Vance once worked for Thiel in venture capital and later received millions of dollars in donations from the billionaire during his Senate run.
Topline
JD Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, has had a long, collaborative relationship with GOP donor and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, one that has aided Vance from his time in venture capital to his role as an Ohio senator.Key Facts
Vance and Thiel’s relationship dates back to 2011, when the senator met Thiel following a talk the venture capitalist gave at Yale Law School that Vance has characterized as “the most significant moment of my time” at the institution, according to a blog post he wrote for Catholic magazine The Lamp.
Vance began planning for a career pivot outside of law following the talk, noting Thiel was “possibly the smartest person” he ever met and that Thiel’s Christian faith “defied the social template I had constructed—that dumb people were Christians and smart ones atheists,” according to the post.
Thiel later became a “pretty good mentor” to Vance, according to The , with Vance making the switch to venture capital and joining the Thiel-co-founded Mithril Capital in 2015 as a partner, according to Politico.
Vance published “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” in 2016 while still working for Mithril Capital, thrusting the venture capitalist into the limelight as he began pondering a potential run for office in the future, according to the Post.
Vance left Mithril Capital in 2017 and joined Washington D.C.-based investment firm Revolution as a managing director to invest in startups outside of major hubs like Silicon Valley and New York City.
Vance launched his own venture capital firm in 2019 under the name Narya Capital, which sought to invest in startups in overlooked cities and reportedly received backing from Thiel and other billionaire investors like venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Axios reported.
Thiel also reportedly brought Vance, who had established himself as a critic of Trump, to Mar-a-Lago in 2021 to smooth over his relationship with the former president, according to The New York Times.
