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The first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee was not just a monumental moment for former venture capitalist JD Vance but a defining moment in the career of another venture capitalist: Peter Thiel.
For 39-year-old Vance, the now-Ohio senator picked by Donald Trump on Monday to be his running mate in the Republican Party's battle for the White House, a career in politics — let alone a position as the right-hand man of the former President — may never have happened without an early bet from Silicon Valley's top kingmaker.
While Vance made his push in politics apparent with his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy" in 2016, it was Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal and defense contractor Palantir, with deep ties to fellow Trump supporter Elon Musk, who would go on to play an outsize role in helping Vance's career rocket.
Of course, this is not the first time Thiel's had a hand in propelling those he favors into the spotlight. The 56-year-old who's worth just over $11 billion, according to Bloomberg, has a long history of putting figures of his choosing onto a path of glory.
For Vance, Thiel's influence first left its mark when he was still a student. In 2020, he recalled his first encounter with the investor in 2011, after Thiel turned up at his law school at Yale to give students a run-through of classic Thiel-isms.
Corporate ladder-climbing could subject a person to a life of meaninglessness, Thiel said. The "technological stagnation" gripping a society that could tweet but didn't have a solution to problems such as dementia and energy use that "increasingly dirtied the planet" needed a rethink, he added.
Vance, who admitted he "had no idea what to expect at the time," said the talk was "the significant moment" of his time at Yale Law School. This helped explain a consequential move he made in the mid-2010s: joining Thiel's J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired investment firm, Mithril Capital, as a junior investor.
Following a two-year stint at Mithril, Vance joined Revolution, a firm co-founded by former AOL chairman Steve Case. Thiel later invested heavily in Vance's venture capital firm, Narya Capital.
Vance's relatively short history in the VC world, then, had clearly given him and Thiel clear exposure to each other, allowing a relationship to foster that would turn the billionaire into the senator's biggest backer. Thiel also got a shoutout on the acknowledgments page of Vance's 2016 book, "Hillbilly Elegy."
The former PayPal CEO has given $15 million to Vance's campaign, Politico reported — the largest donation ever given to one Senate candidate.
Thiel also reportedly accompanied Vance to Mar-a-Lago to seek Trump's council prior to announcing his Senate run in 2016. The backing ultimately led to Vance being elected senator for the first time in 2022 and appears now to have been capped off with the former "never Trumper" earning his spot next to the GOP's leader.
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It's not Thiel's first attempt to play kingmaker. The entrepreneur has always stood out as a conservative figure in the relatively left-leaning Silicon Valley, but in recent years has become an increasingly dominant figure in the Republican Party.
One of Trump's biggest donors in the 2016 presidential campaign, Thiel has re-emerged as a key player in the MAGA movement after largely sitting out the 2020 election.
In November 2023, he gave an interview to The Atlantic about his disappointment with Trump and announced he planned to cut off Republican politicians in 2024.
However, he reportedly donated more than $20 million to support 16 Republican candidates in the midterm elections.
Thiel also appears to have pulled some of his Silicon Valley strings to advance Vance's campaign. He introduced Vance to David Sacks, a fellow PayPal Mafia colleague, who hosted a fundraiser for him and personally donated $1 million to a pro-Vance Super PAC.
Others in the tech world have been eagerly campaigning for Vance behind the scenes.
According to an Axios report, Musk, Sacks, and former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson have been running a secret lobbying campaign for Vance, calling up Trump even after Saturday's assassination attempt to advocate for him.
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Thiel's formidable track record has extended beyond the political arena, too.
The first outside investor in Facebook, Thiel bet on the company when no one else would — and is credited with transforming an up-and-coming Mark Zuckerberg into the slick CEO he now is.
Thiel was also a cofounder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies and made early investments in Airbnb and Spotify. His other success stories include a well-timed SpaceX investment, and an early bet on bitcoin that reportedly netted him more than $1.8 billion.
These investments now form a successful track record that's hard to argue against. With Vance now at Trump's side, Thiel won't have long to wait to find out if his punt on an Ohio "hillbilly" will go all the way to the White House.
