Original author: Lonely Brain
The following information is from internet sources.
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Some believe that Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks, the three leaders of the ‘PayPal Mafia,’ have once again bet successfully.
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The PayPal Mafia is the largest small group in Silicon Valley. Since its sale to eBay in 2002, most of PayPal’s key employees have left, but they still maintain close ties. They even gave their group a name - the ‘PayPal Mafia’.
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What are the characteristics of the “Paypal Gangster”?
Terry recalled, “At first, we mainly recruited people from our own circle. I recruited friends from Stanford University, while Levine recruited friends from the University of Illinois.”
They are all working hard to find a specific type of employee, the criteria are a willingness to compete, extensive knowledge, proficiency in multiple languages, and most importantly, mastery of mathematics. Tyler and Leven do not want their employees to be MBAs, consultants, fraternity members, or athletes.
- Lewin recalled: 'Once a candidate came to the company for an interview, and when I asked him what his hobbies were, he said he liked playing basketball. I immediately said, ‘We can’t hire this person. Everyone I knew in college who liked playing basketball was an idiot.’ In other words, they are hiring people similar to themselves.
Doesn’t it seem like Trump and Pence are completely different people?
During his time at Yale, he attended a speech by Ti’er on technological stagnation and the decline of American elites.
Wens recalled later: “He believed that these two trends… are interrelated. If technological innovation really brings true prosperity, our elites will not compete with each other in increasingly less prestigious achievements.”
Vance Chomsky’s speech was the “most important moment” of his time at Yale.
- Not all PayPal gangs support Trump. For example, Reid Hoffman is explicitly against Trump and has had a public dispute with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk because of this.
In 2015, two years after graduating from Yale Law School, Wan joined Mithril Capital, a venture capital firm run by Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel.
In 2016, he announced plans to move back to Ohio from California and founded a non-profit organization called “Our Ohio Renewal”, dedicated to making it easier for disadvantaged children to achieve their dreams.
In November 2022, with the help of a donation of over $10 million from Thiel, he was elected as a U.S. Senator for Ohio. This is his first public office. Thiel is his biggest sponsor.
- In recalling the first time I met Tiel in 2011, Vance wrote:
“(Till) expresses a feeling… I am infatuated with the achievement itself, not for some meaningful purpose, but to win in social competition.”
I am concerned that I prioritize the pursuit of achievements over character, and this concern becomes even more important: what to pursue?
The depth of Van der Stiel’s influence can be seen from the details below:
- In 2019, Wans founded his own venture capital firm Narya in Ohio, named after a fictional item in J.R.R. Tolkien’s book ‘The Lord of the Rings’, just like Palantir, Til’s company.
In August 2019, he was baptized in the Catholic Church. At that time, he attributed his conversion to the works of the French philosopher René Girard, whom he encountered through Til, who had been a student of Girard’s at Stanford University.
Girard is best known for his theory of “mimetic desire”: the desire of humans to imitate their peers ultimately leads to competition and violent conflict, which are resolved through “scapegoating”.
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Peter Thiel is a critic of large tech companies, but his efforts to establish the dominance of large tech companies are longer than anyone else in the world.
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He claims to be a privacy advocate, but created one of the world’s largest surveillance companies.
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He is a supporter of diversity among elite politicians and intellectuals, yet surrounded by a group of self-proclaimed loyal mafia.
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He is a defender of freedom of speech, but secretly took down a major American media outlet.
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Peter Thiel’s basic philosophy is quite complex and contradictory in some respects, but his obsession with technological progress is intertwined with nationalist politics, and this political ideology sometimes seems to be entangled with white supremacy.
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The biographer of Peter Thiel wrote:
“I want to know how he has built such a high following and consistently made every bet - even though these decisions seem crazy.”
I want to know how someone so respected and beloved can also be so cold and ruthless.
Is Peter Thiel a genius worthy of admiration and study, or a antisocial nihilist? Is he both?
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Turning something originally sour into something sweet, this is the personal experience of Thiel, a journey from an unsuccessful corporate lawyer to an internet billionaire. He has talked about this many times in his university classes, speeches, and his book ‘Zero to One’.
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The book ‘From 0 to 1’, a success manual for libertarians, also believes that monopoly is a good thing, and monarchy is the most effective form of government, and that tech founders are like gods. The global sales of this book have exceeded 1.25 million copies.
Peter Thiel’s “Zero to One” takes disruption itself as the goal of entrepreneurship. Change becomes a declaration - a declaration of challenging the existing order. Thiel is a nihilist - a very intelligent nihilist with no necessary adherence. He is entirely for power - the law of the jungle, namely “I am a predator, and predators always win.”
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Peter Thiel is very tough and ruthless when fighting for company interests.
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PayPal accelerates rise through a form of Arbitrage that is more extreme than what X company pursues. X company is at least registered as a bank, but PayPal can’t even be bothered to do that. When it comes to collecting user information or preventing them from using money for illegal purposes, PayPal has made almost no obvious efforts, and at least some employees see this as openly flouting the rules of the banking industry.
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Of course, there is such a territory where such blatant acts of infringement are considered legal and even worthy of celebration. This is the territory that Till and many PayPal executives are very familiar with: radical conservative politics.
In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay, and Peter Thiel cashed out $55 million, renaming Thiel Capital as Clarium Capital Management and entering the hedge fund industry.
- Peter Thiel and his colleagues practice the concept of “discovering the truth that others have not discovered”, do not follow the usual path, and practice the concept of reverse investment. When others are selling, they buy Japanese government bonds, and when others are pessimistic about the energy industry, they buy a large amount. By the summer of 2008, Clarium’s assets exceeded $7 billion and rose seven times in six years. He also gained a reputation in the investment industry and was hailed as an investment genius.
Also in September 2008, the financial market collapsed. The Clarium Fund began to lose money, and the contrarian investment failed. He had been buying stocks, but the stocks kept plummeting. In 2009, he shorted stocks, but later the stocks pumped. In 2010, the Market Cap of Clarium was only 3.5 billion dollars.
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Tiel’s parents are fervent Republicans, and Tiel also adheres to this sentiment, considering non-shouters as comrades and admiring the Nixon era and Nixon’s political successor Ronald Reagan.
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Peter Thiel has always been very skeptical of the role of government. He has supported various ‘anti-government’ organizations and believes that government progress is far behind the current technological level.
He has long been a supporter of seasteading, which means introducing the competitive mechanism of the free market into the government, using the vast ocean as a platform, allowing 1000 governments to compete with each other, and then citizens can freely choose their own government like choosing a mobile phone, and he has donated at least 5 million US dollars to organizations committed to small government.
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Peter Till, during his teenage years, wrote some programs, but what really fascinated him was the vision of the future. He read works by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, both of whom used their imagination to depict humanoid robots, space travel, lunar settlements, oil-based food that could fill the stomach, cars that floated in the air without wheels, and even immortality.
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Peter Thiel believes that most of the current investment has poured into the innovation of Bit (byte), but the more long hard technology research, the innovation of matter and atom has not received enough long follow, so his Founder’s Fund has also invested in aviation companies, biotechnology, materials science and other fields, dedicated to opening up more long uncultivated virgin land.
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On the official website of Peter Thiel’s Founders’ fund, there is the following declaration:
We invest in smart people solving difficult problems, usually difficult scientific or engineering problems.
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(Founders’ fund) We believe that moving away from supporting disruptive technologies to more cynical and incremental investments has disrupted the landscape of venture capital. Using unfavorable economic conditions as an excuse to explain the nightmare of venture capital has ignored the powerful, non-cyclical 40-year history of returns, as well as the sustained strong performance of the top 20% of the industry for ten years. What venture capital supports has changed, which is why the returns have also changed.
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(Founders’ fund) Our list is not exhaustive. The best companies will create their own field. Generally speaking, from our investors’ perspective, the most promising companies often have several characteristics:
- They are not popular (popular investments tend to be expensive; for example, Groupon is worth billions).
- They are difficult to evaluate (which increases their unpopularity).
- They have technical risks, but these risks are not insurmountable.
- If they succeed, their technology will be very valuable.
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He has a ‘grand’ idea: to stop the footsteps of death and prolong life. He believes that most people passively accept aging, but he does not. He plans to live to at least 120 years old and takes human growth hormone every day for this purpose.
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He also donated over 6 million US dollars to a long-term research foundation for anti-aging, and signed a ‘cryopreservation protocol’ with the low-temperature technology research company Alcor, which means that if Thiel suffers from an incurable disease, his body will be frozen and only thawed in the future when treatment becomes available…
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Legend has it that Peter Thiel regularly exchanges blood with young people in order to maintain eternal youth.
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Peter Thiel’s self-evaluation is: ‘So I think what you call going against the grain is actually a long way of me having a clear understanding of myself.’
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Years ago (around 2016), Peter Thiel expressed the following views in a speech supporting Trump:
“I think Trump is right on major issues. For example: free trade does not benefit all Americans. The opposition is unaware of this, and the elites like free trade. Educated people who formulate public policies explain that, according to economic principles, cheap imported products can benefit everyone.”
In fact, in foreign trade, we have lost thousands of factories and millions of jobs, and the core areas have become completely wasteland. Perhaps policymakers think that no one is a loser, or perhaps they think they are winners and don’t care at all.
I think the people who voted for Trump are also tired of war. We have been fighting for 15 years, spending 460 billion dollars, and 200,000 people have lost their lives, with 5,000 American soldiers killed. But we have not achieved victory. The Bush administration once said that investing 50 billion dollars could bring democracy to Iraq. But we invested 40 times that amount and only got chaos in return. But after these failures caused by both parties, the Democratic Party has become more hawkish since the Vietnam War.
Here are Peter Thiel’s 15 tips for entrepreneurship, investment, and life.
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You are the planner of your life, set priorities.
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Do the best in everything.
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Ensure that the people you are in contact with are suitable for your life and company, and complement each other.
42 Pursue monopoly. Build a highly competitive, unbeatable company, and then strive to free oneself from competition.
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Don’t be a “fake” entrepreneur. Start a company because you can answer a common question.
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The evaluation of essence should be higher than status and reputation. Decisions driven by status are not sustainable and, in the long run, are worthless.
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Competition is a double-edged sword. You can focus on defeating those around you, but you pay the price, neglecting valuable and important things.
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All trends are overrated. Don’t pursue the latest and hottest things, strive for practical solutions to a universal problem.
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Don’t dwell on the past. Focusing on things that don’t work will only weaken your confidence. Don’t spend too long analyzing why certain things don’t work; instead, move forward courageously and change your direction.
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Find the path to success and never follow the crowd.
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I am just thinking about making a living in the future. And this is a graduation ceremony, a brand new beginning. As a technical investor, I invest in new things, I believe in things that have not been seen or done yet.
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Compared to the future you, the current you knows fewer restrictions, fewer taboos, and less fear. So don’t waste your ignorance. Dare to do things that your teachers and parents think are impossible, do things that they have never thought of doing.
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Hamilton College’s 1905 outstanding graduate, Ezra Pound, was both a poet and a prophet. He summarized his mission in three words: ‘Make it new.’ That is, to restore the essence of tradition and make it fresh.
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Do not be faithful to yourself. How do you know if you really have a part called self. Your self may be motivated by competition with others, just like my experience. You need to discipline your self, cultivate your self, and take care of your self. Instead of blindly pursuing self.
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Live each day as if you will live forever. This means, first of all, treating the people around you as if they will live for a long time. The choices you make today are significant because the consequences of these choices will become greater and greater.
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