♪ >> he has been called the king of techtopia. peter thiel is one of silicon valley's most audacious and contrarian investors. he made his name founding paypal then funding facebook. he is now is backing rocket ships, dna manipulation, meat grown in labs, and a start-up island off the coast. he has paid kids to skip college and start companies instead, in hopes of reaching a better future, faster. and building flying cars along the way. joining me is the bold and controversial venture capitalist and now the author of a new book, "zero to one," peter thiel.

>> thank you. >> "zero to one," what does that mean? >> it means doing something new. going to the first typewriter, the first word processor, the first car, the first airplane. doing something that has never been done before. if we are going to take our civilization to the next level, it will require us to do new things. to invent new things. >> what companies have taken us from zero to one? >> facebook with social networking. google in search. >> yet, you argue for the last few decades, we have been in a tech slowdown. have facebook and apple and google not been innovative enough? >> as a society, i would argue we have not done as much as we could have. if you have had less innovations in energy and biotechnology, and not as many as we would like, transportation, it is not moving any faster. >> one thing you tell inspiring entrepreneurs is don't copy mark zuckerberg and steve jobs, why not?

>> the next mark zuckerberg won't be starting a social networking site. the next larry page will not be starting a search engine. the next bill gates won't be starting an operating system, and so in some sense you cannot copy them because they did not copy somebody else. >> you also suggest that they come up with one very important truth that very few people agree with you on. why is finding something nobody agrees with you on the best way to get everyone to believe in you? >> i think great companies have a sense of mission. there's a sense that if we weren't doing this, nobody else would be doing this. and you will be a monopoly. not in the bad sense of a rent collector, but in the good sense of an inventor, a patent with intellectual property. and that is the best kind of investment to have. >> you say google is a monopoly? >> it obviously is. they do not talk about the 98% of revenue that comes from search, which is where they have a monopoly. they focus on all these other areas. ebay has a monopoly in the

auction space. amazon has a monopoly of scale in e-commerce at this point. >> is facebook a monopoly? >> i would argue it is not as robust a monopoly as google, because there are emerging competitors in the social networking space that come up year. you see a twitter or snapchat. all these companies emerge on a continual basis. >> do you have any concern that companies like google, facebook, apple, amazon, could ever become too powerful that they would stifle innovation? >> i tend to think this has not happened a lot in the technology area, because there has always been enough innovation to keep things flowing. >> do you think someday google, facebook, amazon, will not be as dominant as they are? >> i think they will be dominant for a while, but i don't think they will be dominant forever. >> do you see one or the other becoming more dominant than the rest? >> it is always difficult to judge this, but if i had to pick

one, i do tend to think of google as the one that is on an incredible arc at this point. >> why? >> the core search monopoly is powerful. they are trying to extend it into all these other areas. >> their monopoly is in search, but they are exploring so many different things, robotics, google glass, self-driving cars. >> these are all attempts to extend the search monopoly. >> what google projects are you most excited about? >> i think self-driving cars is going to change transportation maybe as much as the development of the car itself. >> you compare compelling startups to cults, should they be like cults? >> they should not be like cults in the sense that believing in something that's wrong. but it is always a good sign if but there is an intense understanding of something that's true that very few other people do. my friend, elon musk's space x

company, is motivated by the idea that they are going to build rockets that will get human beings to mars in the next fifteen years. it is not a cult in that it is a wrong belief, but it is unusual, this unique set of ideas that motivate people there. >> something else you say is that a messed up startup cannot be fixed. why not? >> foundations are incredibly important. if you get some of the first things wrong, it is extremely hard to recover. >> i am guessing you do not think messed up tech companies that are larger than start-ups can be fixed, either. yahoo!, hp can they be fixed? >> hp and yahoo! are not really technology companies at all. they were technology companies in the 1970's and 1980's with hp, and in the 1990's with yahoo! these were technology companies, today they are fundamentally bets against technology.

>> even though they are not technology companies, can yahoo! and hp be fixed? >> there are things one can do to streamline them. it is a mistake for them to radically try to reinvent themselves and become technology companies once again. >> you mention marissa mayer, what do you think her chances are of turning things around? >> she is by far the best ceo yahoo! has had in a decade. she should not be evaluated on whether she invents something new. that is setting her up for failure. the existing businesses are big, if you can improve those and make those work, that is fantastic. >> other than what you have written in this book, what are some things you believe that very few people agree with you on? >> an issue i have been outspoken about is this idea that college education has become something of a bubble. a trillion dollars of student debt is not getting what we are

paying for. it needs to be rethought in a fundamental way. >> if you could start education over again, what would you do? >> get rid of the word education. >> would there be no schools? >> they would be very different. they are stuck in the 19th century. you figure out ways to make them individuated, where different students learn at their own pace. >> you have the thiel fellowship. you give aspiring entrepreneurs money to not go to school. some of those entrepreneurs have gone back to school. why do you think that is? >> most of them have not. it was designed as a two-year program in which people could take a break from college. i think they have found it to be an incredibly valuable learning experience. i went to stanford and law school. i might do that again. >> would you do it over? >> if i did it again, i would ask a lot more tough questions.

>> would you be where you are if you did not go to stanford. >> you can never run these experiments twice. i do think having gone to standford, having met a lot of people there, was valuable. had i gone to any other university, that may have discouraged me from going into tech. >> what else would you maybe want to do? >> be a teacher. >> the guy who wants to get rid of education? >> i am not against learning, i am against education. >> of the six people who built paypal, four had built bombs in high school. >> i was not one of them. >> who built the bombs if it wasn't you? [laughter]

♪ >> something that you talk about is the danger of founders becoming captive to their own myth. what is the myth of peter thiel and what is the reality? >> the myth is that they are

somehow singular and that they are somehow divine, omnipotent beings. these things that i am doing are not solo efforts. i have friends that i talk to a lot and people i talk to closely. >> i am curious about your background, and what shaped you along the way. i know that you were born in germany and moved around a lot, you went to south africa and namibia. tell me about your upbringing. >> i lived in a lot of different places. i went to seven different elementary schools as a kid. i think of myself as always having been a little bit like an outsider, and a little bit of an insider. so there is kind of a combination of outsider-insider perspective that shaped me a lot. >> what were your parents like? >> my dad was an engineer. my mom was a homemaker. they were focused on education. >> you were raised an evangelical christian and did not believe in anything like evolution? >> i still consider myself a christian and i think it is

important to have a very different perspective on things, because it pushes you to either defend your ideas really well or to have a much deeper understanding of why they are wrong. >> on paper you worked in a new york law firm and you worked on wall street. it sounds pretty standard. where was the contrarian in you? >> i could see ahead at what people were going to be doing a decade from now, two decades from now. there was a sense that i could not see myself as being happy doing this. >> was there any event in life that triggered you to start down a different path? >> it was a bit of an evolution. i can point to late nights at the law firm where i was asking myself, what am i doing here? >> from the paypal mafia to people you've met, who do you call for what? >> there is something about the set of my friends from paypal, where there is an intense experience and i think those bonds will never quite be matched in their intensity. >> in your book, the first line

in chapter 14 is, "of the six people who founded paypal, four of them built bombs in high school." >> i was not one of those four. [laughter] i think there is something that is quite extreme about personalities of going to starting up a company. >> so building a bomb is a good thing? >> it's not a particularly good thing. having an extreme personality is a somewhat good thing. >> who built the bombs? it wasn't you? >> i can't say. >> as successful as paypal was, as successful as so many members of the paypal mafia have been, you have said you think paypal was a failure. why? >> it was a failure in that we did not achieve our original vision of a completely new currency system. >> what about bitcoin, does that get closer to what you had imagined? >> i am probably psychologically biased against it. i would be tempted to come up with reasons why nobody would succeed at it.

>> chances of it succeeding are unlikely? >> i think it is slightly too cumbersome to work as a new payment system. >> you were the first outside investor in facebook. did you convince mark or did he convince you? >> some combination of both. the company was growing fast. they only needed more money for computers. i convinced them i would be relatively hands-off. >> do you worry facebook could get distracted, internet.org, drone companies, virtual reality? >> it is always a challenge. you have to do new things, because you are not in a static world, and you don't want to do too many. you want to do the right number of things. >> you created palantir. customers include the cia, fbi, army, the marines, and the air force, yet there is so much mystery around it. as i understand, palantir is using data on a massive scale to

solve problems from disease to terrorism. >> it is always an interactive problem. part of the data can be processed by computers. parts of that data can be analyzed by humans. palantir was critical in connecting all the dots in fighting bin laden. >> do you think palantir could stop the next 9/11, or has it already? >> something like palantir is the key to stopping major terrorist attacks. i don't think we are going to do it by projecting military force throughout the world, i think we will do it by sort of very cleverly uncovering these conspiracies before they come together. >> some have expressed concern that palantir could actually be used to do evil things? do you worry about that? >> there is always a two edged part to these technologies. technologies are never intrinsically good. there is always a question of how they can be used or abused.

i think there are a lot of checks in place. >> someone described it as plugging into the matrix. >> one government agency that gave us a bunch of data, and during the demo we uncovered a terrorist plot they had not suspected. this led them to conclude they had to reclassify data as classified. >> would you say it has helped thwart multiple terrorist plots? >> i suspect that is true. >> what is the craziest sector that you might enter that we would not expect? >> one that we started to look at the margins that is wildly out of fashion is the nuclear power industry. is it possible to build safer, cheaper, better reactors with all of these new technologies? and when you look at the technologies, it looks like the answer is definitely yes. i am very worried about the regulatory issues with it. but i think it is worth tackling that some more.

>> i want to talk more about your vision of the future and man versus machine. you are not concerned that computers are going to take our jobs? >> not anytime soon. i think technology has freed people up to do other things. >> at some point though, you said in the 22nd century, computers could become smarter than us. >> there is always an interesting sort of debate about whether artificial intelligence will become smarter than humans and how would that change things? i don't think that will happen for a long time, but i think if and when it happens, the primary questions are not economic. they are political and cultural problems. i think it is like having extraterrestrial landing on the planet. if we had aliens landing on this planet, we would not ask as the first question, what does this mean for my job? we would ask, are they friendly or not friendly? >> what is the most audacious idea you have pondered about how

humans could potentially survive in the future? >> we should give nuclear power very serious consideration, since it does not create greenhouse gases. >> is it about colonizing other planets? >> i would put the date for that in the second half of the 21st century. >> but it is going to happen? >> it is going to happen. >> is mars going to be first? >> there are a lot of things that make mars natural, yes. >> you ponder several other different futures, including human extinction. what are the possibilities about that? >> what are the technologies we need to develop? >> we need to stay focused on that and i think our prospects are very good. >> you have a startup island off the coast. what is your vision there? >> this is a very small side project. is it possible to create some new community? if we could start a new society, we'd have very different rules.

very different ways of governing it. this is still far in the future, but it has a lot of people interested. >> so you're talking about another country? >> it would be another country, and it would cost tens of billions to build, more capital than i have. but there is nothing that makes it impossible. >> you think that you may live to be 120. >> i certainly hope to, yes.

♪ >> you have been portrayed on the hbo show "silicon valley" and this island has been portrayed on the show. have you watched it? >> i've seen a few of the episodes. they would dispute they were portraying me. >> he's called peter gregory. >> well, they would still dispute. >> he invested in an island. >> i think the character gives a compelling portrayal of someone

who is passionate about the future, determined to make things happen. people are driven, slightly crazy. i think it is a positive show. >> can you really grow meat and leather in labs? >> yes, you can. it's not yet clear whether people will eat it. i think the problem is if somebody will actually eat it. >> failure in silicon valley is ok, right? >> this idea that failure is ok is a destructive means. i think that failure is always a problem. when a company fails, it is a tragedy. it is often damaging for the people who go through it. >> what is your biggest failure? >> there are some things that work better than others. but, on the whole, i have always been resilient. >> i know you have thought a lot about the extension of human life. you think that you may live until 120. >> i certainly hope to, yes. >> are you taking immortality

pills? >> i am investing in biotechnology. i think on the nutrition side, there are some very basic things that can be done. you should not eat sugar. that is the one nutritional rule. >> do you not eat sugar? >> i still do, but not so much. >> what do you eat more of? >> i do the paleo diet. that does not get you to 120. you need new technology and innovation for us to have longer and healthier lives. >> like what? >> cures for cancer, alzheimer's, find ways to restore organs when they are falling apart. the main, drastic thing i am doing is i am on hgh, human growth hormone, on a daily basis. >> what is the benefit of that?

>> it helps maintain muscle mass, so you are much less likely to get bone injuries, arthritis, stuff like that. it increases your cancer risk. >> but you are not concerned about that? >> i am hopeful we will get cancer cured in the next decade. the other thing that is happening is all of the stuff on the bio level, where you have as many bacteria inside of you have cells. one of the things that will happen in the next few years, is people will figure out ways to reset your bacterial ecosystem. you can look at people who are super healthy, you can figure out what ecosystem they have and replace yours with theirs. >> peter thiel, thank you so much for joining us today on "studio 1.0," it was great having you. ♪

♪ >> he made his name as a top tech analyst on wall street, leading coverage of the amazon ipo. then, bill gurley made his way to the promised land of silicon valley, launching his career as a venture capitalist, joining benchmark capital in 1999. almost right away, the bubble burst. bill gurley rode the market up and down, along the way making early bets on some of the hottest names -- twitter, uber, snapchat, instagram. joining me today on "studio 1.0," seasoned venture