Interview of the Week: Peter Thiel
Svelte Hacker News
Peter Thiel is one of Silicon Valley’s bigger-than-life characters. Now he is leaving the epicenter of the tech industry. A conversation on human herd behavior, successful investment, Donald Trump’s genius, homosexuality and death.
The mentioning of his name sends shockwaves through Silicon Valley, the place where serial founder and venture capital investor Peter Thiel has been a driving force of the internet revolution for decades. In 1999, he co-founded Paypal with Elon Musk. Their aim: Reinventing the financial system and, indeed, money. That revolution stopped half-way, however Paypal achieved to make online payments radically easier, paving the way for e-commerce, which turned the internet into a goldmine. The founders drove the company to a market value of over 1 billion dollars, making it one of the first so-called unicorns. In 2002, Paypal was bought by Ebay for over 1 bn USD.
