Founder
Thiel Capital

Thiel founded investment firm Thiel Capital in 1996 and later founded PayPal. The ecommerce platform later merged with Elon Musk’s payment company X.com, and the combined entity sold sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. Thiel has invested in some of the top Silicon Valley startups. He was the first outside investor in Facebook, making a $500,000 angel investment in the company in August 2004. He sold most of his stake in the social media company for $1 billion in 2012. Today, Thiel is also a partner at Founders Fund, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has funded notable companies including SpaceX, Spotify and OpenAI. Other venture capital firms he started include Valar Ventures and Mithrill Capital. His Thiel Fellowship, which gives $100,000 and two years of support to young founders, has helped incubate large tech players like Figma and Ethereum.

YEARS ON LA500: 7