Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel
Peter Andreas Thielis a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and hedge fund manager. Thiel co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Elon Musk 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth11 October 1967
CountryUnited States of America
Technologies like PayPal foster competition because they enable people to shift their funds from one jurisdiction to another, and I think that ultimately will lead to a world in which there's less government power and therefore more individual control.
You don't want to just do 'me too' companies that are copying what others are doing.
As an undergraduate at Stanford, I started 'The Stanford Review,' which ended up being very engaged in the hot debates of the time: campus speech codes, questions about diversity on campus, all sorts of debates like that.
The model of the U.S. economy is that we are the country that does new things.
An entrepreneur must deal with more uncertainty than a professional with a well-defined role.
We live in a world in which courage is in less supply than genius.
I would not describe myself as a super early adopter of consumer technology.
I would like to live longer, and I would like other people to live longer.
In Silicon Valley, I point out that many of the more successful entrepreneurs seem to be suffering from a mild form of Asperger's where it's like you're missing the imitation, socialization gene.
I had a good experience in college, but I don't think interdisciplinary education is something that's stressed very much at all. It's generally considered to be something of a bad idea.
I'm very pro-science and pro-technology; I believe that these have been key drivers of progress in the world in the last centuries.
Investors are always biased to invest in things they themselves understand. So venture capitalists like Uber because they like driving in black town cars. They don't like Airbnb because they like staying in five-star hotels, not sleeping on people's couches.
If you're trying to develop a new drug, that costs you a billion dollars to get through the FDA. If you want to start a software company, you can get started with maybe $100,000.
I don't think success is complicated; if you do something that works, then it's a success.