Thiel isn't beholden to time cycles that the funds are. So I wouldn't read into it that Founder's wasn't interested.

This might help: http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2010/08/vc-insanity-economics...

Why I feel these questions are so Quora-like?

Take FB out and Thiel has a horrible investment record. In case people missed, he has a horrible investment record. A coin toss would be better than his choices, let alone low cost index funds. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-12/clarium-hedge-fund-...

Yes, but you shouldn't take facebook out.

The whole point of investing like this is that a home-run can offset a large number of failures / also rans.

The Wright brothers have a horrible record of making things fly if you removed the flights made at Kitty Hawk.

Yes and no. I think he just gave a $500K check from his own funds so others will not see a cut of that, just losses from his other investments. But yeah, he made money for himself gambling /investing /a combo or whatever. However, not even his FB lottery win can get his record out of the hole.

He is connected, famous and rich so he can afford to and can pick the early stage companies to through a bit of money at, hoping a few strike. But, there's a difference between billion dollar sized funds and angel ones.