Also, he tends to be contrarian in his posture towards investments. For example, he's backed anti-ageing research[1], which is obviously viable, but seen by many as oddball.

He was the first outside investor in Facebook[2]...

And perhaps most well known for co-founding PayPal with Elon Musk and Max Levchin.

There's a ton of vids with him being interviewed on YouTube, if you want the gist of the guy.

I've bookmarked this one for later. A Conversation with Peter Thiel and Niall Ferguson[3]. (Niall Ferguson has done some fine work, as well)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Anti-aging_research [2] In the intro section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exfbmY7mg8s