![]() ![]() After their first breakfast, Thiel and Levchin (left with Thiel) began recruiting everyone they knew at their alma maters. ![]() But even by that standard, PayPal was a petri dish for entrepreneurs. It’s the reason people come to the area from all over the world. In some ways they’re classic characters of Silicon Valley, where success and easy access to capital breed ambition and further success. This group of serial entrepreneurs and investors represents a new generation of wealth and power. Thiel and Levchin, the don and consigliere of the mafia, figure that all told, there are dozens of enterprises worth a total of roughly $30 billion – and that value is growing rapidly, as evidenced by Thiel’s good fortune with Facebook. It’s amazing how many hot web properties can trace their ancestries to PayPal.īesides Facebook (FB) and Slide, there’s Yelp, Digg, and YouTube. Every garment on Levchin’s unwashed body is a freebie – University of Illinois zip jacket, mismatching shorts, bright orange T-shirt with some Hebrew lettering.ĭuring the past five years they’ve been furiously building things – investment firms, philanthropies, solar-power companies, an electric-car maker, a firm that aims to colonize Mars, and of course a slew of Internet companies. The doorbell rings, and in walks a scruffy, sleepy-eyed Max Levchin, 32, who has trekked over from his new $5 million-plus home a few blocks away in Pacific Heights. “I’m Peter,” he says, extending his hand and smiling before thanking me for agreeing to such a late breakfast meeting. Wearing a powder-blue T-shirt wet with sweat, he displays the relaxed self-confidence of Michael Corleone. Just back from a morning run, Thiel emerges into the dining room of his home in the shadow of San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. He drives a half-million-dollar McLaren supercar. ![]() The man has bankrolled everything from restaurants to movies and is lauded by many as some kind of free-market genius. He’s got an early $500,000 stake in Facebook that’s now worth about $1 billion on paper. He’s the founder of a new venture capital firm that’s the talk of Silicon Valley. The 40-year-old entrepreneur runs a $3 billion hedge fund. Make yourself comfortable in the dining room. A door opens, and a blond man appears in a white jacket with large buttons. ![]()
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