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The rise of Peter Thiel, the iconic Silicon Valley VC who wants to cheat death

Julie BortMay 25, 2016, 18:43 IST

Peter Thiel, Founders Fund in conversation with Caroline Daniel from the Financial Times on the Web Summit Centre Stage at the 2014 Web Summit on November 6, 2014 in Dublin, Ireland.Tristan Fewings/Getty Images

Peter Thiel is today known as one of the most successful and colorful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley.

He came to fame and fortune by co-founding PayPal and then as an early investor in Facebook and is now is trying to stop aging and death, find technologies that would let people live forever, and encouraging smart young people to skip college and start companies instead. (He's a famously outspoken libertarian.)

If you take every classic tale of about Silicon Valley and combine them into one human being, you'd get Peter Thiel.