Insight
Strachman: Unconventional paths trigger defensiveness because observers infer superiority
“When you're doing something different, What other people hear or see or imply about that difference is that what you're doing is better than what they're doing. There's always this comparison.”
Disclosure
Strachman: 1517 Fund aims to eventually fund eleven-year-old founders
“And I tell people I want to be funding eleven-year-olds because I think they're incredibly creative and interesting and can be starting things earlier.”
Opinion
Strachman: Outsourcing application reading does selection programs a disservice
“A lot of programs I noticed today, the application readers are separate from the people who are running the program. And I think that's kind of a disservice.”
Assertion Supported
Strachman: Early media backlash targeted individual Thiel Fellows directly
“Reporters targeted specific fellows, people like Dale Stevens.”
Assertion Contradicted
Strachman: The American gap year did not exist before the Thiel Fellowship
“The American gap year did not exist when the fellowship started. It was not a thing. No one talked about taking gap years here, and now it's super common.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Strachman: Thiel started the public conversation about the higher education bubble
“What's wonderful about the fellowship is that people talk about the cost of higher ed now and the education bubble and the crazy inflation that it's outpaced without ever mentioning Peter. Like people have forgotten that he's actually the one who started that …”
Insight
Strachman looks for 'hyperfluency' when evaluating young technical founders
“There's a trait that we look for that we call hyperfluency, and All the old Teal fellows had it. People like Dylan and Vitalik and Laura and now our new founders that we work with, some of which who have become fellows, people like Augustus from Rainmaker, Eth…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Strachman predicts AGI will arrive in seven to ten years
“I think 20 years is too far out. I think five years is probably too soon. Yeah, I don't know. I want to say between seven and 10, something like that.”
Disclosure
Strachman: Thiel Fellowship team passed on Vitalik Buterin's Ether pre-sale
“Of course, there's Vitalik with Ethereum. He launched the first sale of ether during the fellowship. My colleague, Michael is one of the first people to put a Facebook post out about Ethereum and one of our biggest financial mistakes, but I don't really view i…”
Insight
Strachman: Post-interview energy levels indicate which founders are worth backing
“One question that we had, that's kind of an odd one that we used at the finalist round that we all use still today. Did I have more or less energy after talking to this person? And, you know, that's not the end all be all question. That wasn't like, okay, stam…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Strachman: O'Shaughnessy Ventures and 776 modeled fellowships on Thiel Fellowship
“Like you look at O'Shaughnessy Ventures, seven, seven, six, these types of programs are very much modeled off of things like the Teal Fellowship.”
Opinion
Strachman: Parents increasingly opt for modular schooling and selective homeschooling
“I think it's becoming less common for children to go to one school just throughout the entire life cycle. I think more parents are choosing sometimes even to homeschool for a bit. There's a lot of people who now homeschool during those middle school years beca…”
Assertion Supported
Strachman: Almost all inaugural Thiel Fellows voluntarily relocated to SF group houses
“When we first set up the program, we didn't, and we never had any sort of mandate about moving to San Francisco or anything like that. But the first year, almost all of them came to San Francisco, which was a bit of a surprise because we assumed they would Kin…”
Assertion Supported
Strachman: Thiel Fellowship originally set up SF startup house Mission Control
“Mission Control is a startup house that's been around now for probably about 13 years. And we originally set up that house for fellows, and then it's gotten sort of passed on to friends of friends.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Strachman: Thiel Fellowship's '20 Under 20' concept was brainstormed on a flight
“Jim and Peter and Luke Nozick had flown back on a plane from New York. This was right before the Sarah Lacy interview the next morning, actually. And I think they sort of brainstormed this number of 20 people, and then the idea of, like, 20 under 20”
Disclosure
Strachman: Thiel shifted the fellowship focus from broad pursuits to startups
“At one point, even with the fellowship, like we went from, okay, it's not a startup program. And we can have researchers and nonprofit people and startup people. So like a few years later, he's like, well, maybe we should be a startup program.”
Disclosure
Strachman: 1517 Fund's first $20M fund was anchored by Peter Thiel
“So we raised our first fund 10 years ago. Peter was our anchor check actually. That was a twenty million dollar fund.”
Assertion Supported
Strachman: Thiel Fellowship launched before assembling a dedicated program team
“There was no team. I mean, there was Jonathan Cain, who was the president of the foundation, Jim O'Neill, who is, is now at HHS. He was on the board of the foundation Michael Gibson. That was his first day of work actually. And he wasn't expecting to be there …”
