Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel’s background

One of Silicon Valley’s most influential entrepreneurs and investors, Peter Thiel’s life is a testament to creating progress through defying convention.

As the co-founder and later CEO of PayPal, he revolutionized the world of online commerce.

With an impressive investment record that includes Facebook, LinkedIn and Yelp, his talent for picking out the next big thing is unrivalled.

As the leader of the Thiel Foundation, he works to identify and support the next generation of game changers and tech companies.

As a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, Peter has been involved with some of the most dynamic companies to emerge from Silicon Valley in the past decade. Peters first start-up was PayPal, which he co-founded in 1998 and led as Chairman and CEO. Peters tenure culminated in PayPals sale to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. After the eBay acquisition, Peter founded Clarium Capital Management, a global macro hedge fund. Peter also helped launch Palantir Technologies, an analytical software company and serves as the chairman of that company’s board.

Before launching Founders Fund with his PayPal partners Ken Howery and Luke Nosek, Peter was an active venture capitalist in his personal capacity, funding companies like Facebook, where Peter was that company’s first outside investor and director.

Peters contributions to technology, entrepreneurship and finance have been widely recognized, including by the World Economic Forum, which honored Peter as a Young Global Leader and by BusinessWeek, which named him one of the 25 most influential people on the Web.

Peter is also involved with a variety of philanthropic, academic and cultural pursuits. He serves as a primary supporter of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a group that promotes press freedom worldwide; the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which seeks to foster the responsible development of advanced computing technologies; and the SENS Foundation, a medical charity dedicated to extending healthy human lifespans. Peter remains active at his alma mater and has taught at Stanford Law School, in addition to serving on the Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

Peter received a BA in Philosophy from Stanford University and a JD from Stanford Law School.