We back dropouts, renegade students & deep tech scientists at the earliest stages of their companies
In 2010, our team cofounded the Thiel Fellowship with Peter Thiel to prove out a simple belief: great founders don’t need university degrees. That was a $100k grant program – and it gave birth to projects like Ethereum, companies like Figma, OYO Rooms, and Luminar, and funds like the Longevity Fund. We started 1517 to scale that further and expand the support and community that the Thiel Fellowship started.