Peter Thiel
– Co-founder of PayPal, Founders Fund, and Palantir data mining software company Technologies, he was the first outside investor in Facebook ($50,000)
Experiences of Great Innovators: Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Founders Fund and data mining software company Palantir technologies
Thiel, 55, has a net worth of $2.7 billion, has supported Donald Trump, and is now part of his team.
This is a successful entrepreneur and also a successful venture capitalist. First he became the co-founder of PayPal and then the first professional investor in Facebook. He gave a $50,000 check to Mark Zuckerberg and his associates in 2004. In return he got 10 percent shares of the company. Thiel is still on the Facebook board today but has sold most of his stake. His venture firm also includes Founders Fund. These include SpaceX and CIA-backed data mining software company Palantir. He is also the co-founder of this company. Thal supported Donald Trump in the US presidential election last year and is now part of the Trump team. 49. The year-old Thiel has a net worth of $2.7 billion.
Palantir named his company after the fictional Lord of the Rings.
Peter was born in 1967 in Frankfurt, Germany. His father was an engineer and moved to America with the family when Peter was one year old. Peter was a chess player during his school and university days. He was the top ranked player in the U.S. under 21. He loved reading science fiction. He named his data analytics company Palantir after the seeing stones of the fiction The Lord of the Rings. He studied philosophy at Stanford University and attended Stanford Law School. He worked in a law firm in New York. At Stanford, he had a burning desire to do something new. There he started the Today newspaper. Also became a co-author of a book. The Diversity Myth. In 1999, he founded PayPal with a group of friends. This was an electronic payment system for ecommerce. It was the early days of replacing paper money and bringing online currency. In 2002, the company was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion. Peter’s share was 3.7 percent. He received 55 million dollars. Peter says that everyone at PayPal had the same goal to do something different. Then, when the partners here fell apart, it spread over Silicon Valley. They are also called PayPal mafia. Elon Musk built SpaceX and Tesla Motors. By Reid Hoffman. Max Levinchin created the online urban guide Yelp. In 2004, Reid Hoffman interviewed Peter with young computer programmer Mark Zuckerberg. He was a Harvard dropout and was working on building his college’s networking site. He became the first outside investor in Facebook. Meanwhile, he co-founded data analytics company Palantir with Alex Karp. Back in the days of PayPal, Peter built an anti-fraud system that was a combination of computer software and human analysis. Peter was confident that the system would catch both financial fraud and terrorist networks. A part of the CIA became an investor in the Telesis company. It is said that his company also played a role in tracking down Osama bin Laden.
Their software can track both financial fraud and terror networks, the CIA has invested in the project.
About success in business Peter says the books say compete. But my opinion is different. The best method of successful business is to innovate. So you have a monopoly. If you have an idea for a new company, now is the best time to start it. Whatever work you do, ask yourself why you are doing this work
