Hamburg – fear of loss? As Peter Thiel is totally relaxed. “Now there are times no return without risk.” Therefore, the investor juggles with billions – and focuses on ideas that others think is foolhardy. For example, the investigation of immortality. For death and disease -. Before it is afraid Peter Thiel

Otherwise it seems

not much to give, what could stop the 44-year-olds. Thiel belongs to the caste of Silicon Valley sizes, with the rake in billions of provocative transparency and thereby oscillate between genius and insanity. Somewhere between these two poles was also the idea for Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg dreamed of establishing a network of people around the world. Thiel started in 2004 as an early investor in the $ 500,000-line network, and later he converted the loan into equity in order.

The risk was worth it. Today he still holds 2.5 percent of Facebook, the IPO brings him or about two billion one dollar. Thiel sits on Facebook’s Board. Already last year he managed with an estimated fortune of 1.5 billion dollars in the billionaire rankings by U.S. magazine “Forbes”.

But go to him not just about money, says Thiel. He wants mitentwickeln the future. “Who has only safe ideas, has no exciting ideas,” he said, “time”. That sounds a lot like American gold rush mentality. But his roots Thiel in Germany. He was born in 1967 in Hesse. The family emigrated when he was a baby. His father worked as a chemical engineer. After stints in South Africa and Namibia, had the family settled in California.

An encounter at the university changed his life

The many parades as a child he moved several times, the school was still best in class. The unsettled life he sees rather than an advantage. The many impressions have encouraged his curiosity, he says. The image of the child prodigy fit his preferences: play chess and math

.

The desire for change runs through Thiel’s life. After school he studied philosophy and law at the elite university Stanford. After graduation, he worked as a lawyer in a prestigious law firm, but after seven months, he moved on. In the Investment Bank Credit Suisse, he is a derivatives trader. In 1998 he went to California and began his career as an investor -. With his own hedge fund goes

Then

Thiel founded his reputation as a businessman with an unerring instinct for promising ideas: In August 1998 he met after a lecture at Stanford University in the computer science student Max Levchin. Thiel says the idea of ​​his business, he wants to start an internet business. Thiel invested well a quarter of a million dollars in the small start-up. The founders call it PayPal. Thiel is boss and is guiding the company through the time when the internet bubble. In 2002, he brings the online payment service to the public. In the same year bought Ebay the company for $ 1.5 billion. Thiel goes with an estimated $ 60 million profit from the business.

But he does not sit down to rest, but is grounded with Clarium Capital Management, another hedge fund. Thiel invested in commodities, dares € betting dollar. Since the beginning of the returns are high, the financial manager has been hailed as a worthy successor to the legendary investor George Soros. But at least now that reputation has suffered. Since 2008, Clarium Capital’s more or less continuous losses, the hedge fund in 2010 amounted to 23 percent in the red. Thiel had gambled with a bet on oil. Since 2008, the assets of the fund has fallen by 90 percent. Thiel wants to discourage young people from studying In Silicon Valley but

Thiel is an investor with vision. He stops in front of wealthy people talk with sentences like this: “. The future is not something abstract, we have all of it and are asked to design them, shape them and to make it.” Who can show in the U.S. alongside such words even billions, is regarded as visionary.

Thiel fancies himself as a representative of provocative ideas. The billionaire funded annually 20 highly talented students under age 20 with $ 100,000 each. Condition for the money: you need to stop their studies and work instead of their own business ideas

.

“Contrary to common perception is forming a drag on innovation and progress made,” Thiel holds against critics. By tuition fees would go into debt and then graduates to take the first job blindly. “People can do anything, what entrepreneurial, innovative or even non-commercial,” says Thiel.

is therefore fitting that he “Seasteading” invested. This initiative will establish new States on floating, artificial platforms in the open sea. With deregulated economy and efficient administration, these maritime states existing nations put pressure on liberal reform.

Thiel is considered to be libertarian, who is working toward ensuring that the state governs as little as possible into the economy and society. Politicians do not have the knowledge to recognize what problems are most pressing, he says. As a student, Thiel founded a conservative student newspaper that railed against feminism and multiculturalism on campus. In the 2008 presidential campaign, he supported Republican John McCain, even the ultra-conservative tea party candidates received money from him. Even on an anti-immigrant organization have donated money to Thiel.

But the image of the stalwart Republican, there are breaks: Thiel already supported a pro-marijuana campaign

.He wants to overcome

illness and death

of the options through Facebook is the enthusiastic entrepreneur, but about his private life, he reveals very little. As a website in 2007, wrote that he lives in San Francisco at the Four Seasons, and drives a McLaren sports car, Thiel was angry. As another web page then also made public his homosexuality, Thiel scolded the reporters as terrorists.

The Internet, he now sees no longer, as the largest investment opportunity. Give the best prospects for technological breakthroughs are in biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, or in the field of artificial intelligence, Thiel said the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”.

Is it any wonder that Thiel is also on the wildest part of all projects: overcoming sickness, old age and death. This he puts money into the biotech company Halcyon. The head of the company, he should have said, smiling at a party: “You have to do it, otherwise we all must die.”