The Emotional Intelligence of the Autistic Entrepreneur

One of the most interesting articles I have read this year was in The New Yorker, 28 November 2011 issue about Peter Thiel, who was described by the magazine as the most successful technology investor currently alive.  Many of you would have seen an actor portraying Thiel in The Social Network; he is the West Coast Angel who makes the first investment in Facebook.  The article is well worth reading and highly recommended.

Thiel was one of the founders of Paypal and also the CEO of Clarium Capital.  The article tries to get inside the head of Thiel and in particular focuses on his contrarian thinking.  As readers of this blog will know I use the 7MTF/Humm as my method of analysing the emotional intelligence of a person.  Six of the seven core 7MTF/Humm components stem from mental illnesses and the Artist component stems from Autism.  I have written about the Artist in entrepreneurs before such as in Steve Jobs.   However I don’t think I have ever read an article that so completely describes the Artist component in an entrepreneur.
Artists can be summed up as follows:

They beat to a different drum.
They are visually creative.
They are not orally fluent.
They avoid conflict.
They regard themselves as persistent; other people think they are very stubborn.

Theil very much beats to a different drum.  He is described by his friends as being exceptionally open to intellectual weirdness.  He is even more of a libertarian than Ron Paul.   He believes that education is the next bubble in the US economy.  Education has become very expensive, students are taking out very large loans, but when they graduate there are no jobs.  They are also studying courses such as law and finance for which the market is declining.  Yet you need the qualifications to get on the first rung of an increasingly stratified society. Thiel believes the best  plan for young people to follow is start their own technology company.  And now he is putting his money where his mouth is and via the Thiel Fellowships providing 20 two year grants of $100,000.

As the CEO of Paypal he would only hire friends to avoid conflict.  As the CEO of Clarium Capital Hedge Fund he constantly took contrary positions.  He started with $10 million in 2002 and by the summer of 2008 it had grown to $7 billion.  Unfortunately he stubbornly persisted with the same contrarian strategy and Clarium is now valued at $350 million.

There are a number other demonstrations of the Artist component in Thiel’s temperament.  He stutters, he has come out of the closet, and is an evangelical Christian.  This all makes for a complex and intriguing personality but if you know the Humm, very understandable.