Meet Peter Thiel- A Prudent Entrepreneur who co-founded PayPal

Entrepreneur, venture investor, and political activist Peter Andreas Thiel is a German American millionaire. He was the first outside investor in Facebook and a co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Thiel was ranked 297th as of May 2022 and had an estimated net worth of $7.19 billion.

Early Life

Thiel was born on October 11, 1967, to Susanne and Klaus Friedrich Thiel in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany. When Peter was a year old, the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where his father worked as a chemical engineer. Thiel and his younger brother, Patrick Michael Thiel, were raised as nomads because of Klaus’ subsequent employment with several mining firms. Thiel’s father did not become a citizen of the United States, but his mother did.

The Thiels resided in South Africa and South West Africa until making Foster City, California, their permanent home in 1977. (modern-day Namibia). Peter shifted to different elementary schools seven times. In Swakopmund, he attended a harsh school where children had to wear uniforms and were subjected to physical punishment like having their hands smacked with rulers. This experience gave him a dislike of regimentation and uniformity, which eventually manifested itself in his support for individualism and libertarianism.

He attended Stanford University to study philosophy. Thiel co-founded The Stanford Review, a conservative and libertarian publication, in 1987. Thiel was The Stanford Review’s first editor-in-chief and held that position up until 1989, when he received his Bachelor of Arts. Thiel has maintained this connection throughout time by holding events at his home, making donations to the newspaper, conferring with the senior editorial staff on a regular basis, and placing graduates in internships or employment within his network. In 1992, Thiel graduated with a Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School.

Career:

Thiel worked as a law clerk for Judge James Larry Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit after earning his law degree from Stanford. Thiel then worked in New York for Sullivan & Cromwell as a securities attorney. After seven months and three days, he resigned from the law firm, alleging a dearth of transcendent value in his output. He then accepted a position at Credit Suisse as a derivatives trader for currency options. He began working with them in 1993 while simultaneously writing speeches for William B1qennett, a former secretary of education for the United States. He left California in 1996 in search of a more fulfilling career.

When Thiel eventually made it back to the Bay Area, he saw that the dot-com boom had been sparked by the creation of the internet and the personal computer. He raised $1 million for the founding of Thiel Capital Management with the help of friends and family, starting his venture capital career. When his friend Luke Nosek’s web-based calendar venture failed, he lost $100,000, which was a setback for him early on. When Max Levchin, a friend of Nosek, shared his concept for a business involving cryptography with him, his luck changed, and in 1998 they launched their first firm, Confinity.

PayPal:

Thiel thought they could create software using Confinity to fill a gap in online payment processing. Although new payment choices for consumers were made available by the usage of credit cards and growing ATM networks, not all retailers have the equipment required to accept credit cards. Customers must pay exact cash or checks as a result. By encrypting data on digital devices, Thiel aimed to develop a kind of digital wallet for consumers’ ease and security, and in 1999 Confinity introduced PayPal. PayPal pledged to expand the options for handling money. According to Thiel, PayPal’s goal is to free individuals from the depreciation of their currencies’ value brought on by inflation.

When PayPal debuted at a press conference in 1999, officials from Nokia and Deutsche Bank donated Thiel $3 million in venture investment via PayPal on their PalmPilots.PayPal then expanded through mergers in 2000 with Elon Musk’s online financial services firm X.com and with Pixo, a startup specialising in mobile commerce. These mergers allowed PayPal to enter the wireless phone market and change it into a safer and more user-friendly tool by allowing users to transfer money using a free online registration and email rather than exchanging bank account information.

Facebook

Thiel joined Facebook’s board of directors and made a $500,000 angel investment in the firm in August 2004 for a 10.2% share. With this initial outside investment, Facebook was valued at $4.9 million. Thiel did not participate actively in Facebook’s operations while serving on the board. Zuckerberg credited Thiel with helping him schedule Facebook’s 2007 Series D investment round, which closed before the 2008 financial crisis, saying that he helped with timing the successive rounds of funding.

Personal life

Thiel married in October 2017 to his long-time partner Matt Danzeisen in Vienna, Austria. Danzeisenis works as a portfolio manager at Thiel Capital

Honors and Awards

In February 2013, Peter earned the TechCrunch Crunchie Award for Venture Capitalist of the Year.
In 2012, he was named Alumnus of the Year by a group called Students for Liberty.
On November 7, 2009, he received an honorary degree from Universidad Francisco Marroquin.
The World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader as one of the most notable leaders under the age of 40. (2007).
In 2006, he received the Herman Lay Award for Entrepreneurship.