Mar. 4th, 2019
Thiel Fellowship
On September 29, 2010, Thiel created the Thiel Fellowship, which annually awards $100,000 to 20 people under the age of 20 in order to spur them to drop out of college and create their own ventures.[85][86][87] According to Thiel, for many young people, college is the path to take when they have no idea what to do with their lives:
I feel I was personally very guilty of this; you don’t know what to do with your life, so you get a college degree; you don’t know what you’re going to do with your college degree, so you get a graduate degree. In my case it was law school, which is the classic thing one does when one has no idea what else to do. I don’t have any big regrets, but if I had to do it over I would try to think more about the future than I did at the time… You cannot get out of student debt even if you personally go bankrupt, it’s a form of almost like indentured servitude, it’s attached to your physical person for the rest of your life.[14]
Breakout Labs
In November 2011, the Thiel Foundation announced the creation of Breakout Labs, a grant-making program intended to “to fill the funding gap that exists for innovative research outside the confines of an academic institution, large corporation, or government.”[88][89] It offers grants of up to $350,000 to science-focused startups, “with no strings attached”.[90][91] In April 2012, Breakout Labs announced its first set of grantees.[89][92] In total, 12 startups received funding, for a total of $4.5 million in grants.[90] One of the first ventures to receive funding from Breakout Labs was 3Scan, a tissue imaging platform.[91]
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