Day: November 6, 2025

• Peter Thiel once offered a simple theory for why millennials are more supportive of socialism.
• In 2020, Thiel said student debt and the cost of housing were to blame.
• His once-private email is being shared once again after Zohran Mamdani’s victory.

Peter Thiel’s theory for why some millennials have embraced socialism is receiving renewed attention following New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s victory.

“When 70% of Millennials say they are pro-socialist, we need to do better than simply dismiss them by saying that they are stupid or entitled or brainwashed; we should try and understand why,” Thiel wrote in a January 2020 email to top Facebook leaders, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

Billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya posted a screenshot of the exchange as business and tech leaders began to digest Mamdani’s stunning rise as a self-described democratic socialist to lead the nation’s largest city.

“Tl;dr too much student debt and lack of affordable housing keeps young people with negative capital for too long,” Palihapitiya wrote on X. “And without a stake in the capitalist system, they will turn against it.”

Thiel said that young Americans had grown fed up with a system that many may have felt had left them behind.

“from the perspective of a broken generational compact, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate; and if one has no stake in the capitalist system, then one may well turn against it,” Thiel wrote.

Often described as a libertarian, Thiel wrote that he “would be the last person to advocate for socialism,” but it was important to understand why a large percentage of young Americans felt disconnected. Thiel spoke in support of President Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Thiel distanced himself from politics after the 2022 midterms, but has recently resumed supporting Republican causes.

At the time of his message, Thiel was encouraging Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to think more about how to deploy his capital as “the spokesman for the Millennial generation.” Thiel said the social media network needed to make sure it stayed “attuned” to the rising generation.

The internal messages came to light amid an onslaught of lawsuits related to Meta’s treatment of young users’ mental health. Thirty-three states sued Meta in federal court while others, including Tennessee and the District of Columbia, filed suit in state court. Business Insider verified the authenticity of Thiel’s message, which was posted by the newsletter Internal Tech Emails.

A spokesperson for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Young voters continue to warm to socialism

More recent polling shows that a wide swath of younger Americans continue to hold positive views of socialism, even as the nation as a whole does not. An August Gallup poll found that 49% adults 18 to 34 had a positive view of socialism, 10 percentage points higher than adults overall.

It’s not a straight line. It’s hard to reconcile Thiel’s thesis with President Donald Trump’s significant improvement among young voters in 2024 compared to his two previous runs. Trump has routinely used the socialist label as a cudgel against his opponents, a trend he continued with Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he also called a “Marxist” and a communist. (Harris was neither of those things.)

The AP Voter Poll, which is based on a survey of more than 17,000 voters in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York City, found most voters under 30 supported Democrats.

Mamdani built a massive advantage with young voters, the survey found. He outperformed Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by 60 percentage points among voters ages 18 to 19 and by 38 points among voters ages 30 to 44.

Addressing his supporters Tuesday night, Mamdani quoted Eugene V. Debs, a 1900s American socialist leader who once ran for president while in prison.

“I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this,” Mamdani said.

• Tatiana Teppoeva launched her own company after being laid off from Microsoft in January.
• Her son’s entrepreneurial success inspired her to pursue her long-held business dreams.
• Now she’s in control of her own schedule and enjoys the freedom that comes with being an entrepreneur.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tatiana Teppoeva, a 49-year-old entrepreneur in Redmond, Washington. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

I’m an entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in economics and two master’s degrees, and I’m currently pursuing an MBA. I’m also a US patent holder in predictive AI, a certified personality profiler, and certified in nonverbal communication, voice, and speech analysis.

At the start of my career, I worked at Boeing as a business analyst, where I led global customer satisfaction initiatives and internal employee engagement analytics.

In May 2011, I joined Microsoft as a senior research manager. From 2015 to 2025, I transitioned into a senior data and applied scientist role, where I developed and patented an AI model for predicting hardware failures.

When I was laid off from Microsoft after 14 years, I started a company, One Nonverbal Ecosystem, rather than seeking a new corporate job. Now I teach executives how to command the room and project the presence they want.

I got an email from Microsoft in January telling me I had been laid off

My first reaction was disbelief and pure happiness. I picked up the phone and called a friend to share the news.

For more than a year, I had been thinking about leaving to start my own company, but it was not an easy decision after a 17-year stable career at Boeing and Microsoft.

I even had a resignation letter saved in my drafts, waiting for the right moment. When the layoff happened, I felt it was a green light, and I was grateful.

Microsoft provided me with clarity and a financial cushion with severance and medical coverage, which allowed me to start building my business without the immediate pressure of financial concerns.

One of the biggest inspirations for me to start my own company was my son, who’s a successful businessman

I watched him start from nothing and build something impressive as a business owner in the construction space. He wasn’t interested in college, and I didn’t know how it would turn out, but I told him it was the perfect time to experiment. If it worked, wonderful. If not, he would still gain valuable experience. I’ve always believed we either win or we learn; there are no failures.

Watching his journey encouraged me to take the same leap. I had wanted to start my own business since I was 30, but life circumstances made me put that dream on hold.

But now, my kids are older, and I have my degrees and experience. I know I could always return to employment if I want to.

In Big Tech, I learned that fear, not ambition, became the dominant driver behind performance

One time while at Microsoft, we were in the middle of a high-stakes incident review, the kind where everyone is under pressure because millions of users could be affected.

On the surface, the team looked motivated and fully engaged, but when we talked privately afterward, many colleagues admitted they were working out of fear of being blamed if something went wrong.

That moment showed me how often performance in corporate settings is powered by fear rather than real drive. Fear can create short bursts of results, but it’s not sustainable in the long run. I learned that people do their best work when they feel trust and clarity, not when they’re trying to avoid punishment.

This is exactly how I envision entrepreneurship: being busy on my own terms

I officially launched my business in spring 2025. Some days I work 16 hours and I love it, and other days I might work zero. I decide when and what I do. I really enjoy learning new things, and this is a completely new world for me.

At times, it feels overwhelming because I have 100 ideas competing in my head, so I have to work on focusing.

I’ve been published in the media, spoken on podcasts, created my first online course, trained small business teams, and worked with high-level individuals — all things I had never done before. Recently, I hired my first employee part-time.

I wish I had known earlier that isolation is not the challenge I expected

For me, it’s actually the opposite. I’m part of many communities and groups, so I often have to step back to focus on my top priorities.

The real difference from corporate life is that now, even when I feel overwhelmed, it’s because of my own choices — and that feels like freedom.