Peter Thiel, investor and co-founder of e-payments giant PayPal
One of the most influential investors in Silicon Valley and co-founder of e-payments giant PayPal, Peter Thiel has been confirmed as a speaker at the Summit event in Dublin in November.
Thiel is colloquially referred to as the ‘Don of the PayPal Mafia’ – a group of former employees and investors of PayPal who have gone on to become some of the most influential people in the tech world today.
These include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, the founders of YouTube; co-founders of Yelp Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons; super angel investor and founder of 500 Startups Dave McClure; and serial investor Max Levchin.
Yesterday, the company they helped build revealed 1,000 new spin-off jobs for Ireland, which will bring the total headcount at PayPal in the country to 3,000 by 2018.
Thiel was the first outside investor in Facebook and his initial US$500,000 investment in Mark Zuckerberg’s college campus idea helped Facebook on its journey to a market value of more than US$150bn today.
Thiel has also invested in Limerick brothers Patrick and John Collison’s payments company Stripe – valued at US$1.75bn – through his investment firm, the San Francisco, California-based Founder’s Fund.
The Summit, which takes place on 4-6 November, will include other speakers, such as Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior, Evernote CEO Phil Libin and Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley.
