Peter Andreas Thiel: Clarium Capital

Peter Andreas Thiel launched a global macro hedge fund, Clarium Capital immediately after selling PayPal. In 2005, Clarium Capital was honored as global macro fund of the year by two trade magazines MarHedge and Absolute Return. Thiel’s investing style became the subject of a chapter in Steve Drobny’s book, Inside the House of Money. He successfully bet that the US dollar would weaken in 2003, and he gained significant returns by betting that energy and the dollar would rally in 2005.

In addition to Facebook, Peter Andreas Thiel has made early-stage investments in numerous startups (both personally and through his venture capital fund). These include Slide, LinkedIn, Geni.com, Friendster, Rapleaf, Clickable Inc, Yammer, Yelp, Inc., Vator, Powerset, Palantir Technologies, Joyent and IronPort. Slide, LinkedIn, Yelp, Geni.com, and Yammer were each founded by Thiel’s colleagues from PayPal. Fortune magazine reports that PayPal alumni have founded or invested in dozens of startups with an aggregate value of around $30 billion. In Silicon Valley circles, Peter Thiel is colloquially referred to as the “Don of the PayPal Mafia”. Thiel’s views on management are highly regarded, especially his famous observation that start-up success is highly correlated with low CEO pay.

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