Thiel wrote Zuckerberg a check for $500,000. Eight years later, he sold most of his stake in Facebook for roughly a billion dollars. Thiel saw past the False Fail of Friendster, just as Endo saw past the False Fails of the statins and Folkman saw past the False Fails of his blood-vessel inhibitors.

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In 2006, billionaire technology investor John Doerr announced that “green is the new red, white and blue.” He could have stopped at “red.” As Doerr himself said, “Internet-sized markets are in the billions of dollars; the energy markets are in the trillions.” What he didn’t say is that huge, trillion-dollar markets mean ruthless, bloody competition

Everything about him was peculiar, starting with motives—or at least what he believed his motives to be. He didn’t come right out with all of it on our walk, maybe because he realized how implausible it’d sound to a total stranger. He needed infinity dollars because he planned to address the biggest existential risks to life on earth: nuclear war,