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.
Peter Thiel's marvelous wealth – estimates range from 2 to 3 billion USD – stems primarily from his investment in Facebook. As the first external investor, he bought 10 percent of the company for just 500 000 dollars. After Facebook's IPO in 2012, he sold the bunch of his shares for over one billion. But also other investments were highly successful. Thiel's Palantir is one of the “big data” pioneers.
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