How I Invest · 3 min · Nov 4, 2026

Lower entry prices change the venture return math

JSJack Selby · Managing Director, Thiel Capital

Jack Selby says Copper Sky can invest outside coastal hubs at roughly one-tenth of Silicon Valley Series A valuations.

The episode’s best minutes

32:21 Cheap capital left venture with zombie funds6 min
42:27 AI can produce strong returns without trillion-dollar exits3 min
18:36Lower entry prices change the venture return math3 min
3 more moments in the full episode

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“my math is very, very, very different because my entry point is so much less expensive.”

JSJack Selbyat 19:38 · How I Invest

Takeaways

He cites Series A valuations at about one-tenth of Silicon Valley levels.
A typical $3 million investment can buy 10–20% ownership.
His target is a more attainable $500 million outcome, not another Elon Musk.

About this segment

Jack Selby says Copper Sky can invest outside coastal hubs at roughly one-tenth of Silicon Valley Series A valuations. Lower prices make meaningful ownership and more achievable exit targets work for the fund.

JS

Jack Selby is a Managing director at Thiel Capital, early PayPal team member, and Clarium Capital cofounder.

Joined PayPal as an original employee, led international operations, and co-founded Clarium Capital with Peter Thiel.

David Weisburd, Host

From “Peter Thiel's 27-Year Partner on the AI Bubble, the Venture Capital Crisis, and the PayPal Mafia”, Nov 4, 2026. Watch the full episode

Transcript

From the transcript How I Invest publishes with the episode.

18:49
Empirically, in terms of valuations, do you have any data in terms of different geographies within The United States and and what the valuations are today? What we saw with our first fund is that we could usually invest, at about between... Let's see. About one tenth of the average series a valuation of what you would see in Silicon Valley. One tenth. One tenth. Yes. So, yeah, essentially, 10¢ on the dollar.
19:15
And how does that translate into portfolio strategy and and how you think about portfolio construction? So this is the core of it. And so I don't care about what what type of investing you do, but entry price matters. And if you can invest at 10¢ on the dollar versus what's going on in Powell today, that makes a huge difference versus, you know, if you're investing in thinking machines in a pre series a round at a $14,000,000,000 valuation, how does that work?
19:40
How does that math work? Is thinking machines going to be the next SpaceX? I don't know. Maybe. But it has to be for the venture math to work. Full stop. And people don't talk about this. So my math is very, very, very different because my entry point is so much less expensive. I can usually buy between 1020% equity in a noncoastal series a deal for an average ticket of $3,000,000. Those are the brass tacks.
20:05
I think that is something I can do with relatively good probability compared to Silicon Valley BC today, and very importantly, because I was lucky enough to be a series a investor in SpaceX, which by the way was almost nineteen years ago. So so much of Silicon Valley, the pitch today is like, I'm gonna go find you the next Elon Musk at age 24. That is a terrible pitch because the probability of that is basically zero.
20:27
Peter can find the next Elon. Marc Andreessen can go find the next Elon, but the handful of folks that can do that in terms of true access is very, very, very limited. That's one. Two, you pair that with an outrageously long extended duration. That's a poor parent. So what I think I can do is I have better odds because my minimum bar that I need to cross, that $500,000,000 threshold, is easier, it's more realistic, and importantly, I can get there more quickly than telling you I'm gonna find you the next Elon, and by the way, that's gonna take two two decades from a gestation perspective.
21:02
Yeah. There's a joke. Three x over twenty years is not a good return. Well said.