Thiel's Facebook Investment Advice
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A story about Peter Thiel giving direct investment advice to a college intern about Facebook in its early days.
"I met a guy who in college was friends with a guy who worked under Peter Thiel at PayPal. The intern gets invited to go to Peter's Tahoe cabin with about 20 other people. The friend tags along and when he gets there, the first question Peter asked him was 'How much money do you have?'
The college kid is thinking 'I just have a checking account at Wells Fargo.' Peter says 'I don't care how much money you have, but whatever you have, you should invest in a company called Facebook.' This was back in 2005 or 2006, when Peter was the main investor in Facebook.
The guy was thinking 'Okay, the college thing, the app we waste time on?' He wasn't comfortable investing all his money after just meeting Peter. But this interaction shows how Peter has zero interest in small talk - he's looking for original thinkers. If you're just saying the same things everybody says, he mentally buckets you as someone who won't give original thoughts. But if you do have original thoughts, he doesn't care about your pedigree or accomplishments - you're in his circle of people he wants to talk to."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.