WHY THIS BILLIONAIRE MAY BE HOGAN’S HERO
Whether or not he funded the wrestler’s lawsuit, Peter Thiel stands by his principles
Even in the personality-driven world of Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel stands out.
The PayPal co-founder and early Facebook and Airbnb investor, best known for his contrarian views and a golden touch, is once again in the headlines. But this time, it’s as the possibly secretive funder of Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker.
In 2012, the news site posted a video of Hogan having sex with a friend’s wife. Hogan sued on privacy grounds, and in March a Florida jury awarded him $140 million in damages. Wednesday, a judge denied Gawker’s motion for a new trial.
Just how a billionaire investor may be connected with the bellicose wrestler remains an unconfirmed mystery.
Thiel, 48, has not commented on the Forbes report, which was followed by a New York Times article that also quoted unnamed people saying Thiel was paying privately for the legal case brought by Terry Gene Bollea, otherwise known as Hulk Hogan. It’s not illegal to privately pay for someone else’s legal suit.
Speculation that the storied Hogan- Gawker suit may involve Silicon Valley’s billions had been bubbling for a few days.
This week, Nick Denton, the founder of Gawker Media, told
The New York Times that “my own personal hunch is that it’s linked to Silicon Valley, but that’s nothing really more than a hunch. If you’re a billionaire and you don’t like the coverage of you, and you don’t particularly want to embroil yourself any further in a public scandal, it’s a pretty smart, rational thing to fund other legal cases.”
So why would Thiel back this legal case, if the two news reports are true?
For starters, the PayPal cofounder has had his scrapes with Gawker, which in 2007 posted a story with the headline, “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.” While the piece actually was an effort to argue that Silicon Valley venture capitals might be biased against gay investors — the article’s author, Owen Thomas, said he himself was gay — it came off as accusatory.
What’s more, Gawker’s nowdefunct Silicon Valley-themed blog Valleywag featured Thiel in many posts. In a 2009 interview with PE Hub Network, Thiel blasted Valleywag as “the Silicon Valley equivalent of al- Qaeda.”
“It’s terrible for the Valley, which is supposed to be about people who are willing to think out loud and be different,” Thiel said. “I think they should be described as terrorists, not as writers or reporters. I don’t understand the psychology of people who would kill themselves and blow up buildings, and I don’t understand people who would spend their lives being angry; it just seems unhealthy.”
Thiel’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
To understand why Thiel might have backed Hogan, it’s important to glimpse the man’s unwavering libertarian world view, one that in particular prizes privacy.
In person, Thiel’s demeanor is both quietly measured and fiercely resolute; he was said to be the model for Peter Gregory, the oddly brilliant libertarian character on HBO’s Silicon Valley.
Indeed, Thiel’s savviness as an entrepreneur and investor is overshadowed only by his bold pronouncements. The cloud is a “buzzword.” College is a place where “you get talked out of original ideas.” Or, as he told The New
Yorker in 2011, lamenting the disappointing reach of tech, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”
Backing Hogan would be in keeping with Thiel’s habit of putting his money behind things that light his fire, in the same way that Thiel Fellowships award $100,000 to students keen on building new companies. Breakout Labs, which is supported by the Thiel Foundation, looks to fuel scientific efforts to extend life.
Ironically, Thiel is a supporter of The Committee to Protect Journalists. The group’s goal is to support freedom of the press. This would seem contradictory, but Thiel appears comfortable with duality. Consider this passage from
New Yorker writer George Packer’s profile of the investor: “Thiel — who grew up middle class, earned degrees from Stanford and Stanford Law School, worked at a white-shoe New York law firm and a premier Wall Street investment bank, employs two assistants and a chef, and is currently reading obscure essays by the philosopher Leo Strauss — holds élites in contempt.
“‘This is always a problem with élites, they’re always skewed in an optimistic direction,’ ” Thiel told Packer. “It may be true to an even greater extent at present.”
The title of the magazine’s tome? “No Death, No Taxes,” encapsulating Thiel’s hands-off doctrine.
Thiel’s rise to wealth was rapid. Born in Germany but raised in the Silicon Valley exurb of Foster City, he made a name for himself at Stanford as the co-founder of the Stanford Review, whose conservative pieces challenged campus edicts on political correctness and laws against hate speech.
After trading derivatives for Credit Suisse, Thiel launched his own investing fund which, in 1998, led him to co-found with Max Levchin an online payments system called PayPal. The group that grew that venture into a powerhouse — the so-dubbed PayPal Mafia — included Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman. Companies that were launched by PayPal Mafia veterans include Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube and Yelp.
When PayPal was bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, Thiel took home $55 million and never looked back.
Piercing Thiel’s steely facade is not easy. It remains to be seen if he was indeed supporting Hogan. But if it’s true, it would hardly be one of his most controversial moves.
“I don’t understand the psychology of people ... who would spend their lives being angry; it just seems unhealthy.” Peter Thiel, in a 2009 interview