Christopher Olah

The Thiel Fellowship (originally named 20 under 20) is a fellowship created by billionaire Peter Thiel through the Thiel Foundation in 2010. The fellowship is intended for students aged 22 or younger and offers them a total of $200,000 over two years, as well as guidance and other resources, to drop out of school and pursue other work, which could involve scientific research, creating a startup, or working on a social movement. Selection for the fellowship is through a competitive annual process, with up to 20 fellows selected annually.

History

Peter Thiel announced the fellowship at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2010. The first round of fellows, based on applications made at the end of 2010, was announced in May 2011. The second round of fellows, based on applications made at the end of 2011, was announced in June 2012. That year, the fellowship launched a website called "20 Under 20 Documentary Series" that features an online documentary series of four Thiel Fellowship recipients.

The third class (announced in May 2013) included 22 fellows working on projects from garment manufacturing and B2B web products to ARM powered servers and biomedicine. The class included 7 fellows from outside of the US.

In early February 2025, Elon Musk used several Thiel Fellows in an attempt to take over operations of the Department of the Treasury through the Trump Administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Reception

Initial perspectives

Initially, Thiel's announcement of the Fellowship met with diverse responses. Some, such as Jacob Weisberg, criticized Thiel's proposal for its utopianism and attack on the importance of education. Others, such as academic Vivek Wadhwa, expressed skepticism about whether the success or failure of the Thiel Fellowship would carry any broader lessons regarding the value of higher education or the wisdom of dropping out. In May 2011, shortly after the first Thiel Fellows were named, the admissions office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) congratulated two of its students for receiving the Fellowship; both MIT students would, the blog stated, be able to return to MIT to resume studies after completing the two-year fellowship if they desired.

A year after first Fellows were named, opinions on the program ranged from the skeptical and critical to the laudatory and optimistic. In 2012, Eric Markowitz offered a mixed review of the Thiel Fellowship in '' Inc.'' magazine. In 2013 the program attracted criticism for its limited results. In April, an article by Richard Nieva for ''PandoDaily'' took a close look at how the first batch of Thiel Fellows had fared, finding that some had succeeded and others planned to return to school in the fall once their two years were up. In September, Vivek Wadhwa wrote that the Fellowship had failed to produce notable successes to date, and its limited successes were instances where its Fellows were collaborating with experienced individuals. Also in October, former Harvard University President Larry Summers, speaking at The Nantucket Project conference, said:

I think the single most misdirected bit of philanthropy in this decade is Peter Thiel's special program to bribe people to drop out of college.

Thiel Fellow Dan Friedman, also a mentor for the Fellowship, published an October 2013 op-ed response, restating in ''TechCrunch'' the Fellowship's thesis, and arguing that liberal arts education was becoming less relevant. In a supportive December 2013 ''Wall Street Journal'' article, the Thiel Fellowship and its recipient's accomplishements were summarized, up to that point, in this way: "64 Thiel Fellows have started 67 for-profit ventures, raised $55.4 million in angel and venture funding, published two books, created 30 apps and 135 full-time jobs, and brought clean water and solar power to 6,000 Kenyans who needed it."

Longer term perspectives

In October 2023, the ''Washington Post'' reported that: "Eleven of the 271 recipients of the Thiel Fellowship have founded unicorns so far, an impressive accomplishment that doesn’t even take into account the inspiring innovations of other fellows and the many exciting projects yet to mature."

Recipients

Notable recipients

Notable recipients include the following people (with the year they were awarded the fellowship is indicated in parentheses):
* Laura Deming (2011) – founder and partner at Longevity Fund.
* Dale J. Stephens (2011) – founder of Year On, formerly UnCollege.
*Dylan Field (2012) – co-founder and CEO of Figma
*Taylor Wilson (2012) – the second youngest person to produce nuclear fusion.
*Ritesh Agarwal (2013) – founder & CEO of OYO Rooms.
*William LeGate (2013) – CEO of Pillow Fight; previously Good Pillow.
* Austin Russell (2013) – founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies, the world's youngest self-made billionaire as of 2021.
*Vitalik Buterin (2014) – co-creator of Ethereum.
* Lucy Guo (2014) - co-founder Scale.AI, founder of Passes.
* Stacey Ferreira (2015) – co-founder of the gig worker platform, Forge.
* Simon Tian (2015) – founder of Neptune, Fonus.
*Cathy Tie (2015) – founder of Ranomics, Partner at Cervin Ventures
* Joey Krug (2016) – founder of decentralized prediction market platform Augur, later co-CIO at Pantera Capital, partner at Founders Fund.
* Boyan Slat (2016) – founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup.
* Shahed Khan (2017) –  co-founder of Loom, Inc..
* Lani Lazzari (2017) –  worked on skincare for sensitive skins.
*Iddris Sandu (2018) –  co-founder of Spatial Labs.
* Joshua Browder (2018) – founder & CEO of legal startup DoNotPay.
* Erin Smith (2018) – creator of software to detect Parkinson's Disease.
* Shane Curran (2020) –  worked on security software for developers.

References

Further reading

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External links

* {{official website, https://www.thielfellowship.org

Full list of Thiel Fellowship Fellows

Fellowships