How Did Peter Thiel Get Oren Zeev to Raise a Fund?

Peter Thiel got Oren Zeev to raise a fund by offering, in a meeting Zeev thought was only a comparison of notes, to be the limited partner and treat it as an experiment. Zeev had left Apex thinking he was finished. He had made enough money, the partnership had been a hard place to work, and he was worn out. He spent 2007 trying other things, including teaching high school math. In 2008 he came back to investing and refused the normal structure. He calls that choice post-traumatic, not a strategy. He would not join a partnership or start one.

For seven or eight years he invested alone, led every deal, wrote seven-figure checks, and did about two a year because that was all he could afford. He never called himself an angel. Tipalti was one of the companies. The calendar stayed empty, and he did not want the old life back.

He agreed on the spot: no management fee, no ten-year fund, only carry, and the right to stop. He left with a fund. An hour earlier he had not known he was raising. Thiel was a passive limited partner, the only outside backer of that first fund beside Zeev's own commitment, and is not one today. About six months later he was still operating the same way, now with other people's money. He is on fund 11, and he puts the total at $2.7 billion.