Tech elite discovers it may need Peter Thiel
Investor was shunned for supporting Trump but is now a key conduit for his industry
Not long ago Peter Thiel was viewed as a pariah in Silicon Valley because of the billionaire tech entrepreneur’s outspoken support for Donald Trump.
Now, with his appointment to Mr Trump’s transition team, Mr Thiel has overnight become a key conduit for an industry with a lot at stake in the next administration.
His appointment also signals how highly the president-elect prizes loyalty among his advisers — even if their policies might not always line up with his own. Mr Thiel donated more than $1m to Mr Trump’s campaign, and stood by the divisive candidate even when that meant being shunned by the tech elite.
A libertarian, Mr Thiel has been highly critical of wasteful government spending, high debt levels, and US spending on foreign wars. He has also spoken out against the Patriot Act and against net neutrality rules, which ensure equal internet speed for different types of content.
While his exact role in the transition is not yet known — he will join the executive committee alongside 16 other members — Mr Thiel is likely to have a big impact in influencing tech policy. The President-elect, despite his enthusiasm for Twitter, is not well versed in technology and rarely uses computers.
For tech companies, the next few years will be crucial for resolving issues such as net neutrality, government surveillance and repatriation of overseas cash reserves. The Trump administration will also help set the course for cutting-edge technologies such as driverless cars and commercial drones.
One area of policy concern is Mr Thiel’s stance on the First Amendment given his vendetta against Gawker, the media company, which outed him as gay nearly a decade ago. Mr Thiel financially supported Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit of Gawker, which reached a $31m settlement last week and pushed the company into bankruptcy.
In coming months a key question will be whether Silicon Valley can repair its relationship with Mr Thiel, who has long been seen as an outsider.
“I really do think that the tech community kind of owes Peter a little bit of an apology,” said Bradley Tusk, a political consultant and investor in Uber and other start-ups. “One of the biggest problems with our community is we don’t get involved in politics and then we take this position that no one should ever regulate us in the first place, and that is absurd.”
A German-born chess prodigy whose parents brought him to US when he was one year old, Mr Thiel has tried his hand at law practice, banking and managing hedge funds. In Silicon Valley he is best known for co-founding ******, the payments company, and Palantir, the big data firm with close ties to the CIA.
Through his venture capital firm, Founders Fund, Mr Thiel has investments in a range of prominent start-ups, including SpaceX, Airbnb, Spotify and Lyft, which is Uber’s US rival.
Silicon Valley’s tech investors like to pride themselves on taking contrarian bets and spotting trends that no one else can see. But Mr Thiel has accused his peers of having big blind spots when it comes to politics.
“To the wealthy people who give money and the commentators who give reasons why, it all seems like a bad dream,” he said, referring to Trump’s candidacy in a speech a few days before the election. “But it is just this heedlessness, this temptation to ignore difficult realities, indulged by our most influential citizens, that got us where we are today.”
One of Mr Thiel’s most notable investments was in Facebook during its early days: He paid half a million dollars for a 10 per cent stake in the company, which later made him a billionaire. Now the tech world is wondering whether Mr Thiel’s $1.25m donation to the Trump campaign could be an investment that yields even greater long-term returns for a man who has always been the Valley’s black sheep.
