Peter Thiel

“This was the thing I really learned from Peter Thiel and Paul Graham, both in two different ways, which is that the very best companies, the very best investment opportunities are almost never the ones that look really popular.”

“I think you do this. I think Peter Thiel does this really, really well”

“One of the very early Stripe rounds, I know Peter Thiel was an investor, Sam Altman, a number of the folks who were involved or connected with the PayPal mafia... stuck early money into Stripe. And now 15 years later are having the joy of buying PayPal back.”

“Peter Thiel quipped many years ago that he thought crypto would be libertarian or decentralizing and that AI would be communist or centralizing. And I think one thing we've perhaps learned is that technology isn't deterministic and that there are a set of choices that determine whether these technologies are decentralizing or centralizing.”

“Peter Thiel has a saying that's like fairly famous... Competition is for losers. And he's so, of course he's right because he's always right.”

“Certainly like Peter, the most famous of them with Palantir. And then Trey with Anduril. Scott with General Matter.”

“He said, branding is a moat. Branding is a secret that you can know. And then he goes, unfortunately, it's not a secret that I know. So I'm not even going to write about it.”

“"Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius." — Peter Thiel (cited in newsletter)”

“AI inference startup Etched emerged from stealth with $800 million in total funding across multiple rounds at a $5 billion valuation. Investors include VentureTech Alliance, Peter Thiel and Jane Street.”

“You only need one or two secrets in the Peter Thiel terms, right? You only really need to understand one or two secrets in your lifetime to become fabulously rich. And this is one of them.”

“I think Peter Thiel in some sense is like kind of hypocritical when he's like don't go to college where he had Stanford undergrad, Stanford law school. He got all the badges. Right. So not but I think the underlying point is correct, but to me, like getting a badge is useful if you don't have any other badges.”

“Sam introduced me and... a few weeks later he emailed asking if he could invest.”

“I told him everything it's like here's how I screwed this up... best offer I got was 275 but the firm wants board control so if you'll just do it without taking the control of the board you guys can have it and Peter just offered 300 instead of 275.”

“Internal records from Dialog—a secretive invite-only group co-founded by Peter Thiel—were left exposed online, revealing members and attendees from U.S. politics, finance, tech, national security, and academia.”

“A Wired exposé on Peter Thiel's Dialog Society generates a lot of hand-wringing over not a lot of substance.”

“Peter Thiel took 10% of Facebook and generated one of the greatest venture returns in history.”

“I look back at what Peter did with Facebook. You know I think a lot of the reason that he originally did that deal was because most people wanted a much higher ownership percentage. And he was okay getting 10% of the company which obviously was clearly the right decision.”

“Was watching these videos, a lot of them like Y Combinator, you know, videos and all this stuff... Read Zero to One, incredible book.”

“Peter Thiel — Co-founder of PayPal and Palantir; founder of Founders Fund”

“Trae Stephens — Contributed questions; cited for sharing his biggest lesson from Peter Thiel”

“There's a reason why Peter Thiel is the greatest venture capitalist in history... he built up a team full of people who were having nothing in common in terms of how we saw the world, but also were truly our own individual characters who could absolutely push back on him.”

“I asked him, what is one thing about Peter Thiel, your biggest lesson? What did you learn? And he was like, that he's always right.”

“Everyone tried to kill him immediately because they were terrified of him. It is exactly confirmation of his fears of group dynamics. He was immediately witch-burned.”

“Panthalassa raised $140M at $1B valuation; backed by Peter Thiel. 'Renewable energy and ocean technology company harnessing ocean energy.'”

“Peter Thiel...Buying a mansion in Buenos Aires, meeting with President Javier Milei and other officials, and temporarily relocating his family there.”

“German defense tech company Quantum Systems, which is backed by investors including Peter Thiel, is seeking a €10 billion valuation in an IPO.”

“Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio”

“Panthalassa... Raised $140M Series B led by Peter Thiel”

“Panthalassa…builds autonomous ocean-based systems to generate wave power and run AI computing at sea, raised $140 million in a Series B round led by Peter Thiel, with John Doerr, TIME Ventures, SciFi Ventures…Founders Fund [and others] also piling on.”

“Founders Fund officially closed a $6B growth fund; notable that senior management and employees (including Peter Thiel) supplied $1.5 billion of the total.”

“Vertical or intensive progress means doing new things — going from 0 to 1. Vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has ever done.”