Thiel Foundation announces its first 20 Under 20 fellowship class

The Thiel Foundation announced 24 inaugural Thiel Fellows in May 2011, paying each $100,000 over two years to drop out of or skip college and build startups. The program, originally branded '20 Under 20,' recruited from Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. The fellowship created a Thiel-loyal cohort of founders and signaled an explicit anti-credentialing stance that later shaped his political recruiting.