Investor Peter Thiel is known for his help in creating or shaping several companies, including PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL), Palantir Technologies (NASDAQ:PLTR), and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META).
Investors may be less familiar with Thiel's legendary chess playing that once landed him an investment from a rival.
Chess Rivalry Lands Investment Pre-PayPal
Thiel co-founded software company Confinity with Max Levchin and Luke Nosek. The company would later merge with Elon Musk's X.com and become PayPal.
Prior to the company's merger and eventual IPO listing in 2002, Thiel was an avid chess player in California.
Author Jimmy Soni, who wrote "The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley," has shared the story of how Thiel's chess playing helped secure an investment in the company from an unlikely person.
In an interview, Soni recalls looking at the cap sheet for the early investors in PayPal and seeing the name Ed Bogus, which he didn't recognize and hadn't heard of before.
"He invested very early in Peter Thiel's company, it was called Confinity," Soni recalled.
Soni looked up Bogus online finding a musician living in San Francisco and immediately thought he had the wrong person before reaching out through a phone number he found. Soni left a message explaining that he was working on a book about the early days of PayPal.
Within 10 to 15 minutes of the message, the book author got a call back from Bogus, who said he was, in fact, an early investor in Thiel's company.
Bogus said this was the only serious investment he had ever made at the time.
The investor recalled that while Thiel was building and investing in tech companies around Palo Alto, he was also playing competitive chess. One of his common opponents in chess tournaments was Bogus.
"He described his style of play as merciless," Soni said.
Bogus told Soni that one day Thiel showed up at his house and said he was looking for friends and families to invest in his company, telling his chess rival that they had become friendly through their love for the game.
Without hesitation, Bogus stopped Thiel's sales pitch, went and grabbed a check to give Thiel the money for the investment.
Bogus explained to Soni why he made the investment in a person he barely knew and a company he didn't know.
"Peter was so ruthless, so merciless in his style of play that I knew that anything that he did, he would make it successful. That's why I did it."
The investment became the best one Bogus ever made.
Thiel's Legacy
Thiel was ranked as a National Master in the United States for chess, even finishing 17th in the 2000 US Open.
Less known for his chess playing, Thiel is best known for being the first outside investor in Facebook, which is now Meta Platforms.
Thiel was also a co-founder in PayPal and Palantir and today is an investor in companies through his Founders Fund.
Today, Thiel is also a big supporter of the cryptocurrency sector. Founders Fund recently announced a 9% stake in Bitmine Immersion Technologies (AMEX:BMNR), an Ethereum treasury company.
Thiel's cryptocurrency exchange Bullish (NYSE:BLSH) recently went public. The company, backed by Thiel, originally planned for a 2021 public listing. Bullish shares opened for trading at $90.45, ahead of an IPO pricing range of $32 and $33 and a pricing of $37 per share. Shares soared to over $100 on their first day of trading before closing their opening day at $68.
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