Thiel Fellowship

The Thiel Fellowship is a fellowship founded by billionaire Peter Thiel in 2011 through the Thiel Foundation. The fellowship is intended for individuals 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 around 15 fellows selected annually. In addition to the grant, fellows gain mentorship and access to a community of founders and resources offered by the Thiel Foundation.

Peter Thiel announced the Thiel Fellowship (originally named 20 Under 20) at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2010.

Thiel had initially intended to found a university but he realized that such an institution would not align with his vision of education. The day before the TechCrunch event, he was flying on a plane when reading the script of the movie The Social Network, which portrayed him as a ruthless capitalist. He disliked the portrayal. The idea of an anti-Rhodes scholarship came to him and a group of Thiel Capital employees. He urgently called up Michael Gibson, who had just been recruited one day before originally to help Thiel teach a course at Stanford, to help flesh out the plan. Gibson later recounted that he and others at Thiel Capital were still working on the details right up to the moment Thiel went on the stage at TechCrunch. One week later, Danielle Strachman was hired to help lead the program.

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.

By the fourth year, the fellowship had achieved few successes. In 2015, Thiel changed the rules so that young people as old as 22 could join as well.

Strachman recalled that she and Gibson often discussed with Thiel about the candidates Strachman and Gibson had interviewed, and the candidates Thiel had interviewed. She remarked that Thiel sometimes dismissed candidates based on intuition.

In 2015, Strachman and Gibson left and, with the backing of Thiel, started their own venture fund named 1517 to "scale that further and expand the support and community that the Thiel Fellowship started." (the fund backs "companies led by college dropouts and people who never studied in higher ed" in general)