Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel
Peter Andreas Thielis a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist and hedge fund manager. Thiel co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin and Elon Musk 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...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth11 October 1967
CountryUnited States of America
I would not describe myself as a super early adopter of consumer technology.
Spiraling demand for resources of which our world contains a finite supply is the great long-term threat posed by globalisation. That is why we need new technology to relieve it.
I believe that people are too complacent about technology.
The optimism that many felt in the 1960s over labour-saving technology is giving way to a fearful question: 'Will your labour be good for anything in the future? Or will you be replaced by a machine?'
Our society, the dominant culture doesn't like science. It doesn't like technology.
If the whole U.S. was like Silicon Valley, we'd be in good shape. But now, the entire U.S. is not driven by technology, is not driven by innovation.
Technology is probably the single biggest driver of productivity gains for the developed countries. For example, I think it's much more important than free trade.
Technology and capitalism are very much linked. I think that capitalism probably works best in a technologically progressing society.
Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.
A lot of the key to Apple's succes is Designing technology in order to hide it.
In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.
If people were super-optimistic about technology there would be no reason to be pessimistic about the future.
It is sort of a bit of a caricature of capitalism, that it's always this zero-sum game where you have winners and losers. Silicon Valley, the technology industry at its best, creates a situation where everybody can be a winner.
My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more.