>> 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 today on "studio 1.0" 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 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. you have had less innovations in energy and biotechnology, and there has been some, but not as much as we would like. transportation, it is not moving any faster. >> one thing you tell aspiring entrepreneurs is don't copy mark zuckerberg, don't copy larry and

sergei, don't copy bill gates. why not? >> the next mark zuckerberg won't be starting a social networking site. 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 believe in you? >> i think great companies have a sense of mission. there is a sense that if we want doing this, -- if we were not doing this, nobody would be doing this, and you would have a monopoly, not in a bad sense, but in the good sense as an a pageant andave good technology and that is the , best kind of investment to have. >> you say google is a monopoly? >> it 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. -- 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, there still are emerging competitors in the social networking space that come up every year. you see a twitter or snapchat. all these companies emerge on an -- a continual basis. that you have any concern companies like facebook, google, apple could 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 been enough innovation to keep things flowing. >> do you think someday google, facebook, apple, amazon, will not be as dominant as they are? >> i think they will be dominant for a while, so i think they are all great businesses, but i don't think they will be dominant forever. >> do you see one or the other becoming dominant? -- 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? >> i think 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. what kind of project are you most excited about? >> these are all attempts to extend the search monopoly. i think self driving cars will change transportation maybe as much 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 of believing something that is wrong. but there is always an intense understanding that something is true that very few other people do. my friend, elon musk, believes that he has a unique set of ideas to motivate people there.

in thatt a cold -- cult it is a wrong belief, but it is an unusual, unique set of ideas that motivate people and listing was then from the rest of the world -- and distinguish them from the rest of the world. >> something else you say is that a messed up startup cannot be fixed. why not? >> foundations are 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 on abstract be fixed -- are larger than startups can be fixed? can yahoo!, hp can 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! even though these were technology companies, now they are bets against technology.

>> even though they are not technology companies, can yahoo! and hp be fixed? >> there are things we can do to streamline them. it is probably 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? >> i think she is by far the best ceo yahoo! as had in at least a decade. i think 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? >> certainly an issue i have about is this idea that college education has become something of a bubble. a trillion dollars of student debt.

we are 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 would try to figure out ways to make them individuated, where different students learn at their own pace. >> you have the thiel fellowship. basically, you give aspiring entrepreneurs money to not go to school. and to start companies instead. 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 undergrad law school, where he met the paypal mafia? -- where you met the paypal mafia? >> you can never run these experiments twice. 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. >> if you weren't in tech, what is something else you would want to do? >> i would want to be a teacher. >> the guy who wants to get rid of education would be a teacher. >> i am not against learning, i am against education. >> of the six people who built paypal, who talk to build bonds in high school -- four of them build bombs in high school. >> i was not one of them. [laughter] ♪

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

somehow singular and that they are somehow divine, omnipotent beings. any of these things that i'm doing are not solo efforts. i have friends who i talk to a lot and people i work with closely. >> i am curious about your background and what has shaped your views along the way. i know that you were born in germany and moved around a lot, south africa and namibia. tell me about your upbringing. >> i lived a lot of places. i went to seven different elementary schools as a kid, and i think of myself as always having been 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 did your parents do? what were they like? >> my dad was an engineer. my mom ended up being a homemaker after i was born. they were very focused on education. >> you are also raised on evangelical christian. an evangelical christian.

you questioned things 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? >> you can see ahead what people were going to be doing a decade from now and two decades from now. there was a sense that i couldn't see myself as being that happy doing this. >> was there any event in life or something that triggered you to start down a different path? >> it was a bit of an evolution. i can certainly point to late nights at the law firm, where you are sort of thinking what are you doing here? >> from the paypal mafia to the people you have met since, who do you call for what? >> there is something about a -- the set of my friends from paypal, this was an intense experience. and i think those bonds will never quite be matched in their intensity. >> the first line of chapter 14,

"of the six people who built paypal, four had built bombs in high school." >> i was not one of those four. [laughter] i think there is something that is always quite extreme about the personalities that go into starting a company. >> so building a bomb is a good , thing? >> it is not a good thing. having some extreme personalities i think is a somewhat good thing. >> who built the bombs? it wasn't you? >> you would have to choose four of the remaining five. >> 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 in the world. >> what about bitcoin? does that get closer to what you imagine? >> i am probably psychologically biased against it. if we could not succeed at paypal, i would be tempted to come up with reasons why no one could succeed at it. >> do you think the chances of

it succeeding are unlikely? >> my sense is that it is still slightly too cumbersome to work at the end of the day as a new payment system. >> you were the first outside investor in facebook. did mark convince you to invest or did you convince mark to let you invest? >> i suppose some combination of both. it felt like a no-brainer. the company was growing very fast. they only needed more money for computers, and i convinced them that i would be relatively hands-off as an investor. >> do you worry that 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.

humans. one reporter who looked into it concluded its software had been used in the bin laden raid and was critical in connecting all the dots to finding him. >> do you think it could stop stopink palantir could the next 9/11, or has it already? >> something like palantir is key to stopping 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 your clients could actually use palantir to do evil things. do you worry about that? >> there are always two parts to these technologies, and technologies are never intrinsically good. there is always a question as to

how they could be used or abused. i think there are a lot of checks in place. >> someone described it as it is kind of like plugging into the matrix. >> one government agency that gave us a bunch of data, during the demo, we discovered a terrorist plot that they had not even suspected existed, and it led them to reclassify all sorts of data as classified. >> would you say palantir has helped thwart multiple terrorist plots? >> i suspect that is true. >> with founders fund, for example, what is the craziest sector that you might enter that we would not expect? >> one that we started to look at 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 so worried 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 actually say the 22nd century, computers could be smarter than us. >> this is always an interesting sort of debate. what will happen? will artificial intelligence actually get smarter than humans? 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, but political and cultural. it would be like extraterrestrials landing on the planet. if we had aliens land on the planet, we would not ask what does this mean for my job. we would ask, are they friendly or not friendly? >> what's 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 emit greenhouse gases. >> is it about colonizing other planets or solar systems? >> i would put the date for that second half in the 22nd century. >> it is going to happen. >> is mars going to be first? >> there are a lot of things that make mars the natural other planet in the system. yes. >> you ponder several other different futures, including human extinction. what are the possibilities about -- of that? >> what are the right things for us to be doing? what are the technologies we need to develop? we need to stay focused on that and i think our prospects are very good. >> one of the things you are investing in or have invested in is a startup island off the coast. what is your vision there? >> this is a very small side project. the question is, is it possible to create some new community that we could start a new society that would have very different rules and different ways of governing it. this is very far in the future, but it has pulled in a lot of people. >> so, you are imagining it being another country? >> it would be another country,

it would cost probably in the tens of billions to build, which is 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 the island has been portrayed on the show. have you watched it? >> i've seen a few of the episodes. they would dispute they are really portraying me on the show. >> he is called peter gregory. >> they would still dispute -- >> he invested in an island!

>> they would still dispute that. but i think the character gives a compelling portrayal of someone who is passionate about the future, determined to make his happen, people are driven, slightly crazy in different ways, but i think, on the whole, it is a very positive show. >> do you believe you can grow meat in a lab? -- meat and leather in labs? >> yes, you can. it's not yet clear if people will eat it. >> failure is ok? >> i think the idea that failure is ok is one of the more destructive memes out there in silicon valley. failure is always a problem. when a company fails, it is always a tragedy. it is often quite damaging for the people who go through it. >> what do you consider your biggest failures? >> there definitely are some things that worked better than others. there are investments that have failed. but on the whole, i've always been resilient and always have come back. >> i know you have thought a lot about the extension of human life. you think you may live to 120. >> i certainly hope to, yes. >> what are you doing differently? are you taking immortality

pills, some super exercise regimen? >> i'm investing in a lot of biotechnology companies. 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 eat some, but not as much as i used to. >> what do you eat more of? >> i do the paleo-type diet. i think you actually will need new technology, new innovation for us to really have both longer and healthier lives. >> new technology like what? >> we need to find cures for cancer, cures for alzheimer's, a way to restore organs when they are falling apart, just all different ways bodies break down and find ways to reverse all of them. the main, drastic thing i'm doing is i am on hgh, human growth hormone, on a daily basis. >> what is the benefit of that

supposed to be? >> it helps maintain muscle mass. you're much less likely to get bone injuries, arthritis, stuff like that as you get older. there is always a worry of it will increase your cancer risk. >> you are not concerned about that? >> i am hopeful we will get cancer cured in the next decade. the other big nutrition thing that is happening is all of the , where youe biome have as many bacteria inside of you as cells. i think one of the things that is going to happen in the next few years is people are going to figure out ways to reset your bacterial ecosystem. you look at people who are super healthy. 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 today. ♪

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