Biotech is hot in general and as the article says, the ones around Harvard were doing well. So investing 5m in one is not crazy. I'm sure he merely expected single or double digits return.

He got lucky to be an investor in one that hit it big. Stories are also about spectacular winners or losers. There are no story on all the investor that got normal returns last year.

try beating this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Facebook

>In August 2004, Thiel made a $500,000 angel investment in Facebook for a 10.2% stake in the company