Former Paypal CEO talks Web 2.0

Mercury News: 

Peter Thiel, former chief executive of PayPal, runs a Menlo Park hedge fund, Clarium Capital. Last year, he joined with two other PayPal co-founders to launch a San Francisco venture capital fund called the Founders Fund. With $50 million to invest, it focuses on consumer Internet start-ups.

The firm typically likes to be the first to invest in a company, putting up $1 million or less.

Mercury News Staff Writer Matt Marshall recently caught up with Thiel. Here are edited excerpts from the interview:

Q The Web 2.0 craze has been on for a while. Will it be over soon?

A I don’t think it’s going to be over soon because the usage metrics are still tracking in a very steep northeasterly direction. You’ll see things get ahead of themselves, valuations and so on, but there’s a shift going on from traditional Hollywood media to a tech-centric media industry. Surveys are showing, people under 28 are spending more time on the Internet than watching television. It’s a really big-scale thing.