New and Untried
Horizontal or extensive progress means copying things that work going from 1 to n, horizontal progress is easy to imagine because we already know what it looks like.
Vertical or intensive progress means doing new things going from 0 to 1, vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has even done.
Reference: Book Zero To One By Peter Thiel