what is the myth of peter thiel and what is the reality? ter: 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 am doing are not solo efforts. i have friends that i talked to a lot and people i work with closely. emily: i am curious about your background, and what shaped your views along the way. i know that you were born in germany. you moved around a lot -- south africa, namibia. tell me about your upbringing. peter: i lived in a lot of different places. i went to seven different elementary schools as a kid. i think of myself of always having been in some ways a little bit like an outsider and a little bit of an insider. so there is some sort of a combination of outsider-insider perspective that shaped things a lot. emily: what were your parents like? peter: my dad was an engineer. my mom ended up being a homemaker. they were focused on education. emily: you were raised an evangelical christian. peter: yes. emily: and you question things like evo

peter thiel talks about this. the point peter makes, and i agree with that, is there never is one.re will never be another microsoft. there will never be another google. there was just the one. it is the same thing -- people look to whatsapp. we have founders come in all the time -- there will not be another whatsapp. there will be new things. what do we know about the new things? they will be viewed as completely crazy. the one thing we know is that nobody will think it's the next best thing. it will be out on the fringe. it will be considered bizarre. it will be software as a service in 1999. everybody is going to be like, there is no way. like, it could never possibly work. 10-years later that is the thing. emily: the marc andreessen, everybody. ♪ ♪ cory: from pier three in san francisco, welcome to bloomberg west, where we cover innovation, technology and the future of business. i'm cory johnson, every weekend we bring you the best of west. it was a huge week for cyber security, nearly 30,000 experts descended on san francisco for the rsa conference, the largest in the world. a

his name was peter thiel. he was giving a lecture on currency trading. it turned out to be a really, really small class. and i just chatted him up afterwards, because i just sort of felt like -- i was definitely not there to learn about currency trading, i was there to sleep and get some air-conditioning. and i ended up listening. he seemed like a really smart guy. he said, "well, what are you going to do with yourself, next?" i said, "i'm going to start a company." he said, "oh, great! we should have breakfast." "ok, when?" "how about tomorrow morning?" we met at hobee's on embarcadero road, and he had the red, white, and blue shake. and we talked about companies and ultimately started paypal. emily: the paypal story is sort of long and legend, as we know. looking back, was selling it the right thing? the right time? max: the team was very tired. probably the right call. but, on the emotional front, it was very difficult. on the business front, probably the right thing. emily: what was difficult about it? max: it's your baby. it was this gangly teenager

aaron: i am sort of between peter thiel and mark andreessen in my tweet volume. emily: silicon valley is sometimes criticized for being too audacious, too arrogant, and thinking that we can change the world. is that fair? aaron: it used to be that there was a cycle of disruption within silicon valley where software companies constantly sort of disrupted themselves. we are going through an evolution where we are having to interact with so many new markets in so many different ways. and at first that starts out as, we can solve those problems better than anybody else. sometimes that belief is right, and sometimes that is not. sometimes when it's not correct, it ends up looking ludicrous and we look obnoxious for it. right? the outside world is unbelievably fascinated with and excited about working with silicon valley in this wave of disruption. something that we do not get a perspective for as often as i think we could or should -- emily: you mean because we are living in our own bubble? aaron: we live in our own bubble. the view is it is sort of silicon valley ver

emily: peter thiel, the venture capitalist, criticized twitter, calling it horribly mismanaged, probablya lot of pot smoking going on over there." how do you respond to that? bill: i think he is on a book tour, correct? emily: i believe so. bill: i would leave it at that. once you make a statement like that about a management team who has created a $30 billion company, taken it public, grown revenues to $1 billion, i think you lose all credibility yourself. emily: what else can uber do? we have seen them delivering christmas trees. but really, what is next? ♪ emily: what is the myth of bill gurley and what is the reality? bill: i don't know if i can separate the two. i love being an investor. i think, over the past five years, people have made a big deal out of, do you have operating experience as a vc. i think over the next five years, if the markets play out like i think, they will be asking, do they have investor experience, because that is what the job is after all. emily: some will only hire partners who were former ceos. bill: 90% of the time when a venture capitalist opens their m

emily: so while you are at stanford, you met peter thiel. reid: yes. emily: tell me how you met. peter and i had both been told about each other by people we knew. i was told he was this really right wing person, he was told i was this really left-wing person. we both went, 'wait a minute, i've heard about you.' and so we grabbed coffee, and i think we argued for eight hours. right, because we were like, 'oh, you can't believe that.' and then we were like, 'that was fun, let's do that again.' emily: you went on to oxford, you studied philosophy, why? reid: i said, 'well, i think i'll be an academic. because if i'm an academic, i can write about both of these interesting questions. i'm always fascinated about people -- how we think, how we reason. how we communicate. and in fact, actually, what i realized was that the course of becoming an academic professor was to be a very, very narrow scholar. so you essentially wanted to be an expert on this thing that, for example, only 10 to 20 people in the world probably knew about. and actually, what i really want to do was how do you help

emily: you mentioned that peter thiel encouraged you to buy into it.u think you can beat the returns of other vc funds? or the standard distributions? chamath: we are absolutely obliterating the market. we're probably, like -- well, the public side vehicle is probably, like, 30 points of alpha above the nasdaq. the private side vehicles are roughly the same. i mean, it is really good. we are involved in probably $10 billion to $15 billion unicorn companies in meaningful ways. emily: i want to know about your poker hobby. you're not -- you don't just enjoy poker, you are in the world series of poker. chamath: it would be great if one day we would ever be able to film this. but there's about 20 extremely successful businessmen. we play regularly in an unbelievable game in l.a. and since then, i started my own version of that here. emily: who is the best poker player in silicon valley? chamath: if i had to name -- i could name a couple who i think are exceptional. david sacks, ceo of yammer. in my home game. dave goldberg, ceo of surveymonkey, also my hom

you see peter thiel who is the billionaire co-founder of paypal, he has expressed interest in rand paul. he gave to ted cruz's 2012 senate campaign. ron paul he's a big supporter of. you see that a little more openly too. david: thank you very much everybody should read that rebecca nelson from national journal. interesting piece. >> thank you for having me. david: swiss america trading chairman says the anti-conservative sentiment is coming straight from the white house. craig, how so? >> david, you don't have to look very far to see how much mr. obama has embraced republicans who are conservative. i mean clearly it has been a very, very hostile environment for conservatives and republicans over the last six years and quite frankly i think that silicon valley is following suit, and what fascinates me about it david, and you said it just a moment ago free market capitalism which is the bedrock of conservatism, keeping the government out of your business is giving these guys the ability to grow and create huge amounts of wealth huge amounts of productivity and i think guys like larry rob

one of the better known billionaires of silicon valley, peter thiel, who create ad fortune from paypalious other invests, big supporter of rand paul. the leftism from the silicon valley the ceos of apple and google lobby a lot. the real beating heart of silicon valley is still very libertarian. david: sabrina what do you think about rand and silicon valley? >> rich is on to something. silicon valley, left-leaning and culturally progressive. they will be attracted to so one like paul than more establishment gop contenders. what is interesting, silicon valley in recent years has become a lot more politically motivated, a lot more politcally organized and engaged. we're seeing this on social size with religious freedom issues, like net neutrality and privacy. i think rand paul is on the right side of history with those. david: anthony scaramucci, the ante to get into a a race is $15 million. one of these silicon valley billionaires could write a check without thinking about it. there is a lot of cash there. >> they may have business motivation. look at previous statements from rand paul,

matt: peter thiel gave his father $2.5 million. will he come out for rand as well?: it is possible he will do that. super pac's, that changes the game. it has been impressive when we saw jeb bush announced early start raising significant funds. with rand paul, he will be able to do some of that as well in the financial community in silicon valley or the deep pocket public and donor community that is very organized is not probably going to rally behind rand paul. leo: i think doug will tell you perhaps even better thatn i that these 12 people are credible. they are not all capable of being president ball mark when rand's father ran, he was a message candidate. rand paul is a serious candidate. the other 11 are serious candidates. matt: ron paul didn't seem to want it. leo: we had message candidates. these are 12 able people. well i find annoying is the fixation on the money. i have been in iowa every four years since puberty. you don't need hundreds of millions of dollars now. you need about $15 million, up to $30 million to know whether you will be alive in the fall

. >> peter thiel one of the best silicon valley investors said google is a monopoly.e to have that taken back especially since they are facing these kind of pressures in europe as we speak, but you're right charles, the companies are big growing, for google this is a no-brainer what other business can we disrupt? >> google apps droid apps are known for being hacked. there are security issues. >> most people are addicted to apple products. if you're an apple fan girl or guy, google has to compete for your consumer eyes. >> i know you want to see more deirdre, and youn, "ri & reard"ominup ithe nex ur1: p. etertime. ep iig her. thnks l. >>> it's a video everybody is talking about right? that wild ride for passengers on the cruise ship in australia. here's the thing, if you look out your window and see that am i nuts? crazy? dr. ablow is next, he'll let you know. >> on the main deck a lot of the chairs have been pushed all over the place. it's crazy. friday night, buddy. you are gonna need a wingman. and with my cash back, you are money. forget him. my airline miles will