Til Peter

Born October 11, 1967 in a German family in Frankfurt am Main in Germany . At an early age, he moved with his parents to the United States in Foster City California in California ^[9] . In adolescence, he fulfilled the norm of the national chess master , becoming one of the best players in the country under the age of 21 years.

At Stanford University, he studied philosophy of the XX century , in 1989 received a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy , and in 1992 became a law doctor at the Stanford Law Department.

Many of Stanford’s former student acquaintances were invited to collaborate during their professional and business careers, including university friends Keith Rabois , David O. Sacks, and Reid Hoffman , who worked at PayPal and later became part of the informal community of entrepreneurs, known as the "PayPal Mafia." While studying at Stanford, Thiel also encountered Rene Girard , whose theory of “mimetic desire” influenced him.

Career start

Thiel was an assistant judge of the United States Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal, James Edmondson . From 1993 to 1996, he was a Credit Suisse trader, working in the derivatives markets ^[10] . In 1996, he founded the Thiel Capital Management fund.

PayPal

In 1998, together with Max Levchin, he founded the PayPal online payment system, which soon merged with the similar X.com system, Ilona Mask . On February 15, 2002, PayPal became a public company, then in the same year it was acquired by eBay for $ 1.5 billion ^[11] . At the time of the sale of PayPal, Thiel had a share of 3.7%, which then cost approximately $ 55 million ^[12] .

Clarium Capital

Immediately after the sale of PayPal, Thiel launched the global macro hedge fund Clarium Capital , pursuing a global macro strategy. In 2005, Clarium was marked as the global macro fund of the year by two trade magazines - MarHedge And Absolute Return . Thiel's approach to investing was the subject of a chapter in the book of Steve Drobny Inside the House of Money . Thiel successfully bet that the dollar would weaken in 2003, and made significant profits by betting that the dollar and energy recovered in 2005. After significant losses since 2009, Clarium fell from $ 7 billion in assets in 2008 to about $ 350 million in 2011. ^[13]

In 2004, long before the crisis of 2007-2010 , Thiel talked about him in general terms. He claimed that, in fact, the 2000 dotcom bubble migrated into the financial sector. Specifically, he talked about the vulnerabilities of General Electric and Wal-Mart . At the same time, he was talking about a real estate bubble. For example, in 2004, he announced his refusal to purchase Martha Stewart’s cottage for $ 7 million in Manhattan in the winter of 2003-2004 ^[10] .

Facebook

In August 2004, Thiel became a Facebook business angel , investing $ 500,000 in him. In return, he received 10.2% of the company and membership on the board of directors. This was the first external investment on Facebook. ^{[14] [15]}

In the Facebook Effect book, David Kirkpatrick describes the story of how Thiel became an investor in a social network: former Napster and Plaxo employee Sean Parker , who served as Facebook president, looked for investors for the firm, and on the recommendation of the general manager LinkedIn director Reid Hoffman (who refused to become a leading investor due to a potential conflict of interest between Facebook and LinkedIn) was sent to Thiel. Thiel met with Parker and Mark Zuckerberg (then a Harvard student), and Thiel agreed to lead the initial round of investment in exchange for stocks. Hoffman and Mark Pincus also took part in this round. Initially, the investment was supposed to go to Facebook’s capital if the number of its users reached 1.5 million by the end of 2004. Although Facebook didn’t achieve this goal a bit, Thiel agreed to the investment in capital ^[16] . So he recalls his investment:

“I was comfortable following their initial vision. And that was a reasonable estimate. I thought it was a pretty safe investment. ” ^[16]

As a board member, Thiel was not involved in everyday decision making. According to Sara Lacy , the main advice of Thiel Zuckerberg in his early years was “Just Don't Spoil” ^[3] However, he helped in choosing the time for various rounds of financing. ^[17] .

In September 2010, Thiel, expressing skepticism about the potential for growth in the consumer sector of the Internet, argued that in relation to other Internet companies, Facebook (which was then valued at $ 30 billion) was relatively underestimated ^[18] . In May 2012, Facebook entered an IPO with a market capitalization of about $ 100 billion, at which Thiel sold shares for $ 638 million ^[19] . In August 2012, immediately after the end of the blocking period, Til sold almost all of his remaining stake at a price of $ 19.27 to $ 20.69 per share for $ 395.8 million. In total, he sold Facebook shares in excess of $ 1 billion. ^[19] Now he has 5 million shares and a seat on the board of directors. ^[20]

Business Angel and Venture Investor

In 2005, Thiel created the Founders Fund , an angel and venture investment fund . The partners in the fund were Sean Parker , Ken Howry And Luke Nozek . In addition to Facebook, Thiel invested in many other startups at an early stage (in person or through the Founders Fund). Among them are Booktrack , Slide , LinkedIn , Friendster , Rapleaf , Geni.com , Yammer , Yelp , Powerset , Practice Fusion , Vator , Palantir , IronPort , Votizen , Asana , Big Think , Caplinked, Quora , Rypple , Stripe and Legendary Entertainment. Several projects were founded by Thiel's former PayPal colleagues: Slide was created by Levchin , Linkedin by Hoffman , Yelp by Jeremy Stopplman, Geni.com and Yammer by David Sachs and Xero - Rod Drury . Fortune Magazine reports that PayPal employees (former and current) have jointly created or invested in dozens of startups totaling about $ 30 billion. As noted in an article by Fortune magazine, in the circles of Silicon Valley, Thiel is called the “Don Mafia PayPal ” - the leader of an informal association of investors and entrepreneurs - immigrants from PayPal ^[21] . Thiel's management approach has attracted wide attention, in particular, his observation has gained popularity that the success of a startup is closely linked to the low salary of the CEO.

In 2003, Thiel founded the Palantir company, funded by the CIA venture capital fund In-Q-Tel ^[22] . In 2014, at the start of the project, he invested $ 100,000 in the platform for creating decentralized online services based on the Ethereum blockchain ^[23] .

Mithril: Late Stage Investment Fund

In June 2012, Thiel launched the Mithril Fund, designed for late-stage investments. At the time of launch, this fund had a capital of $ 402 million. Mithril is intended for companies in the stage between private and preparing to become public ^{[5] [6]} . Thiel’s partners in the fund are Jim O'Neill, one of the founders of Thiel Fellowship, and Ajay Royan, the former managing director of Clarium Capital .

Peter Thiel supports organizations such as the American Foundation for Equal Rights and GOProud.

Back in his student days, he founded The Stanford Review, a libertarian -style newspaper that gained popularity on a campus with its complex customs, such as political correctness and anti-hate laws. As of the 2010s, The Stanford Review is the university’s main conservative libertarian newspaper.

According to Eric Jackson’s book PayPal Wars , Thiel considered PayPal’s mission to free people from developing countries from the devaluation of national currencies as a result of inflation due to the possibility of withdrawing funds to global electronic accounts denominated in hard currencies .

In the 2010s, he funded suits by Hulk Hogan and other stars against the Gawker Internet blog, which publishes personal celebrity information. In 2016, the court sentenced the publication to payments of 140 million dollars, which brought the media to the brink of bankruptcy . A subsequent court slightly reduced the amount, but the blog filed for bankruptcy in August 2016 ^[24] . The reason for this act was the publication of the 2007 edition on the homosexual orientation of an entrepreneur. According to Thiel, financing of these lawsuits is one of his most philanthropic acts ^[25] .

Peter Thiel is a critic of the modern system of higher education in the United States. He believes that university education is overrated and is a classic bubble. According to his fund, "from 70% to 80% of American universities do not generate a positive effect from investments in education." ^[26]

Thiel Fellowship is a scholarship program for young scientists and businessmen funded by the Thiel Foundation. The grant size is $ 100 thousand for 2 years, young people under the age of 22 years who have a clear vision of the product they want to create can apply for it. A prerequisite is not to study simultaneously in college, but to concentrate fully on creating a new one. [1] The main advantage of participating in the program is the freedom to create new and social connections acquired by community members. In total, entrepreneurs from Thiel Fellows raised $ 409 million and earned $ 40 million from the sale of companies. Many are already over twenty, and some still graduated from the university. The community did not develop as Peter Thiel had originally planned: “He thought that in order to start thinking with his own head, newcomers needed a place and resources. It turned out that the community began to give them something much more valuable - communication. ” ^{[27] [28]}

• Peter Thiel, Blake Masters. From zero to one: How to create a startup that will change the future = Zero To One Notes on Startups, or How to Build the future. - M .: Alpina Publisher , 2015 .-- 192 p. - ISBN 978-5-9614-4839-9 .

• Thiel foundation profile
• The Optimistic Thought Experiment essay by Peter Thiel published in Policy Review
• Epub Version of Peter Thiel Lectures at Stanford University, CS183: Startup
• Virtual Money on ITConversations.com - November 2004