Mr. Luke Nosek

A Polish-born American entrepreneur, he received a B.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the summer of 1995, while still in college, he co-founded SponsorNet New Media, Inc., along with fellow UIUC students Max Levchin and Scott Banister. He then worked for Netscape Communications Corporation. In 1998, with Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Ken Howery, he co-founded PayPal, serving as its Vice President of Marketing and Strategy, creating the company's "instant transfer" product. PayPal was initially a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company; an application that allowed individuals to "beam" sums of money between handheld devices such as mobile phones, Palm Pilots, and pagers. After PayPal went public and was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, he left PayPal to travel and pursue angel investing; a process whereby an affluent individual provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. In 2005, together with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, he started Founders Fund, a San Francisco based venture capital firm with over $1B under management. He currently sits on the boards of SpaceX, Pathway Genomics, and ResearchGate.