Vance is the first prominent tech venture capitalist to win a spot on a major party presidential ticket, in a sign of the industry’s growing power.
The former president fielded repeated calls from tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg and billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Vance’s former employer and mentor, imploring him to add the one-time Silicon Valley investorDavid Sacks and Elon Musk in 2006. The men worked together at PayPal.Vance’s most forceful Silicon Valley advocates are euphoric about the former never-Trumper’s rise in the GOP.
This report is based on 17 interviews with people familiar with Vance’s rise in the Valley, his relationship with Thiel, and the tech world’s ambitions for him should he win the country’s second-highest political office. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their relationships.
Blake Masters, a former senior executive with Thiel Capital who is running for Congress in Arizona, says Vance’s ties to Silicon Valley would help usher in a new era of innovation. Vance made an impression on Thiel, says Colin Greenspon, a former managing director at Mithril, a Thiel investment firm.“We knew this guy is someone we 100 per cent want in our network,” says Greenspon, who would go on to co-found the venture firm Narya with Vance. “The benefit of that Peter Thiel world is that there is always someone interesting coming and going, and J.D. was someone we knew we wanted to stay close to.
“He didn’t seem like somebody who was trying to get the limelight,” says Auren Hoffman, CEO of the start-up SafeGraph, who became friends with Vance after organising the 2016 salon dinner to introduce him to his social set. “I didn’t know his politics.” “What people realised … with meeting J.D. in this context is that Silicon Valley is full of smart people, but not all the smart people are in Silicon Valley,” says Patrick McKenna, one of the investors on the bus.The Lord of the RingsVance told potential backers Silicon Valley was “oversaturated” with copycat, flavour-of-the-moment companies like “Uber for parking”. Vance said Narya would focus on sourcing big ideas and “deep technologies” such as robotics and biotech.
Narya co-founder Greenspon says the firm’s objective is “generating the best possible returns for our investors”.
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