Thiel knows entrepreneurial success on a scale that few ever reach. He was among the founders of PayPal, became Facebook’s first outside investor, co-founded Palantir and, through Founders Fund, invested early in companies such as SpaceX. Now the Frankfurt-born investor is turning his attention to Germany – and offering an unusual diagnosis: Perhaps the country does not only lack the courage to take risks. Perhaps it also suffers from a “fear of success.”
The comments came during a 65-minute conversation with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner on the “MD MEETS” format. The interview was recorded around the 2026 Axel Springer Award, which Thiel received in Berlin in recognition of his influence on entrepreneurship, technology and public debate.
For Thiel, success has rarely been the end of the story
Thiel’s own career helps explain why he is so interested in scale and growth.
PayPal turned digital payments into a global business. After the company was sold to eBay in 2002, its team did not simply disperse. Numerous other businesses were founded or expanded by people from the circle that later became known as the “PayPal Mafia.” Thiel himself invested early in Facebook, co-founded Palantir and became a partner at Founders Fund. Its portfolio spans aerospace, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and many other technology sectors.
His understanding of entrepreneurial success is therefore deeply shaped by Silicon Valley: A good idea should not merely work. It should grow, create new markets and, ideally, give rise to an entire generation of new entrepreneurs and investors.
That is precisely the mechanism Thiel believes Germany is missing.
The “fear of success”
German founders are often said to be afraid of failure, Thiel explains in the interview. Risk aversion and a different attitude toward failure have long been cited as reasons why the United States produces more large technology companies.
Thiel turns that argument around.
Perhaps there is also a “fear of success.” Once someone in Germany has built something that works, he argues, the company is more likely to be sold or the founder may step back rather than scale the business as aggressively as entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg have done. What strikes him is how few truly large new companies Germany has produced over the past several decades.
That is Thiel’s interpretation – not a proven characteristic of German entrepreneurs.
But the question behind it goes far beyond a provocative phrase:
When can a start-up actually be considered successful?
When its founders can sell it for hundreds of millions after a few years?
When the company remains profitable over the long term?
When it grows into a new international corporation?
For Thiel, the answer is fairly clear: Success also means taking a company’s potential as far as possible.
Why Thiel looks at the richest people
To illustrate his argument, Thiel says he compared the 50 wealthiest people in Germany with the 50 wealthiest in the United States.
Among the younger wealthy Americans, he found mostly people who had built their fortunes themselves. Among the younger Germans he examined, by contrast, the fortunes had all been inherited. The comparison is not a scientific study, and Thiel himself describes it as an extreme sample.
His point, however, is not really about billionaires.
When a new company becomes very large, wealth is not created only for its founder. Employees may receive equity, suppliers grow alongside the business, executives gain experience, capital is released and former employees may go on to found companies of their own.
The success of one company can therefore generate further success.
Silicon Valley offers particularly visible examples of this effect – and Thiel’s own career is part of that story.
Germany is creating start-ups – but scaling remains the harder part
Current figures paint a more nuanced picture than Thiel’s deliberately pointed diagnosis.
Around €3.4 billion in venture capital flowed into German start-ups in the second quarter of 2026, the strongest quarter in four years. Seventy-two percent of that capital went to companies in the scale-up phase – businesses that have already moved beyond the traditional start-up stage.
However, the high total was driven by a small number of very large funding rounds. Across the first half of the year, there were 184 transactions worth at least €1 million; the previous record, set in 2022, was 626 deals across the full year. At the same time, KfW continues to describe sentiment among venture-capital investors as subdued, pointing among other things to difficulties in fundraising and company exits.
Germany’s start-up scene is therefore far from disappearing.
The more interesting question is what happens after a company has already become successful.
For Thiel, success also means not being satisfied too soon
This gives his “fear of success” a second meaning.
Thiel is not talking only about capital or regulation. He is also indirectly asking what ambitions an entrepreneur has for the business they have created.
Anyone who builds a company worth €100 million has unquestionably succeeded. But what happens if that company could eventually be worth €10 billion – or €100 billion?
Selling can be the most rational decision for a founder. A buyer may open up new markets, take on risks and offer a price that guarantees financial independence.
Thiel applies a different standard. He is more interested in entrepreneurs who, after their first success, are willing to take significantly greater risks again.
That fits a core idea running through both his career and his book “Zero to One”: In Thiel’s view, truly exceptional companies emerge not by merely improving what already exists, but by creating something fundamentally new. His Thiel Fellowship likewise explicitly supports young entrepreneurs in pursuing projects of their own.
When success feels out of reach for an entire generation
In the interview, Thiel eventually broadens the entrepreneurial question into a social one.
He talks about high housing costs and diminishing opportunities for younger people to move up economically, describing Germany, Europe and, to some extent, the United States as societies in which it has become more difficult for younger generations to improve their financial position.
That gives the idea of “success” another dimension.
The issue is no longer whether Germany can produce the next Zuckerberg. It is whether people still believe they can materially improve their own economic situation through their efforts.
Thiel connects the rise of parties at the political fringes at least partly to this loss of confidence in future economic progress. At the same time, he makes clear that he does not adopt their political answers. In the interview, he explicitly describes the AfD’s positions on Ukraine, China and Israel as wrong.
For Thiel’s argument, that distinction matters: Taking economic discontent seriously does not, in his view, mean endorsing the political conclusions drawn from it.
AI will be the next test
Thiel sees the question of economic ambition particularly clearly in artificial intelligence.
He believes AI could become a technology as important as the internet – or potentially even more important. In the competition with the United States, he sees Europe as significantly behind.
The same question therefore reappears on a larger scale: Will Europe be content to use technologies developed elsewhere – or will it create companies capable of setting global standards themselves?
Germany, in particular, is not starting from zero. It has major research institutions, universities, a strong industrial Mittelstand and companies with global market positions.
Thiel’s criticism is different: Too rarely, in his view, does this foundation produce something new on a comparable scale.
Success begins especially when you keep going
Peter Thiel’s “fear of success” is not a scientific diagnosis of Germany.
His perspective is shaped by Silicon Valley and by a career in which success has almost always been associated with growth, technology, capital and extreme scale. Other entrepreneurs may define success very differently: through independence, profitability, long-term stability or a business deliberately kept at a manageable size.
That does not make Thiel’s question any less interesting.
For years, Germany has debated why too few people start companies, why capital is scarce and why failure carries such a heavy social stigma.
Thiel takes the discussion one step further.
What happens once an idea is already working?
Whether it becomes a solid company, a lucrative exit or the next global corporation is only decided after that point.
Sometimes, the difference between success and extraordinary success may therefore come down to one more question:
How big are we willing to let it become?
SK
