Profile: Peter Thiel: The Contrarian

Factfile

Age:47

Appearance: smooth, clean-cut, piercing blue eyes

Newsworthiness: the most successful venture capitalist in Silicon Valley was a keynote speaker at Dublin’s Web Summit during the week

In the multi-Oscar winning 2010 film The Social Network, there is a scene that shows Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg making a crucial breakthrough. He persuades a German-American entrepreneur called Peter Thiel to become the website’s first outside investor, a $500,000 gamble that will eventually be ...