ACT ONE
THE CONTRARIAN
INT. STANFORD LAW SCHOOL — PALO ALTO — 1992 — DAY
A lecture hall. PETER THIEL, 25, sits in the back row of a constitutional law class. Brilliant, German-born, chess champion. While other students take notes, he reads a copy of Rene Girard's "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World." A PROFESSOR notices.
PROFESSOR
Mr. Thiel, do you find my lecture less interesting than your book?
THIEL
Your lecture is about how the law works. My book is about why humans do what they do. I find the second question more useful.
PROFESSOR
You are in law school, not philosophy school.
THIEL
I am aware. That is the problem.
INT. SULLIVAN & CROMWELL — NEW YORK — 1995 — NIGHT
A prestigious law firm. Thiel, 28, works late in a windowless office. Stacks of documents surround him. He stops typing. Stares at the wall. Then at the clock. Then at the decades of his life that this career will consume.
THIEL
((to a fellow associate))
How long have you been here?
ASSOCIATE
Three years. Seven to make partner.
THIEL
Seven years to earn the right to do this forever.
ASSOCIATE
That is the path.
THIEL
That is the trap. Everyone here is competing for the same prize. The same partnership, the same corner office, the same approval from the same people. Competition is for losers. I am going to do something where there is no competition — because no one else is crazy enough to try it.
He closes his laptop. He will last seven months and three days at the firm.
INT. BUCK'S RESTAURANT — WOODSIDE, CALIFORNIA — 1998 — DAY
The legendary Silicon Valley breakfast spot. Thiel, 31, sits across from MAX LEVCHIN, 23, a Ukrainian-born cryptography genius. Between them: napkins covered in diagrams.
LEVCHIN
I can build software that lets people send money through email. Encrypted. Instant. No bank involved.
THIEL
You want to replace the banking system.
LEVCHIN
I want to make it irrelevant. Banks are slow, expensive, and they exist because people have no alternative. We give them an alternative.
THIEL
((leaning forward))
What you are describing is not a product. It is a revolution. Every government in the world will try to stop you. Banks, regulators, the Federal Reserve — they will come for you.
LEVCHIN
Then we move fast enough that they cannot catch us.
THIEL
I will invest a million dollars. And I will be the CEO. Not because I know payments. Because I know how to fight a war against institutions that do not want to change.
INT. PAYPAL OFFICES — UNIVERSITY AVENUE, PALO ALTO — 2000 — DAY
PayPal: growing 7-10% per day. Burning $10 million per month.
Controlled chaos. Young engineers everywhere. ELON MUSK, 29, CEO of X.com (which has just merged with PayPal), argues with Thiel about the company's direction. The merger is volatile. Egos collide.
MUSK
We need to rebuild the platform on Windows. The Unix system cannot scale—
THIEL
You want to rewrite the entire codebase while we are hemorrhaging cash. That is insane.
MUSK
I am the CEO—
THIEL
And I am the largest shareholder. The engineers trust me. The board trusts me. We are not rewriting the platform.
The power struggle will end with Musk ousted as CEO while on his honeymoon in Australia. Thiel returns as CEO. The "PayPal Mafia" — the founders and early employees — will go on to create or fund Tesla, SpaceX, YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Palantir.
CUT TO:
ACT TWO
THE BET
INT. PAYPAL — THIEL'S OFFICE — JULY 2002 — DAY
PayPal IPO: February 2002. Acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion: July 2002.
Thiel signs the eBay acquisition papers. His share: $55 million. He stares at the number.
Fifty-five million dollars. More money than anyone in my family has ever seen. Enough to retire. Enough to never work again. But retirement is death for a mind like mine. The question is not what to do with the money. The question is: what does nobody else see?
INT. THIEL'S OFFICE — SAN FRANCISCO — JUNE 2004 — DAY
A sparse office. Thiel meets with MARK ZUCKERBERG, 20, wearing a hoodie and flip-flops. Zuckerberg has a laptop showing TheFacebook — a college social network with 200,000 users.
ZUCKERBERG
It is a social network for college students. Harvard, then the Ivies, then everywhere.
THIEL
Social networks have failed before. Friendster. What makes yours different?
ZUCKERBERG
Real identity. You use your real name. Your real photo. Your real friends. Friendster was anonymous. We are authentic.
THIEL
Real identity on the internet. That is either brilliant or catastrophic. Possibly both.
ZUCKERBERG
I need $500,000.
THIEL
((beat))
For what percentage?
ZUCKERBERG
10.2%.
Thiel studies the boy in the hoodie. Twenty years old. No business experience. A social network for college kids. Every rational analysis says no.
THIEL
Done.
The $500,000 will become worth over $1 billion. It is the single greatest angel investment in the history of venture capital.
INT. THIEL'S HOME — SAN FRANCISCO — 2005 — NIGHT
Thiel reads GAWKER MEDIA on his laptop. The gossip site has published a story outing him as gay — a fact he has kept private. His face is stone. Cold fury.
THIEL
((to himself))
They think privacy is a game. They think other people's lives are content. I will teach them otherwise.
He opens a legal pad. Begins writing. Plans. Not for a lawsuit — for a campaign. One that will take a decade and destroy a media empire. He will not put his name on it. He will be invisible. Patient. Lethal.
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ACT THREE
THE WAR
INT. LAW OFFICE — NEW YORK — 2012 — DAY
Thiel meets with LAWYERS. Seven years have passed since Gawker outed him. He has been quietly funding lawsuits against the media company — finding plaintiffs, paying legal bills, building cases. All in secret.
LAWYER
We have found a case. Hulk Hogan. Gawker published a sex tape. Clear invasion of privacy. We can destroy them.
THIEL
How much will it cost?
LAWYER
Ten million dollars. Maybe more.
THIEL
Do it. And my name stays out of it. Completely. Until the very end.
INT. COURTROOM — ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA — 2016 — DAY
Bollea v. Gawker Media LLC. Verdict: $140 million.
The jury delivers its verdict. $140 million in damages. NICK DENTON, Gawker's founder, sits ashen-faced. HULK HOGAN celebrates. And behind it all — invisible, unnamed, patient — Peter Thiel has funded the entire case. A billionaire's decade-long vendetta against a media company, executed through the legal system with surgical precision.
When the news breaks that Thiel funded the lawsuit, the media world is stunned. A new model of power has been demonstrated: a single individual can use wealth to destroy a media organization through the courts.
They said I was vengeful. Perhaps. They said I was dangerous. Certainly. But they published a private fact about my life without my consent. They believed their freedom of speech was absolute. I demonstrated that it was not. People call it the most controversial thing I have done. I call it the most patient.
INT. PALANTIR HEADQUARTERS — PALO ALTO — 2018 — DAY
Palantir Technologies: valued at $20 billion. Clients include CIA, FBI, NSA, ICE, U.S. Army.
The headquarters of Palantir — Thiel's data analytics company, co-founded in 2003, named after the all-seeing stones in Lord of the Rings. The company's software is used by intelligence agencies worldwide.
REPORTER
((at a press event))
Mr. Thiel, critics say Palantir is a surveillance company that helps governments spy on their own citizens.
THIEL
Palantir helps governments find terrorists and criminals. If you are uncomfortable with that, consider the alternative: governments finding terrorists and criminals without any technological constraints on how they search. Software creates accountability. Without it, intelligence agencies operate in the dark.
REPORTER
And the contracts with ICE? Immigration enforcement?
THIEL
A sovereign nation has the right to enforce its borders. You may disagree with the policy. But the technology is neutral. Blaming the software for the policy is like blaming the road for the car accident.
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ACT FOUR
THE PHILOSOPHER
INT. STANFORD LECTURE HALL — 2014 — DAY
Thiel lectures to a packed Stanford class — the lectures that will become his book "Zero to One." Students hang on every word.
THIEL
Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page will not build a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg will not build a social network. If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them. Going from zero to one means doing something nobody has done before. Going from one to N means copying something that works. Zero to one creates value. One to N competes for it. Competition is for losers.
STUDENT
How do you know which ideas are zero-to-one ideas?
THIEL
Ask yourself: what important truth do very few people agree with you on? If your answer makes people uncomfortable, you might be onto something. If it makes them angry, you are almost certainly onto something.
INT. REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION — CLEVELAND — JULY 2016 — NIGHT
Thiel stands at the podium of the RNC. He is the first openly gay speaker at a Republican convention. The crowd — many of whom would not support gay rights — cheers for him.
THIEL
I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all, I am proud to be an American.
The crowd erupts. Thiel — the contrarian — has found his most contrarian position yet: a gay, libertarian, Silicon Valley billionaire endorsing Donald Trump.
INT. THIEL'S OFFICE — 2022 — DAY
Thiel, 55, works in a minimalist office. On the wall: a chessboard frozen in a famous game position. Books by Rene Girard, Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt. He is reviewing investments — Founders Fund, his venture capital firm, has backed Airbnb, Stripe, SpaceX, Palantir.
THIEL
((to a partner))
The entire venture capital industry has become a herd. They all invest in the same categories, the same types of founders, the same business models. They have gone from zero to one all the way back to one to N. We need to find the things that everyone else thinks are crazy.
PARTNER
What things?
THIEL
Life extension. Space colonization. Undersea habitation. Nuclear energy. The things that sound like science fiction are the things that will define the next century. Everything else is incremental.
EXT. NEW ZEALAND — THIEL'S ESTATE — 2024 — EVENING
Thiel's property in New Zealand — his backup plan, his escape hatch, his hedge against civilizational collapse. The landscape is pristine, remote, beautiful. He stands looking at the Southern Cross.
I have been called a genius and a villain. A visionary and a monster. A libertarian, a monarchist, a contrarian. All of these are partially true and none of them are complete. I am a man who believes that the future should be different from the present — radically, uncomfortably different. Every great fortune, every great company, every great idea begins with a single person who believes something that nobody else believes. PayPal. Facebook. Palantir. Zero to one. The courage to be wrong. The patience to be proven right.
INT. FOUNDERS FUND — SAN FRANCISCO — 2024 — DAY
Thiel sits in a conference room. A YOUNG FOUNDER presents a pitch — something radical, something uncomfortable, something that makes everyone in the room shift in their seats. Thiel leans forward. His eyes light up the way they did when Zuckerberg showed him Facebook twenty years ago.
THIEL
Tell me more.
Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal and served as its CEO through its $1.5 billion acquisition by eBay. His $500,000 angel investment in Facebook became worth over $1 billion — the greatest angel investment in venture capital history. He co-founded Palantir Technologies, which became one of the most important and controversial defense technology companies in the world. Through Founders Fund, he has backed SpaceX, Airbnb, Stripe, and dozens of other transformative companies. His book "Zero to One" became a bible for startup founders worldwide. His secret funding of the Hulk Hogan lawsuit that destroyed Gawker Media demonstrated a new model of billionaire power. His net worth exceeds $10 billion. He remains Silicon Valley's most polarizing and influential contrarian.
FADE OUT.