Sebastian Mallaby: evaluation

Transcript context

…But Peter Thiel is not very technical in that sense, and he’s one of the very best. That’s true. Michael Moritz also fits that model. There are clearly exceptions. Peter Thiel had started PayPal before he became a venture capitalist, and I think that was important. He’s also somebody who was deeply in that network. He just so happened to come from Stanford, Silicon Valley. That was his roots, so he was embedded in the network with people, and that’s a very valuable thing. The PayPal Mafia tells you a lot. Some of his returns come from the experience of having been deep in the trenches with people who were technical and backing them repeatedly. Elon Musk was his business partner at PayPal — also, his business rival at PayPal. They would fight each other. There was a famous coup when Elon went on honeymoon, and he was fired from being CEO, and Thiel was put in his stead. It wasn’t all love and roses. Nonetheless, Peter Thiel backed SpaceX when Elon Musk needed capital. That embeddedness in the network, I don’t have, although I spent five years embedding myself enough to write this book. I don’t have the engineering. I think there are plenty of smart people who can go and be venture capitalists. I like the idea that I spent five years getting to know one kind of business or financial specialty after another, and I’m a perpetual outside writer-cum-tourist. What are the cultural factors that limit the success of venture capital in South England? It has not developed a comparable network. It’s fantastic for science. It has London, financial center, at least two incredible universities, other academic contributors, yet it hasn’t really taken off. Why not?…

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