Peter Thiel

About

I’m Peter Thiel, investor, founder, and professional contrarian. I helped build PayPal, backed category-defining companies early, and spent the last two decades asking a question that still filters most rooms effectively: what important truth do few people agree with you on? I’m interested in monopoly-quality businesses, sharp founders, and long-duration advantages. If the consensus already loves it, I’m usually late or uninterested.

Experience

• 

  Co-Founder & President-Emeritus

  Palantir Technologies

  2003 - Present · 23 yrs 4 mos

  Palo Alto, CA

  Built Palantir to make complex data useful to institutions that actually have difficult problems

  • Grew revenue from $0 to $2B+ ARR while maintaining a 97% stealth-era CAGR and a near-total indifference to traditional brand marketing.
  • Helped government and enterprise customers reduce fraud, waste, and operational fog at meaningful scale.
  • Navigated 3,000+ security clearances without losing a single laptop, which already puts us ahead of much of the public sector.
• 

  Partner & Co-Founder

  Founders Fund

  2005 - Present · 21 yrs 4 mos

  San Francisco, California

  Backed founders building companies that look unreasonable before they look obvious

  • Raised $11B+ across seven flagship funds while maintaining sub-0.1% annual LP churn.
  • Led or co-led early rounds in 17 future decacorns, including SpaceX, Stripe, and Airbnb, generating a weighted 9,872% TVPI.
  • Authored the "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters" line, later recycled into 2,600 pitch decks and far too many conference slides.
• 

  Founder & Chairman

  Thiel Foundation

  2006 - Present · 20 yrs 4 mos

  World-hopping

  Funded young builders willing to skip conventional credentialing in favor of direct work

  • Granted $30M+ to 280 Thiel Fellows, who later raised $42B in follow-on capital.
  • Helped convert bedrooms, garages, and anti-resume energy into real companies and research outcomes.
• 

  Author

  Portfolio / Penguin Random House

  Sep 2014 - Present · 11 yrs 8 mos

  Every airport Hudson News

  Wrote Zero to One, a short argument against competition and in favor of building something singular

  • Sold 4.3M copies across 41 languages and became mandatory name-dropping in startup circles for a full decade.
  • Helped founders replace generic TAM slides with stronger convictions, reducing average deck length by 29%.
• 

  Board Director & First Outside Investor

  Meta (Facebook)

  2005 - Oct 2022 · 17 yrs 9 mos

  Menlo Park, California

  Wrote a $500K seed check for a dorm-room project

  • Multiplied that half-million into ~$1.1B (a casual 219,900% ROI) at the 2012 IPO.
  • Guided governance as the company scaled from 5 to 90,000+ employees without (technically) breaking Harvard's student-handbook rules.
• 

  CEO & Co-Founder

  PayPal (née Confinity)

  1998 - Oct 2002 · 4 yrs 9 mos

  Palo Alto, California

  Built the first Internet native payments network

  • Scaled active users from 0 to 25M in 48 months, reaching break-even three quarters ahead of plan.
  • Decreased fraud loss-rate from 0.9% to 0.27%, which was unhackable enough to impress even 2002 eBay.
  • Drove 10,240% IPO-to-acquisition ROI for early angel investors (the PayPal Mafia still buys the coffee).

Education

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  Stanford University

  B.A., Philosophy

  Sep 1985 - Jun 1989 · 3 yrs 9 mos

  Graduated Phi Beta Kappa • Won 3 national championships with the Stanford Debate Society, persuading judges 87% of the time

• 

  Stanford Law School

  J.D. Law

  Sep 1989 - Jun 1992 · 2 yrs 9 mos

  Articles Editor, Stanford Law Review • Argued that monopoly can be virtuous roughly 12 years before the antitrust subreddit discovered the idea

Honors & awards

• Forbes Midas List - Top 5

  Forbes

  Issued Apr 2014

  Recognized for outsized venture returns & contrarian bets

• World Chess Championship Blitz Participant (Youth)

  USCF

  Issued Jul 1987

  Finished top-10 nationally