While I feel like confluence is being overly snarky and cynical about the Thiel program, upon hitting the fact that you listed Andrew Hsu and Airy Labs among th

While I feel like confluence is being overly snarky and cynical about the Thiel program, upon hitting the fact that you listed Andrew Hsu and Airy Labs among the list of accomplished Thiel Fellows it becomes immediately apparent that you really haven't actually done your homework. At the risk of sounding like I'm attacking Andrew, he was just about the worst possible example for you to pick. His startup is and was notorious for imploding after being run into the ground with highly public mismanagement that involved interference from his family members. If I were someone who wanted to make a spurious argument attacking the Thiel Fellowship, he would be exhibit #1. The rest of your post is merely a long list of people all in the process of "starting" something - but not actually having accomplished anything of particular note. It is easy to "start" a company, or a fund, or an organization. It is much harder to actually achieve anything with that. And despite what TechCrunch/other mdia may wish for you to believe, raising funding, giving talks, and winning random competitions are hardly accomplishments. Now, I don't think the Thiel Fellowship is a bad thing. If I was younger than 20 I would very much be interested in applying for the program. The fact that most Thiel Fellows have not accomplished anything of great external significance has so much less to do with the program and the fellows themselves, and so much more to do with how damn hard it is to start a successful company / solve a big hairy problem. It's not something you do in two years. It's a process and I think the Thiel Fellowship was only ever meant as an experience in independent learning/self-starting for the fellows. I have no doubt that every Thiel Fellow has learned a lot in his/her experience, but I think it is unwise to tout many of the people in your list as having made concrete achievements.