Luke Nosek

Luke Nosek's venture capital career was influenced heavily by the connections he made as one of the first employees at PayPal, the online payment company bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Nosek followed fellow PayPal mafioso Peter Thiel to Founders Fund, where his two biggest investments to date have been in companies founded by former PayPal employees. He was the first institutional investor in Elon Musk's SpaceX, a company whose progress, Nosek says, is "critical to the human race." Nosek was also the first backer of PayPal COO David Sacks' Geni, which later spun out Yammer (acquired by Microsoft in June 2012 for $1.2 billion). While at PayPal, he served as vice president of marketing and strategy, creating the company's "instant transfer" product. A dedicated yoga student, he practices daily meditation and goes on several retreats a year to further his study. Read Less