Fast Forward with the Thiel Foundation: An event to inspire bold philanthropy
San Francisco – Dec 15, 2011 – The Thiel Foundation last night hosted its annual gathering of tech luminaries and radical philanthropy. At an invitation-only celebration at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Peter Thiel introduced guests to non-profit organizations that are changing the future. These non-profits included:
- The Long Now Foundation, which sees the future in terms of millennia instead of a fiscal year
- The Seasteading Institute, which enables opportunities for humanity to experiment with new ways of governance
- The SENS Foundation, which rejects the ideology that aging is an inevitable part of living
- The Singularity Institute, which is planning for a day when we create beings more intelligent than ourselves
- Singularity University, which is educating business leaders and entrepreneurs to think boldly about the future
The Thiel Foundation also showcased two of its programs, Breakout Labs and the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship. The Thiel Fellowship, which is accepting applications this month for its second class of Fellows, provides highly motivated teens with financial support and mentorship to skip college and change the world. Breakout Labs is a revolutionary revolving fund to support independent scientists in advancing their most radical ideas.
“The tech community is at its best when it solves problems that seem impossible by inventing solutions that will someday sound obvious,” said Thiel Foundation head Jim O’Neill. “Nonprofits can create these solutions with a longer horizon. We want to show people ways to advance innovation in their philanthropy just as they do in their day jobs.”
Each organization collaborated with two LEGO artists – Dan Parker and Alex Shullman – to design and execute a sculpture that explains its mission. Some, like the Equation of the Time Cam are faithful renderings of a real object. Others, like Breakout Labs’ genetically-modified flying pigs, are more symbolic.
About the Thiel Foundation
The Thiel Foundation defends and promotes freedom in all its dimensions: political, personal, and economic. The Thiel Foundation supports innovative scientific research and new technologies that empower people to improve their lives, champions organizations and individuals who expose human rights abuses and authoritarianism in all its guises, and encourages the exploration of new ideas and new spaces where people can be less reliant on government and where freedom can flourish. For more information, see ThielFoundation.org.
About Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist.
He first gained attention for innovations in banking and startup finance. Today he is known as the mentor of the PayPal mafia of entrepreneurs, as well as for his warnings of a coming technology deficit with severe economic consequences. He works to accelerate innovation to prevent such a crisis by identifying and funding promising technology ideas and by guiding successful companies to scale and dominate their industries.
In 1998, Mr. Thiel made e-commerce easier, faster, and more secure by co-founding and leading PayPal, which now has more than 100 million active financial accounts. In 2002, he sold PayPal to eBay and founded a global macro fund, Clarium.
In 2004, he co-founded Palantir Technologies, which offers platforms for finance companies and intelligence, defense, and law enforcement communities to integrate, visualize, and analyze the world’s information.
In the same year, he made the first outside investment in Facebook, a social networking hub that now has more than 800 million active members. He serves on its board.
Building on his personal success as a venture capital investor, Mr. Thiel co-founded and manages Founders Fund, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital fund that has pioneered new methods of venture financing that benefit founders. Through Founders Fund, as well as through his private investing, he has helped the next generation of tech companies, such as SpaceX, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zynga, RoboteX, and Spotify.
Mr. Thiel promotes better health through investments in innovative companies like Halcyon Molecular, Practice Fusion, and ZocDoc, and by funding the longevity research of Dr. Cynthia Kenyon and the SENS Foundation.
Mr. Thiel advances freedom by sponsoring the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Seasteading Institute, and the Human Rights Foundation. He funds the artificial intelligence research of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. He also aids work against violence through the Oslo Freedom Forum and through the research of philosopher René Girard, which is extended and promulgated by Imitatio.
In 2010, Mr. Thiel created the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship, which nurtures the tech visionaries of tomorrow.
Mr. Thiel earned a B.A. in philosophy from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where he occasionally teaches on globalization and technology and serves on the board of overseers of the Hoover Institution. His articles have appeared in Policy Review and the Wall Street Journal. He co-produced the film Thank You for Smoking, was rated a master by the United States Chess Federation, and received the Innovation Award from the Economist in 2010.
Mr. Thiel established and funds the Thiel Foundation. He lives in San Francisco.
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