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
thinking government years
I think markets are often not thinking on a long-time horizon, I think that our government structurally is doing even less so. When we have a government where we have people who are up for election at most once every six years for a U.S. senator, that's a time horizon that is much shorter than in a market that a company is looking at 10, 15, 20 years which is a time horizon over which a stock price is typically valued.
believe years risk
I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years - part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion.
cash-flow years looks
Value investors look at cash flows. If a company can maintain present cash flows for 5 or 6 years, it’s a good investment. Investors then just hope that those cash flows—and thus the company’s value—don’t decrease faster than they anticipate.
party college years
University administrators are the equivalent of subprime mortgage brokers selling you a story that you should go into debt massively, that it's not a consumption decision, it's an investment decision. Actually, no, it's a bad consumption decision. Most colleges are four-year parties.
years printing-money debt
In a world where wealth is growing, you can get away with printing money. Doubling the debt over the next 20 years is not a problem.
belief bubble call classic education intense
Education is a bubble in a classic sense. To call something a bubble, it must be overpriced, and there must be an intense belief in it.
astronauts computers guided power processing thousands
Every one of today's smartphones has thousands of times more processing power than the computers that guided astronauts to the moon.
challenge customers difficult large numbers services sign
The big challenge with Internet financial services has been that it's very difficult to get large numbers of customers to sign up for your service.
best biggest considered cults difference extreme kinds less might outside people slightly tend
The best start-ups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful start-up are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.
believe drivers
I'm very pro-science and pro-technology; I believe that these have been key drivers of progress in the world in the last centuries.
experience people toward
Is there something about the gay experience, being gay and the gay experience, that pushes us even more than other people toward competition?
decadent
The millennial generation in the US is the first that has reduced expectations from those of their parents. And I think there is something decadent and declinist about that.
fearful felt future giving good labour optimism replaced 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?'
clear critical lawyer teacher
Credentials are critical if you want to do something professional. If you want to become a doctor or lawyer or teacher or professor, there is a credentialing process. But there are a lot of other things where it's not clear they're that important.