Peter Andreas Thiel (born October 11, 1967) is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, hedge fund manager, and social critic. Thiel co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Elon Musk (see PayPal Mafia) 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.
Thiel serves as president of Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund with $700 million in assets under management; a managing partner in Founders Fund, a venture capital fund with $2 billion in assets under management; co-founder and investment committee chair of Mithril Capital Management; and co-founder and chairman of Valar Ventures.
Thiel was ranked #293 on the Forbes 400 in 2011, with a net worth of $1.5 billion as of March 2012.He was ranked #4 on the Forbes Midas List of 2014 at $2.2 billion.Thiel lives in San Francisco.
Early life and education
Born to Germans Klaus Thiel, a chemical engineer, and Susanne Thiel, in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. Thiel has one brother, Patrick Thiel. Thiel moved to the United States with his parents when he was one year old, and was raised in Foster City, California.
Thiel was a US-rated Chess Master and one of the highest ranked under-21 players in the country.
Thiel studied 20th-century philosophy as an undergraduate at Stanford University. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Stanford in 1989 and acquired a J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1992.
An avowed libertarian, he founded The Stanford Review in 1987 along with Norman Book. The Stanford Review became famous for challenging campus mores including political correctness and laws against hate speech. The Stanford Review is now the university's main conservative/libertarian newspaper.
Thiel formed friendships with other students at Stanford, many of whom contributed to the Stanford Review. These include Keith Rabois, David O. Sacks, and Reid Hoffman. Some of these friends later took up jobs at PayPal (co-founded by Thiel) and became part of the PayPal Mafia.[citation needed]
While studying at Stanford, Thiel also encountered René Girard, whose mimetic theory influenced him.
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