Luke Nosek
Luke Nosek is the Co-Founder and Managing Member of Gigafund, a venture capital firm backing the world's most ambitious and transformative entrepreneurs. Luke was also the Co-Founder and Vice President of Marketing and Strategy at PayPal, the pioneer in the online payment industry, where he created the company's "Instant Transfer," PayPal's most profitable product. After eBay's acquisition of PayPal, he launched venture capital firm Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery. At Founders Fund, he led the first venture investment in Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2008 and has served on the SpaceX board since then. Prior to PayPal, he was an evangelist at Netscape.
Luke Nosek Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Co-Founder and Managing Member
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Co-Founder and Managing Partner
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Co-Founder and Vice President of Marketing and Strategy
Academic History
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B.S., Computer Engineering
At Founders Fund, Luke was the initial architect of the "Founder Friendly" strategy.
He later built Founders Fund's biotechnology practice from scratch.
In 2009, he joined Halcyon Molecular, a Founders Fund portfolio company pursuing a novel approach to ultra-fast complete genome sequencing, as President.
Founders Fund has invested in high-tech companies such as Airbnb, Facebook, and Palantir Technologies.
Luke was one of the PayPal Mafia members. He is the creator of PayPal's "Instant Transfer," the company's most profitable product.
He oversaw the company's marketing efforts at launch, growing the user base to 1 million customers in the first six months.
TECH INVESTMENTS
He was the first institutional investor in Elon Musk's SpaceX.
He was also the first backer of PayPal COO David Sacks' Geni, which later spun out Yammer.
He has also co-founded two other consumer internet companies, including the web's first advertising network, and has made a number of venture investments since 2000.
MEDIA & APPEARANCES
Luke has been featured or quoted in Forbes, Bloomberg, Business Insider, CNBC, Cointelegraph, and TechCrunch.