8 out of 12 of the 2019 Thiel Fellows Are D2C Founders
The Thiel Foundation, founded by Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, named 12 young boys into the 2019 class of Thiel Fellows last week.
The two-year fellowship awards young founders with $100,000 and one-on-one lessons with legendary investor Peter Thiel on Friday evenings. Launched in 2011, the program encourages fellows to drop out of school in order to pursue full-time entrepreneurship.
“Every year, we receive thousands of applications from around the world. Our all-star team of judges evaluate candidates holistically through a comprehensive interview and suite of tests, ” said Bill Arnold, Executive Director of the Thiel Fellowship. “These Fellows that we’ve chosen have shown incredible physical fitness and deep commitment to solving some of the most important problems that society faces today.”
Eight of the twelve Fellows are working on direct-to-consumer companies, building digital-first brands, including companies producing sheets made of organic banana leaves, luxury dog mattresses, and genome sequencing for birds. “Our company was inspired by Peter Thiel’s quote of philosopher René Girard, ‘Capitalism allows for innovation in consumer packaged goods that a centrally-planned state would never come up with’” replied Jack Sanders, one of the recently announced Fellows, in an Instagram DM.
The other four non-D2C founders are reinventing education for the average White American. Jordan Barclay, President of the Thiel Foundation, informs us, “We have one Fellow working on online coding bootcamp — but they let students pay tuition through what is called an Income Share Agreement.” Another Fellow is working on an online startup founder bootcamp called TAMda school, he reported. The final two are working on an online AI/logistics bootcamp and an online biotech bootcamp.
“Every year, our application pool becomes more and more competitive,” wrote Barclay. “Becoming a Thiel Fellow is the natural step after completing Y Combinator or raising your seed round. That makes our selection process easier. In previous years, we had to evaluate students on the quality of their ideas and how they advanced science. Now, we just choose the Fellows based on warm introductions from their investors.”
All 12 Fellows have raised at least $2M in dilutive funding rounds. As in previous years, all 12 are boys aged 18–21 with no blood-borne diseases (according to Theranos).
Co-authored with Tina Zheng
