Peter Thiel

Childhood

Peter Andreas Thiel was born in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany on October 11, 1967 to Susanne and Klaus Friedrich Thiel. The family migrated to the United States when Peter was aged one and lived in Cleveland, where Klaus worked as a chemical engineer. Klaus then worked for various mining companies, which caused an itinerant upbringing for Thiel and his younger brother, Patrick Michael Thiel. Thiel's mother naturalized as a U.S. citizen but his father did not.

Before settling in Foster City, California in 1977, the Thiels had lived in South Africa and South-West Africa, and Peter had been forced to change elementary schools seven times. One of Peter's elementary schools, a strict establishment in Swakopmund, required students to wear uniforms and utilized corporal punishment, such as striking students' hands with a ruler for mistakes. This experience instilled a distaste for uniformity and regimentation later reflected in Thiel's support for individualism and libertarianism as an adult.

In his youth, Thiel played Dungeons & Dragons, was an avid reader of science fiction, with Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein among his favorite authors, and a fan of J. R. R. Tolkien's works, stating as an adult that he had read The Lord of the Rings over ten times during his childhood. He has since founded 6 firms (Palantir Technologies, Valar Ventures, Mithril Capital, Lembas LLC, Rivendell LLC and Arda Capital) whose names originate from Tolkien.

Education

In school, Thiel excelled in mathematics, and scored first in a California-wide mathematics competition while attending middle school in San Mateo. At the San Mateo High School, he read Ayn Rand, admired the optimism and anti-communism of then-President Ronald Reagan, and was valedictorian of his graduating class in 1985.

After graduating from San Mateo High School, Thiel went on to study philosophy at Stanford University. During Thiel's time at Stanford, debates on identity politics and political correctness were ongoing at the university and a "Western Culture" program, which was criticized by The Rainbow Agenda because of a perceived over-representation of the achievements made by European men, was replaced with a "Culture, Ideas and Values" course, which instead pushed diversity and multiculturalism. This replacement provoked controversy on the campus, and led to Thiel founding The Stanford Review, a paper for conservative and libertarian viewpoints, in 1987, through the funding of Irving Kristol.

Thiel served as The Stanford Review's first editor-in-chief and remained in that post until he received his Bachelor of Arts in 1989, at which point his friend David O. Sacks became the new editor-in-chief. Thiel then continued on to the Stanford Law School and acquired his Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1992.

While at Stanford, Thiel encountered René Girard, whose mimetic theory influenced him. Mimetic theory posits that human behavior is based upon mimesis, and that imitation can engender pointless conflict. Girard notes the productive potential of competition: "It is because of this unprecedented capacity to promote competition within limits that always remain socially, if not individually, acceptable that we have all the amazing achievements of the modern world," but states that competition stifles progress once it becomes an end in itself: "rivals are more apt to forget about whatever objects are the cause of the rivalry and instead become more fascinated with one another." Thiel applied this theory to his personal life and business ventures, stating: "The big problem with competition is that it focuses us on the people around us, and while we get better at the things we're competing on, we lose sight of anything that's important, or transcendent, or truly meaningful in our world."

Early career

After graduating from the Stanford Law School, Thiel had interviews with Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. After not being hired, he instead took up a post as a judicial clerk for Judge James Larry Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, but soon moved to New York to work as a securities lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell. After seven months and three days, he left the law firm citing a lack of transcendental value in his work. He then took a job as a derivatives trader in currency options at Credit Suisse, working there from 1993 on while also operating as a speechwriter for former-United States Secretary of Education William Bennett, before again feeling as though his work lacked meaningful value and returning to California in 1996.

Upon returning to the Bay Area, Thiel noticed that the development of the internet and