Personally, I think that the part of this deal that stinks is that the Valar/NZVIF partnership only invested in TWO companies; the majority of funds were just

Personally, I think that the part of this deal that stinks is that the Valar/NZVIF partnership only invested in TWO companies; the majority of funds were just used to buy Xero shares on the public market (yes, they were already listed on the NZX sharemarket by this point). That's kind of like how Chinese investors could game the system and get permanent residency in Canada by "investing" the minimum amount of $1,000,000 into the Vancouver property market (a.k.a. buying a house). And as an added bonus, they'd leave the house empty, messing up the rental market and making it harder for Canadians to find somewhere to live. I have absolutely nothing against residency in return for bona fide business investments, but there's gotta be some element of risk involved for the investor. Getting a sweetheart deal from the government and then investing in the public sharemarket is in no way a benefit to the country. It'd be a very different story had Thiel actually continued to make investments in the local startup community after getting his citizenship. But it sure looks to me like he made a few "investments" for show, got his citizenship (without even setting foot in the country!) and then promptly put his NZ passport into his bug-out bag and moved on to other things.