Peter Thiel

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search
Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel TechCrunch50.jpg
Peter Thiel at the 2008 TechCrunch50 conference.
Born Peter Andreas Thiel
(1967-10-11) October 11, 1967 (age 56)[1]
Frankfurt am Main, West Germany
Alma mater Stanford University (B.A.)
Stanford Law School (J.D.)
Occupation
Net worth DecreaseUS$2.8 billion (September 2015)[2]
Political party Libertarian Party[1]

Peter Andreas Thiel (born October 11, 1967) is a German-born American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, hedge fund manager, social critic, and conservative political activist. Thiel co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Elon Musk (see PayPal Mafia) and served as its CEO. He also co-founded Palantir, of which he is chairman. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, the popular social-networking site, with a 10.2% stake acquired in 2004 for $500,000, and sits on the company's board of directors.

Thiel serves as president of Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund with $700 million in assets under management; a managing partner in Founders Fund, a venture capital fund with $2 billion in assets under management; co-founder and investment committee chair of Mithril Capital Management; and co-founder and chairman of Valar Ventures.[3][4][5]

Thiel was ranked #293 on the Forbes 400 in 2011, with a net worth of $1.5 billion as of March 2012.[6] He was ranked #4 on the Forbes Midas List of 2014 at $2.2 billion.[7] Thiel lives in San Francisco.[8]

Through the Thiel Foundation, he leads Breakout Labs and Thiel Fellowship, and supports life extension, seasteading and other futurist research. A co-founder of The Stanford Review, he is a conservative libertarian who opposes excessive government spending, high government debt, and foreign wars. He made numerous political donations, including Hulk Hogan's lawsuit in Bollea v. Gawker.

Early life

Childhood

Born to Germans Klaus Thiel, a chemical engineer, and Susanne Thiel, in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. Thiel has one brother, Patrick Thiel.[9] Thiel moved to the United States with his parents when he was one year old, and was raised in Foster City, California.[10][11] Thiel was a US-rated Chess Master and one of the highest ranked under-21 players in the country.[12]

College and law school

Thiel studied 20th-century philosophy as an undergraduate at Stanford University. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford in 1989 and acquired a J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1992.[13]

An avowed libertarian, he founded The Stanford Review in 1987 along with Norman Book. The Stanford Review became famous for challenging campus mores including political correctness and laws against hate speech. The Stanford Review is now the university's main conservative/libertarian newspaper.[citation needed]

Thiel formed friendships with other students at Stanford, many of whom contributed to the Stanford Review. These include Keith Rabois, David O. Sacks, and Reid Hoffman. Some of these friends later took up jobs at PayPal (co-founded by Thiel) and became part of the PayPal Mafia.[citation needed]

While studying at Stanford, Thiel also encountered René Girard, whose mimetic theory influenced him.[14]

Career

Early career

After graduating Stanford Law School, Thiel clerked for Judge James Larry Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Thiel unsuccessfully applied for clerkships with Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States.[15] After his clerkship with Judge Edmondson, Thiel worked as a securities lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. After seven months and three days, he left the law firm citing a lack of transcendental value in his work.[16] He then took a job as a derivatives trader in currency options at Credit Suisse, working there from 1993 on while also operating as a speechwriter for former-United States Secretary of Education William Bennett, before again feeling as though his work lacked meaningful value and returning to California in 1996.[17]

Upon returning to the Bay Area, Thiel noticed that the development of the internet and personal computer had already altered the economic landscape and the dot-com boom was well underway. With financial support from friends and family, he was able to raise $1 million toward the establishment of Thiel Capital Management and embark on his venture capital career. Early on, he experienced a setback after investing $100,000 in his friend Luke Nosek's unsuccessful web-based calendar project. However, his luck changed when Max Levchin, a friend of Nosek's, introduced him to his cryptography-related company idea, which later became their first venture called Confinity in 1998.

PayPal

In 1998, Thiel co-founded PayPal, an online payments system, with Max Levchin. The company later merged with X.com, then headed by Elon Musk. PayPal went public on February 15, 2002, and was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion later that year.[18] Thiel's 3.7 percent stake in PayPal was worth approximately $55 million at the time of the acquisition.[19]

According to Eric Jackson's account of PayPal in his book The PayPal Wars, Thiel viewed PayPal's mission as liberating people throughout the world from the erosion of the value of their currencies due to inflation. Jackson recalls an inspirational speech by Thiel in 1999:

We're definitely onto something big. The need PayPal answers is monumental. Everyone in the world needs money – to get paid, to trade, to live. Paper money is an ancient technology and an inconvenient means of payment. You can run out of it. It wears out. It can get lost or stolen. In the twenty-first century, people need a form of money that's more convenient and secure, something that can be accessed from anywhere with a PDA or an Internet connection. Of course, what we're calling 'convenient' for American users will be revolutionary for the developing world. Many of these countries' governments play fast and loose with their currencies," the former derivatives trader [referring to Thiel] noted, before continuing, "They use inflation and sometimes wholesale currency devaluations, like we saw in Russia and several Southeast Asian countries last year [referring to the 1998 Russian financial crisis and 1997 Asian financial crisis], to take wealth away from their citizens. Most of the ordinary people there never have an opportunity to open an offshore account or to get their hands on more than a few bills of a stable currency like U.S. dollars. Eventually PayPal will be able to change this. In the future, when we make our service available outside the U.S. and as Internet penetration continues to expand to all economic tiers of people, PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before. It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or Pounds or Yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure.[20]

Thiel launched a global macro hedge fund, Clarium Capital, pursuing a global macro strategy. In 2005, Clarium was honored as global macro fund of the year by both MarHedge and Absolute Return, two trade magazines. Thiel’s approach to investing became the subject of a chapter in Steve Drobny’s book, Inside the House of Money. Thiel successfully bet that the U.S. dollar would weaken in 2003, and gained significant returns betting that the dollar and energy would rally in 2005. After significant losses starting in 2009, Clarium dropped from $7 billion in assets in 2008 to around $350 million in 2011.[21]

In 2004, well before the financial crisis of 2007–2010 bore him out in general terms, Thiel spoke of the dot-com bubble of 2000 having migrated, in effect, into a growing bubble in the financial sector. He specified General Electric, with its large financing arm, and Walmart as vulnerable. For example, in 2004, he reported having backed away from buying Martha Stewart's Manhattan duplex for $7 million in the winter of 2003–2004.[17] While the apartment did sell in 2004 for $6.65 million to another buyer, it was on the market but unsold in early 2010 at $15.9 million,[22] and later at the reduced price of $13.9 million.[23]

Clarium Capital

<templatestyles src="Module:Hatnote/styles.css"></templatestyles>

Following PayPal's sale to eBay in 2002, Thiel devoted $10 million of his proceeds to establish Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund focusing on directional and liquid instruments in currencies, interest rates, commodities, and equities. Thiel stated that "the big, macroeconomic idea that we had at Clarium—the idée fixe—was the peak-oil theory, which was basically that the world was running out of oil, and that there were no easy alternatives."

In 2003, Clarium Capital reflected a return of 65.6% as Thiel successfully bet that the United States dollar would weaken. In 2004, Thiel spoke of the dot-com bubble having migrated, in effect, into a growing bubble in the financial sector, and specified General Electric and Walmart as vulnerable. In 2005, Clarium saw a 57.1% return as Thiel predicted that the dollar would rally. This success saw Clarium honored as global macro hedge fund of the year by MARHedge and Absolute Return + Alpha.

However, Clarium's faltered in 2006 with a 7.8% loss. During this time, the firm sought to profit in the long-term from its petrodollar analysis, which foresaw the impending decline in oil supplies and the unsustainable bubble growing in the U.S. housing market. Clarium's assets under management indeed, after achieving a 40.3% return in 2007, grew to over $7 billion by 2008, but plummeted as financial markets collapsed near the start of 2009. By 2011, after missing out on the economic rebound, many key investors pulled out, causing Clarium's assets to be valued at $350 million, over half of which was Thiel's own money.[21]

Palantir

<templatestyles src="Module:Hatnote/styles.css"></templatestyles>

In May 2003, Thiel incorporated Palantir Technologies, a big data analysis company named after the Tolkien artifact, and continues to serves as its chairman as of 2016. Thiel stated that the idea for the company was based on the realization that "the approaches that PayPal had used to fight fraud could be extended into other contexts, like fighting terrorism." He also stated that, after the September 11 attacks, the debate in the United States was "will we have more security with less privacy, or less security with more privacy?" and saw Palantir as being able to provide data mining services to government intelligence agencies which were maximally unintrusive and traceable.[24][25]

At first, Palantir's only backers were the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, but the company steadily grew and in 2015 was valued at $20 billion, with Thiel being the company's largest shareholder.[26][27]

Facebook

In August 2004, Thiel made a $500,000 angel investment in the social network Facebook for 10.2% of the company and joined Facebook's board. This was the first outside investment in Facebook,[28][29] and Thiel went on to be portrayed in The Social Network (2010) by actor Wallace Langham.

In his book The Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick outlines the story of how Thiel came to make his investment: former Napster and Plaxo cofounder Sean Parker, who at the time had assumed the title of "President" of Facebook, was seeking investors for Facebook. Parker approached Reid Hoffman, the CEO of work-based social network LinkedIn. Hoffman liked Facebook but declined to be the lead investor because of the potential for conflict of interest with his duties as LinkedIn CEO. He redirected Parker to Thiel, whom he knew from their PayPal days (both Hoffman and Thiel are considered members of the PayPal Mafia). Thiel met Parker and Mark Zuckerberg, the Harvard college student who had founded Facebook and controlled it. Thiel and Zuckerberg got along well and Thiel agreed to lead Facebook's seed round with $500,000 for 10.2% of the company. Hoffman and Mark Pincus also participated in the round. The investment was originally in the form of a convertible note, to be converted to equity if Facebook reached 1.5 million users by the end of 2004. Although Facebook narrowly missed the target, Thiel allowed the loan to be converted to equity anyway.[30] Thiel said of his investment:

I was comfortable with them pursuing their original vision. And it was a very reasonable valuation. I thought it was going to be a pretty safe investment.[30]

As a board member, Thiel was not actively involved in Facebook's day-to-day decision making. According to Sarah Lacy, Thiel's main advice to Zuckerberg in their initial years was "Just don’t fuck it up."[31] However, he did provide help with timing the various rounds of funding. Zuckerberg credited Thiel with helping him time Facebook's 2007 Series D to close before the 2007–2010 financial crisis.[32]

In September 2010, Thiel, while expressing skepticism about the potential for growth in the consumer Internet sector, argued that relative to other Internet companies, Facebook (which then had a secondary market valuation of $30 billion) was comparatively undervalued.[33] Facebook's IPO was in May 2012, with a market cap of nearly $100 billion ($38 a share), at which time Thiel sold 16.8 million shares for $638 million, at almost $38 per share.[34] In August 2012, immediately upon the conclusion of the early investor lock out period, Thiel sold almost all of his remaining stake for between $19.27 and $20.69 per share, or $395.8 million, for a total of more than $1 billion.[35] He still retained 5 million shares and a seat on the board of directors.[36] In 2016 he sold a little under 1 million of his shares for around $100 million. In November 2017 he sold another 160,805 shares for $29 million, putting his holdings in Facebook at 59,913 Class A shares.[37]

Angel investor and venture capitalist

<templatestyles src="Module:Hatnote/styles.css"></templatestyles>

In 2005, Thiel created Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital fund. Other partners in the fund include Sean Parker, Ken Howery, and Luke Nosek.

In addition to Facebook, Thiel has made early-stage investments in numerous startups (personally or through his venture capital fund), including Booktrack, Slide, LinkedIn, Friendster, Rapleaf, Geni.com, Yammer, Yelp, Inc., Powerset, Practice Fusion, MetaMed, Vator, Palantir Technologies, IronPort, Votizen, Asana, Big Think, Caplinked, Quora, Rypple, TransferWise, Nanotronics Imaging, Stripe, and Legendary Entertainment. Slide, LinkedIn, Geni.com, and Yammer were founded by Thiel's former colleagues at PayPal: Slide by Levchin, Linkedin by Reid Hoffman, Yelp by Jeremy Stoppelman, and Geni.com and Yammer by David Sacks. Fortune magazine reports that PayPal alumni have founded or invested in dozens of startups with an aggregate value of around $30 billion. In Silicon Valley circles, Thiel is colloquially referred to as the "Don of the PayPal Mafia", as noted in the Fortune magazine article.[38] Thiel's views on management are highly regarded,[by whom?] especially his famous observation that start-up success is highly correlated with low CEO pay.[citation needed]

Through Valar Ventures, an internationally focused venture firm he cofounded with Andrew McCormack and James Fitzgerald,[39] Thiel was also an early investor in Xero, a software firm headquartered in New Zealand.[40]

In February 2013, Thiel received a TechCrunch Crunchie Award for Venture Capitalist of the year.[41]

Mithril Capital

In June 2012, Peter Thiel launched Mithril Capital Management, named after the fictitious metal in The Lord of the Rings, with Jim O'Neill and Ajay Royan. Unlike Clarium Capital, Mithril Capital, a fund with $402 million at the time of launch, targets companies that are beyond the startup stage and ready to scale up.[3][42]

Y Combinator

In March 2015, it was announced that Thiel joined Y Combinator as one of 10 part-time partners.[43] In November 2017, it was reported that Y Combinator had severed its ties with Thiel. Quartz said: "While details of the split between [Thiel] and [Y Combinator] remains unclear, the unannounced change also highlights a divergence of views. Thiel is Silicon Valley's most outspoken Trump supporter, ... YC's principals, such as president Sam Altman, have made a point of calling out the threat posed by Trump."[44]

Philanthropy

<templatestyles src="Module:Hatnote/styles.css"></templatestyles>

Thiel carries out most of his philanthropic activities through a nonprofit foundation created by him called the Thiel Foundation.[45]

Theory of philanthropy

Thiel concentrates the bulk of his philanthropic efforts on what he sees as potential breakthrough technologies. In November 2010, Thiel organized a Breakthrough Philanthropy conference that showcased eight nonprofits that he believed were working on radical new ideas in technology, government, and human affairs.[46] A similar conference was organized in December 2011 with the name "Fast Forward".[47]

Machine Intelligence Research Institute

Thiel believes in the importance and desirability of a technological singularity.[48] In February 2006, Thiel provided $100,000 of matching funds to back the Singularity Challenge donation drive of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (then known as the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence). Additionally, he joined the Institute's advisory board and participated in the May 2006 Singularity Summit at Stanford as well as at the 2011 Summit held in New York City.

In May 2007, Thiel provided half of the $400,000 matching funds for the annual Singularity Challenge donation drive.

The organization was a participant in the Breakthrough Philanthropy conference (November 2010) and the Fast Forward conference (December 2011).

OpenAI

In December 2015 it was announced that Thiel is one of the financial backers of OpenAI, a non-profit company aimed at the safe development of artificial general intelligence.[49]

Anti-aging research

When asked ”What is the biggest achievement that you haven’t achieved yet?” by the moderator of a discussion panel at the Venture Alpha West 2014 conference, Thiel replied, “Certainly, the area that I’m very passionate about is trying to do something to really get some progress on the anti-aging and longevity front,” describing it as ”a massively under-studied, under-invested phenomena.”[50]

In September 2006, Thiel announced that he would donate $3.5 million to foster anti-aging research through the Methuselah Mouse Prize foundation.[51] He gave the following reasons for his pledge: "Rapid advances in biological science foretell of a treasure trove of discoveries this century, including dramatically improved health and longevity for all. I’m backing Dr. [Aubrey] de Grey, because I believe that his revolutionary approach to aging research will accelerate this process, allowing many people alive today to enjoy radically longer and healthier lives for themselves and their loved ones."

The Thiel Foundation supports the research of the SENS Research Foundation, headed by Dr. de Grey, that is working to achieve the reversal of biological aging. The Thiel Foundation also supports the work of anti-aging researcher Cynthia Kenyon.

The SENS Research Foundation was invited as a participant in Thiel's Breakthrough Philanthropy conference (November 2010) and the Fast Forward conference (December 2011).

Thiel said that he registered to be cryonically suspended, meaning that he would be subject to low-temperature preservation in case of his legal death in hopes that he might be successfully revived by future medical technology.[52]

Seasteading

On April 15, 2008, Thiel pledged $500,000 to the new Seasteading Institute, directed by Patri Friedman, whose mission is "to establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems".[53] This was followed in February 2010 by a subsequent grant of $250,000, and an additional $100,000 in matching funds.[54]

In a talk at the Seasteading Institute conference in November 2009, Thiel explained why he believed that seasteading was necessary for the future of humanity.[55]

In 2011, Thiel was reported as having given a total of $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute.[56] According to the Daily Mail Peter Thiel was inspired to do so by Ayn Rand's philosophical novel Atlas Shrugged.[57]

The Seasteading Institute was a participant in the Breakthrough Philanthropy conference (November 2010) and the Fast Forward conference (December 2011).

Thiel Fellowship

On September 29, 2010, Thiel said he had created a new fellowship called the Thiel Fellowship, which will award $100,000 to 20 people under 20 years old,[58] in order to spur them to stop out of college and create their own ventures.[59] According to Thiel, for many young people, college is the path to take when they have no idea what to do with their lives: "I feel I was personally very guilty of this; you don’t know what to do with your life, so you get a college degree; you don’t know what you’re going to do with your college degree, so you get a graduate degree. In my case it was law school, which is the classic thing one does when one has no idea what else to do. I don’t have any big regrets, but if I had to do it over I would try to think more about the future than I did at the time".[60] "The 24 year-old Peter Thiel had no plan whatsoever", choosing education as a substitute for thinking about personal future.[61] "You cannot get out of student debt even if you personally go bankrupt, it's a form of almost like indentured servitude, it's attached to your physical person for the rest of your life"[62]

Breakout Labs

In October 2011, the Thiel Foundation announced the creation of Breakout Labs, a grant-making program intended to fund early-stage scientific research that may be too radical or innovative for traditional scientific funding bodies but also too long-term and speculative for venture investors.[63] In April 2012, Breakout Labs announced its first set of grantees.[64]

Other causes

The Thiel Foundation is also a supporter of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which promotes the right of journalists to report the news freely without fear of reprisal,[65] and the Human Rights Foundation, which organizes the Oslo Freedom Forum.[66]

Gawker lawsuit

<templatestyles src="Module:Hatnote/styles.css"></templatestyles>

In May 2016, Thiel confirmed in an interview with The New York Times that he had paid $10 million in legal expenses to finance several lawsuits brought by others, including a lawsuit by Terry Bollea ("Hulk Hogan") against Gawker Media for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and infringement of personality rights after Gawker made public sections of a sex tape involving Bollea.[67] The jury awarded Bollea $140 million, and Gawker announced it was permanently shutting its doors due to the lawsuit in August 2016.[68] Thiel referred to his financial support of Bollea's case as one of the "greater philanthropic things that I've done."[69]

Thiel said he was motivated to sue Gawker after they published a 2007 article publicly outing him, which concluded with the statement "Peter Thiel, the smartest VC in the world, is gay. More power to him." Thiel and the author of the article agreed that he was already openly gay, but Thiel stated that Gawker articles about others, including his friends, had "ruined people's lives for no reason," and said, "It's less about revenge and more about specific deterrence."[69]

In response to criticism that his funding of lawsuits against Gawker would restrict the freedom of the press, Thiel cited his donations to the Committee to Protect Journalists and stated, "I refuse to believe that journalism means massive privacy violations. I think much more highly of journalists than that. It's precisely because I respect journalists that I do not believe they are endangered by fighting back against Gawker."[69]

On August 15, 2016, Thiel published an opinion piece in The New York Times in which he argued that his defense of online privacy went beyond Gawker.[70] He highlighted his support for the Intimate Privacy Protection Act, and asserted that athletes and business executives have the right to stay in the closet as long as they want to.[70]

Political activities

Quotes

Peter Thiel wrote, on April 13, 2009, in the Libertarian 'Cato Unbound' blog, “Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” In the same article, he also wrote, "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron."[71]

On September 22, 2010, Thiel said at a 2010 fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, “I believe that gay rights and marriage rights for gay people should not be a partisan issue,” and “Gay marriage can’t be a partisan issue because as long as there are partisan issues or cultural issues in this country, you’ll have trench warfare like on the western front in World War I. You’ll have lots of carnage and no progress.”[72]

He wrote an editorial in National Review in 2011 claiming that the world had entered a "tech slowdown" and that 1969 was when "the hippies took over the country, and when the true cultural war over Progress was lost."[73]

In a 2014 episode of "Conversations with Bill Kristol," he spoke at length on what he perceives to be a crisis in American higher education. He said: "The university system in 2014, it’s like the Catholic Church circa 1514. There’s less diversity, so you have the Dominicans and Franciscans and all these different orders, whereas the diversity between say the Harvard and Stanford political science department is considerably less. ... [Y]ou have this priestly class of professors that doesn’t do very much work, [and] people are buying indulgences in the form of amassing enormous debt for the sort of the secular salvation that a diploma represents." [74]

Bilderberg Group

Thiel is listed as a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group, a private, annual gathering of intellectual figures, political leaders and business executives.[75]

Support for political activism

Thiel is a self-described conservative libertarian.[76]

Thiel has supported gay-rights causes such as the American Foundation for Equal Rights and GOProud.[77] In 2010, Thiel held Homocon 2010 for GOProud, an LGBT conservative/libertarian organization, in his New York City apartment. Thiel himself is gay.[78][79][80][81][82] He invited conservative columnist Ann Coulter, who is a friend of his,[83][84] to Homocon 2010 as a guest speaker.[85] Coulter later dedicated her new book, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America, to Thiel.[86] In 2012, Thiel donated $10,000 to Minnesotans United for All Families, in order to fight Minnesota Amendment 1.[87]

In 2009, it was reported that Thiel helped fund college student James O'Keefe's "Taxpayers Clearing House" video – a satirical look at the politics behind the Wall Street bailout.[88] O'Keefe went on to produce the ACORN undercover sting videos, but through a spokesperson, Thiel denied involvement in – or even knowledge of – the ACORN sting.[88]

In July 2012, Thiel made a $1 million donation to the Club for Growth, a fiscally conservative 501(c)4, becoming the group's largest contributor.[89]

Support for political candidates

Although a member of the Libertarian Party,[1] Thiel donates overwhelmingly more political contributions to Republicans.

In December 2007, Thiel endorsed Ron Paul for President.[90] After Ron Paul failed to secure the Republican nomination for president, Thiel contributed to the John McCain/Sarah Palin presidential ticket of 2008.[91]

In 2010, Thiel supported Meg Whitman, who as CEO of eBay had purchased PayPal from Thiel and his co-founders and investors, in her unsuccessful bid for the governorship of California. He contributed the maximum allowable $25,900 to the Whitman campaign.[92]

In 2012, Thiel, along with PayPal co-founder Luke Nosek and Scott Banister, an early adviser and board member, put their support behind Ron Paul's Endorse Liberty Super PAC, alongside Internet advertising veteran Stephen Oskoui and entrepreneur Jeffrey Harmon, who founded Endorse Liberty in November 2011. Collectively Thiel et al. gave $3.9 million to Endorse Liberty, whose purpose was to promote Texas congressman Ron Paul for president in 2012. As of January 31, 2012, Endorse Liberty reported spending about $3.3 million promoting Paul by setting up two YouTube channels, buying ads from Google and Facebook and StumbleUpon, and building a presence on the Web.[93] At the 2012 Republican National Convention, Thiel held a private meeting with Rand Paul and Ron Paul's presidential delegates to discuss "the future of the Liberty Movement."[94] After Ron Paul again failed to secure the Republican nomination for president, Thiel contributed to the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan presidential ticket of 2012.[91]

Other Republican politicians Thiel has contributed donations to include Rep. James E. Rogan, Don Stenberg, Sen. John Thune Douglas Forrester, Rep. Robin Hayes, Sen. John Cornyn, Sen. Elizabeth Dole, Sen. Lamar Alexander, State Sen. Dick Monteith, Rep. Lee Terry, Sen. Chuck Hagel, Rep. Dan Lungren, Rep. Bob Beauprez, Rep. Mike Simpson, Rep. Tom Tancredo, Rep. Mary Bono, Gov. Butch Otter, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Rep. Nancy Johnson, Rep. Scott Garrett, Rep. Tim Johnson, Rep. Bill Thomas, Sen. Jeff Flake, Sen. Jim DeMint, Sen. Jim Talent, Rep. Denny Rehberg, Rep. Rob Simmons, Rep. Jon Porter, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, Rep. Ed Royce, Sen. Susan Collins, Sen. Gordon H. Smith, Rep. Bob Schaffer, John Neely Kennedy, Sen. Norm Coleman, Rep. Mike Coffman, Rep. Eric Cantor, John Raese, Dino Rossi, Ryan Brumberg, Sen. Rand Paul, Randy Altschuler, Rep. Justin Amash, State Sen. Richard Tisei, Kevin McCarthy, Sen. Ted Cruz, Josh Mandel, and Sen. Orrin Hatch.[91][95][96][97][98][99][100][101]

The only Democrat Thiel has contributed donations to is Ro Khanna.[102]

2016 and after

Thiel initially supported Carly Fiorina's campaign during the 2016 GOP presidential primary elections. After Fiorina dropped out, Thiel supported Donald Trump and became one of the pledged California delegates for Trump's nomination at the 2016 Republican National Convention. He was also a headline speaker during the convention, during which he announced that he was "proud to be gay". On October 15, 2016, Thiel announced a $1.25 million donation in support of Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Thiel stated to The New York Times: "I didn’t give him any money for a long time because I didn’t think it mattered, and then the campaign asked me to." After Trump's victory, Thiel was named to the executive committee of the President-elect's transition team.

Personal life

Citizenship

A German citizen by birth and an American citizen by naturalization, Thiel became a New Zealand citizen in 2011 and owns a 193 hectare (477 acre) estate near Lake Wanaka.[103] In January 2017, questions were raised in the New Zealand media about the decision to grant him New Zealand citizenship.[104] Thiel was given a special fast track to citizenship by the then government minister, under a clause in the relevant legislation, despite having visited the country on only four occasions prior to his application.[105] When he applied, he stated he had no intention of living in New Zealand.[106]

Religious views

Thiel is a self-described Christian and a promoter of René Girard's Christian anthropology.[107] He inherited his Christian beliefs from his parents. Thiel grew up in an evangelical household but, as of 2011, describes his religious beliefs as "somewhat heterodox," complicated by his cultural liberalism, and stated: "I believe Christianity is true but I don't sort of feel a compelling need to convince other people of that."[21]

During his time at Stanford University, Thiel attended a lecture given by René Girard. Girard, a Catholic, explained the role of sacrifice and the scapegoat mechanism in resolving social conflict, which appealed to Thiel as it offered a basis for his Christian faith without the fundamentalism of his parents.[108] Girard had developed a theory of mimetic desire, of people learning to want and compete for the same things, which attempted to explain violence.

Chess career

Peter Thiel
Title Life Master
FIDE rating 2199 (November 2016)[109]
Peak rating 2342 (December 1992)[110]

A former chess prodigy,[111][112] Thiel began playing chess at the age of 6, and in 1979 was ranked the seventh strongest U.S. chess player in the under-13 category.[113] According to ChessBase, he also was "one of the highest ranked under-21 players in the country" at one period of time.[114] He reached a peak USCF rating of 2342 in 1992, and holds the title of Life Master.[110] His FIDE rating is 2199 as of 2017, though he no longer participates in tournaments.[109]

On November 30, 2016, Thiel made the ceremonial first move in the tie-break game of the World Chess Championship 2016 between Sergey Karjakin and Magnus Carlsen.[112][115]

Other pursuits

Media appearances and commentary

Thiel is an occasional commentator on CNBC, having appeared numerous times on both Closing Bell with Kelly Evans, and Squawk Box with Becky Quick.[116] He has been interviewed twice by Charlie Rose on PBS.[117]

Thiel has contributed articles to The Wall Street Journal, First Things, Forbes, and Policy Review, a journal formerly published by the Hoover Institution, on whose board he sits.

Thiel is supposedly the inspiration for the Peter Gregory character on HBO's Silicon Valley.[118]

Awards and honors

In 2006, Thiel won the Herman Lay Award for Entrepreneurship.[119] In 2007, he was honored as a Young Global leader by the World Economic Forum as one of the 250 most distinguished leaders age 40 and under.[120] On November 7, 2009, Thiel was awarded an honorary degree from Universidad Francisco Marroquin[121] In 2012, Students For Liberty, an organization dedicated to spreading libertarian ideals on college campuses, awarded Thiel its "Alumnus of the Year" award, and Thiel delivered the keynote address at the 2012 International Students For Liberty Conference.[122]

The Diversity Myth

Thiel is the co-author, with David O. Sacks, and with a foreword by the late Emory University historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, of the 1995 book [123] The Diversity Myth: 'Multiculturalism' and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford, published by The Independent Institute. The book is critical of political correctness in higher education and the consequent dilution of academic rigor. It "drew a sharp rebuttal from then-Stanford Provost (and later President George W. Bush's National Security Advisor) Condoleezza Rice," with Rice joining Stanford's then president in writing "They (the two former students) concoct a cartoon, not a description of our freshman curriculum"[124] and that Thiel and Sacks' "commentary was demagoguery, pure and simple."[125]

According to his 2011 New Yorker profile, Thiel has backtracked somewhat from his assertions in the book:

'All of the identity-related things are in my mind much more nuanced,' he said. 'I think there is a gay experience, I think there is a black experience, I think there is a woman’s experience that is meaningfully different. I also think there was a tendency to exaggerate it and turn it into an ideological category.' But his reaction against political correctness, he said, was just as narrowly ideological.[21]

Thank You For Smoking

Thiel was the co-producer of Thank You for Smoking, a 2005 feature film based on Christopher Buckley's 1994 novel of the same name.[126]

Teaching and book on startups: Zero to One

In spring 2012 Thiel taught Stanford class CS 183: Startup.[127] Notes for the course, taken by student Blake Masters, led to a book titled Zero to One by Thiel and Masters, released September 2014.[128][129][130][131] Peter Thiel was interviewed about his book by Professor Teppo Felin at the University of Oxford in May, 2015.[132]

Derek Thompson, writing for The Atlantic, stated Zero to One "might be the best business book I've read". He described it as a "self-help book for entrepreneurs, bursting with bromides" but also as a "lucid and profound articulation of capitalism and success in the 21st century economy."

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Peter Thiel, NNDB.
  2. http://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-thiel/
  3. 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. name=techcrunch-mithril | Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. 17.0 17.1 Hibbard, Justin, "Big Bucks From Bubble Fears", Business Week, November 8, 2004. Retrieved 2015-07-27.
  18. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. Eric M. Jackson. The PayPal Wars: Battles With Ebay, the Media, the Mafia, And the Rest of Planet Earth (Kindle Locations 321-327). Kindle Edition.
  21. 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. "Change of Plans: Martha Stewart's Perry Street Place Now Flying Solo for $15.9M", Manhattan Real Estate. Retrieved 2011-01-11.
  23. Goldman, Leah, "House Of The Day: Buy Martha Stewart's Manhattan Penthouse At A $2 Million Markdown", Business Insider, Nov. 23, 2010, 5:23 pm ET. Retrieved 2011-01-11.
  24. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. "Shareholder trading values Facebook at more than $33bn" The Guardian – August 25, 2010: This reference does not confirm Thiel's percentage stake, implied to be 5.2% i.e. 33 divided by 1.7. The 5.2% is also independently asserted in the Facebook section of this Wikipedia article, but without citation. The imputed valuation of Facebook has, also, moved up to $50bn in an early-2011 transaction with Goldman Sachs (Craig, Susanne and Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Goldman Offering Clients a Chance to Invest in Facebook", The New York Times Dealbook, January 2, 2011, 11:31 pm ET.) A 5.2% share of $50 billion would be worth $2.58 billion. For its part, by March 2010, Forbes had actually reduced its estimate of Thiel's net worth to $1.2 billion (#828 on list of world's billionaires), though the higher Facebook valuation makes this even more undervalued. Footnote expanded 2011-01-11.
  29. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. 30.0 30.1 Kirkpatrick, David (2010-06-08). The Facebook Effect (pp. 87–8). Simon & Schuster.
  31. Lacy, Sarah (2008-05-15). Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0. Page 154. Gotham Books.
  32. Kirkpatrick, David (2010-06-08). The Facebook Effect (p. 246). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
  33. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. Tiku, Nitasha. (2013-01-19) Peter Thiel Sells Almost All of His Facebook Stock, Donates $1 Million to a Tea Party PAC. Betabeat. Retrieved on 2013-10-23.
  35. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  36. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  37. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  38. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  39. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  40. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  41. Congratulations Crunchies Winners! GitHub Wins Best Overall Startup. TechCrunch (2013-01-31). Retrieved on 2013-10-23.
  42. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  43. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  44. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  45. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  46. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  47. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  48. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  49. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  50. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  51. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  52. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  53. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  54. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  55. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  56. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  57. Daily Mail reporter. "Floating cities: PayPal billionaire plans to build a whole new libertarian colony off the coast of San Francisco". Mail Online. Updated 25 August 2011.
  58. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  59. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  60. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  61. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_h4nEYEEu8
  62. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_h4nEYEEu8
  63. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  64. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  65. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  66. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  67. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  68. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  69. 69.0 69.1 69.2 Peter Thiel, Tech Billionaire, Reveals Secret War With Gawker By Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times, May 25, 2016
  70. 70.0 70.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  71. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  72. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  73. Thiel, Peter. (2011-10-03) The End of the Future | National Review Online. Nationalreview.com. Retrieved on 2013-10-23.
  74. Thiel, Peter. (2014-10-15) [1] Conversationswithbillkristol.org Retrieved on 2014-09-17.
  75. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  76. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  77. Weisberg, Jacob. "Hyper-libertarian Facebook billionaire Peter Thiel's appalling plan to pay students to quit college". Slate, October 16, 2010.
  78. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  79. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  80. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  81. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  82. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  83. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  84. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  85. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  86. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  87. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  88. 88.0 88.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  89. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  90. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
  91. 91.0 91.1 91.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  92. Fost, Dan, "Old (Pay)Pals: Peter Thiel backs Meg Whitman", Forbes blog, Sep. 17, 2010 7:08 pm ET. Retrieved 2011-01-11.
  93. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  94. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  95. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  96. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  97. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  98. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  99. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  100. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  101. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  102. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  103. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  104. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  105. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  106. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  107. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  108. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  109. 109.0 109.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  110. 110.0 110.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  111. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  112. 112.0 112.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  113. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  114. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  115. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  116. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  117. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  118. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  119. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  120. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  121. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  122. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  123. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  124. Stanford President Condemns Opinion Piece / Former students ridiculed school in Wall Street Journal
  125. Taking aim at Stanford
  126. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  127. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  128. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  129. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  130. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  131. Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  132. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5jMbJmkGrY

Further reading

  • Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links