Disruptors Of The Month Media Man

Disruptors Of The Month

Peter Thiel wins Media Man 'Entrepreneur Of The Month' award

Runner-Ups: Elon Musk, MrBeast and Logan Paul

Profiles

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Peter Andreas Thiel (born 11 October 1967) is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Facebook. ] He was ranked No. 4 on the Forbes Midas List of 2014, with a net worth of $2.2 billion, and No. 391 on the Forbes 400 in 2020, with a net worth of $2.1 billion. As of January 2022, Thiel has an estimated net worth of $9.13 billion and was ranked 279th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Born in Frankfurt, he moved with his family to the United States as an infant. He studied philosophy at Stanford University, graduating with a B.A. in 1989. In 1987, he co-founded The Stanford Review, a conservative campus newspaper. He then earned his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1992]. After graduation, he worked as a judicial law clerk for Judge James Larry Edmondson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, as a securities lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell, as a speechwriter for former-U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett, and as a derivatives trader at Credit Suisse. He founded Thiel Capital Management in 1996. He co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Luke Nosek in 1998, serving as chief executive officer until its sale to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

After PayPal, he founded Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund based in San Francisco. In 2003, he launched Palantir Technologies, a big data analysis company, and serves as its chairman since its inception. In 2005, he launched Founders Fund with PayPal partners Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Earlier, Thiel became Facebook's first outside investor when he acquired a 10.2% stake for $500,000 in August 2004. He sold the majority of his shares in Facebook for over $1 billion in 2012, but remains on the board of directors. He co-founded Valar Ventures in 2010; co-founded Mithril Capital, serving as investment committee chair, in 2012; and served as a part-time partner at Y Combinator from 2015 to 2017.

Through the Thiel Foundation, Thiel governs the grant-making bodies Breakout Labs and Thiel Fellowship, and funds nonprofit research into artificial intelligence, life extension, and seasteading. In 2016, Thiel confirmed that he had funded Hulk Hogan in the Bollea v. Gawker lawsuit because Gawker had previously outed him as gay. The lawsuit eventually bankrupted Gawker. A co-founder of The Stanford Review, he is a conservative libertarian who has made substantial donations to American right-wing figures and causes. (Wikipedia)

News

Peter Thiel to leave Meta board to ‘support Trump agenda’ - February 8, 2022

Peter Thiel has been a vocal supporter of Donald Trump. CREDIT: AP

By Lizette Chapman and Kurt Wagner

Peter Thiel, the tech investor and conservative provocateur who has advised Mark Zuckerberg for nearly two decades at Facebook parent Meta Platforms, will step down from the company’s board after Meta’s annual shareholder meeting in May.

Thiel, who joined the board in 2005 after an early investment in Facebook, plans to increase his political support of former President Donald Trump’s agenda during the 2022 election and doesn’t want his political activities to be a “distraction” for Facebook, according to person close to Thiel.

“He thinks that the Republican Party can advance the Trump agenda and he wants to do what he can to support that,” said the person, who was not authorised to speak publicly.

“His focus will be on supporting Blake Masters, JD Vance and others who support the Trump agenda,” he added, referring to Republican candidates for US Senate. “He wanted to avoid being a distraction for Facebook.”

Thiel helped elect Trump president in 2016 by donating money and speaking on his behalf at the Republican National Convention. When Trump became president, Thiel worked on his transition team while nominating colleagues to fill government positions, including former Thiel Capital Chief of Staff Michael Kratsios, who served as the CTO of the White House until last year. Thiel has continued to support Trump while meeting with members of the Republican Party and members of the far-right in recent years.

Thiel’s departure will mark the end of one of the most productive - and harshly criticised - partnerships between a chief executive officer and an investor in all of business. Thiel, who joined the board in 2005, has been a close adviser to Zuckerberg ever since the duo met through Napster co-founder Sean Parker, when Facebook was still just a social network for college campuses. Thiel was instrumental in shaping Zuckerberg’s ethos during the early days of Facebook and its relentless pursuit of growth.

That relationship continued even as Thiel became more and more controversial in the technology industry, and became a frequent target for Facebook critics and unhappy employees.

Thiel, also is a co-founder and chairman of Palantir, was known to advise Zuckerberg on political issues. He was among those reportedly encouraging the CEO not to fact-check political advertisements in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, a move that many believe benefitted Trump. He also joined a dinner with Zuckerberg and Trump at the White House in 2019.

Many Facebook employees were upset with Thiel’s role in backing Trump in 2016 given the former president’s stance on immigration, and allegations of sexism and racism against then-candidate Trump. But Zuckerberg defended Thiel and his role on Facebook’s board in an internal post to employees in October 2016. “We can’t create a culture that says it cares about diversity and then excludes almost half the country because they back a political candidate,” he wrote at the time.

Masters, a former student of Thiel’s who co-wrote Zero to One with him, is running for the United States Senate as a Republican from Arizona. Masters still oversees Thiel’s personal investment vehicle Thiel Capital and eponymous foundation.

Vance, who previously invested on behalf of Thiel, is running for the US Senate as a Republican from Ohio who is a “conservative outsider.” Vance is best known for his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy and is campaigning on promises to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and push back against gun laws.

Bloomberg