Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel is a renowned tech entrepreneur and investor and the Managing Partner of Founders Fund, the venture capital firm known for prescient bets on some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. Thiel was the Co-Founder of Paypal, the digital payment service, led it as CEO, and took it public in 2002, defining a new era of fast and secure online commerce. He was the first outside investor in Facebook and went on to co-found Palantir, the data-intelligence company that has worked with the U.S. government. Thiel has provided early funding for LinkedIn, Yelp, and dozens of startups, many run by former colleagues who have been dubbed the “PayPal Mafia.” He also leads The Thiel Foundation, which works to advance technological progress and long-term thinking. In addition, he is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.
Peter Thiel Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Managing Partner
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Founder and Chairman
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Member, Board of Directors
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CEO, Chairman and Co-Founder
Academic History
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J.D., Law
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B.A., Philosophy
He is heavily involved in firm strategy and weighs in on its large investments.
Among its investments are Stripe and SpaceX, two of the most valuable unicorns in the world.
The Founders Fund provides venture capital from the entrepreneurs who made PayPal successful – it specializes in very early stage opportunities.
Thiel co-founded and built the largest payments service for individuals and merchants.
He helped enable entirely new systems of electronic payments for individuals and small businesses.
In 2002, he sold Paypal to eBay and founded a global macro fund, Clarium.
CLARIUM CAPITAL
Thiel is the Founder and President of Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund with offices in San Francisco and New York.
He oversees the firm's research, investment, and trading strategies.
Under his leadership, Clarium was recognized as MarHedge Global Macro Fund of the Year (2005) and Absolute Return Global Macro Fund of the Year (2005).
TECH INVESTMENTS
He also co-founded CIA-backed big data startup Palantir, which went public via a direct listing in 2020.
He has helped the next generation of tech companies, such as SpaceX, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zynga, RoboteX, Spotify, Practice Fusion, and ZocDoc.
Today, he is known as the mentor of the PayPal mafia of entrepreneurs, as well as for his warnings of a coming technology deficit with severe economic consequences.
MEDIA & APPEARANCES
Thiel has been featured and profiled in various financial media outlets and publications, including Forbes, Business Insider, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance, Financial Times, Reuters, Fortune, Time, and more.
He has also been featured or quoted in The Block, Bitcoin magazine, TechCrunch, CoinDesk, and Cointelegraph.