Keep ideas separate, or put them together
One of the all-time great investments was made in 2004 by Peter Thiel. He bought 10% of Facebook for $500,000.
He sold almost all of it prematurely but still made out with many millions, if not billions. Today it would be worth $50 billion.
Thiel made is fortune with Paypal, which he also divested but he has invested in Elon Musk's ventures and numerous other tech companies that have boomed.
He has a gift for picking winners and surely his guidance at various companies has been valuable. But his ambitions are bigger. He was an advisor to Donald Trump and is increasingly spending his time lecturing on politics and ideology.
Today the WSJ is reporting that he's moving away from Silicone Valley to Los Angeles because he "has grown more disaffected by what he sees as the intolerant, left-leaning politics of the San Francisco Bay Area."
That's a shame but I'm not sure if it's a shame because Thiel should find a way to do what he does best, or if it's a shame because the people he works with should leave him alone, or if it's a shame because he's decided politics is more important than business.
My philosophy is to leave politics out of everything. I don't talk about them here and I generally think they cloud people's investing judgement. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a case to invest on sheer ideology and that Silicone Valley is poised for a downturn because people there have the wrong mindset.
What do you think?
Anyway, here's a picture of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, who has clearly discovered how to age in reverse.
