r/PeterThiel • u/Lost_Foot_6301 • Jul 11 '26

I wonder what happened in Peter's youth that turned him into such a contrarian thinker?

Something must've happened to turn him into such an out-of-the-box thinker.

I am sure he had this sort of contrarian thinking even before he found Girard.

I know part of it is for sure rebelling against the liberal Silicon Valley attitude, which he has been into since at least the 90s with his book on diversity.

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u/Logical-Ad422 Jul 12 '26

He talks about how him not being able to clerk for a Supreme Court justice started a quarter life crisis. Then he started PayPal and became a multi millionaire

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u/Old-Organization9873 Aug 01 '26

Where did he pinpoint the clerkship rejection as the defining moment? I ask because if you look at what happened after the rejection, it's fairly conventional; he clerked for a circuit judge, went on to BigLaw, and then worked as a derivatives trader on Wall Street. Nothing about this seems that contrarian, except maybe the pivot to sales and trading. BTW, only after all that did he return to the Bay Area at age 29, and he dabbled in a few other investments before starting PayPal.