The outfit, which Denton launched in 2002 with two egregiously underpaid bloggers in his apartment, on Spring Street in Manhattan, had become an Internet innovator, disrupter, and powerhouse-an “octopus with chainsaws,” someone once called it-consisting not just of its eponymous gossip Web site but six others covering everything from design and tech (Gizmodo) to sports (Deadspin) to women’s issues (Jezebel) to cars (Jalopnik) to video games (Kotaku) to self-help tips (Lifehacker). Bitchy, Breezy, and SnarkyĪt his high-water mark, before the Hogan lawsuit, Denton owned 40 percent of Gawker Media, a company valued at as much as $300 million to $400 million. In settling, Thiel has shut that process down. In court as in chess, Thiel had said, “you must begin by studying the endgame.” And the endgame of Hogan’s case may well have been a verdict that was either slashed or overturned on appeal-and a defendant, Denton, who would thereby be at least partly vindicated. The papers had picked up much of what the generally circumspect Thiel had said at a press conference two days before the deal was announced, including his support for Donald Trump and his continued attacks on Gawker, which he called a “singularly sociopathic bully.” But it overlooked a thought that Thiel, a lawyer and a chess master, had cribbed from Jose Raul Capablanca, the great Cuban champion. “Good riddance,” Thiel later said of its demise.ĭenton, though, was not the only one who wanted the case resolved. But Univision swallowed up only six of its seven Web sites, which generated 20 percent of its traffic and revenue and, according to Denton, 80 percent of its tsuris, was left to die. It was far more than Denton could handle, and it led in August to the fire sale of Gawker Media to Univision for $135 million. It was the largest invasion of privacy payday ever against a major media company, and perhaps the first ever to bankrupt one. And by the time Denton and I spoke, Thiel had annihilated them all more completely than even he could have imagined, thanks to a Florida jury’s awarding Hogan $140 million in his Thiel-funded lawsuit last March, sending Gawker Media and Denton into bankruptcy and then killing off altogether. For by the time he received that note Thiel had already begun pouring millions of dollars into a campaign to crush Denton and Gawker Media, using Hulk Hogan, of all people, as his cudgel. “Nothing came of it,” Denton told me, and this is not surprising. I remember only that it was perfectly polite, and that whatever else he may have been thinking, Thiel had agreed to have that cup of coffee. (“Just manners,” he explained.) He did show me what Thiel had written, but would not let me copy it down. “I’m not going to share that with you,” he told me, at least not without getting Thiel’s permission. He then read me Thiel’s response: “Nick, I’m not sure that a political conversation would be that constructive, but. “Let me know if there’s a conversation to be had.” He closed with “Regards, Nick.” It was such stories that had led Thiel, in 2009, to label Valleywag “the Silicon Valley equivalent of Al Qaeda” and to liken its writers to terrorists. Both before and after that, Valleywag and Gawker had continued to ridicule Thiel, his investment decisions, his ideas, and his friends. “Does Nick Denton wish he were Peter Thiel?” a headline on Denton’s own once asked.īut, in 2007, Gawker’s Silicon Valley tributary, Valleywag, had outed Thiel, or at least Thiel thought it had. “Nauseatingly successful” was how Denton once described him. Both were wealthy still in 2014, though as winner of one of Silicon Valley’s greatest daily doubles-he co-founded PayPal and was Facebook’s first big investor-Thiel was exponentially more so, a fact that stuck in the ultra-competitive Denton’s craw. Both have resisted getting old, Denton by attitude, Thiel through human growth hormones. Both are libertarians, and nonconformists, and visionaries, and science-fiction fans, and workaholics, and wonks. Both are gay, and both came out relatively late. Both made their fortunes in the digital world in fact, it had brought them together in San Francisco a dozen or so years earlier. Both graduated from fancy universities-Denton from Oxford and Thiel from Stanford. Both were born in Europe-Denton in England and Thiel in Germany. They are contemporaries: Denton turned 50 this past August, and Thiel 49 two months later. It could easily have been a message to a friend, or at least a kindred spirit, for, as many people who know them both have noted, the two have so much in common. One day in September 2014 the publisher of Gawker Media, Nick Denton, sent an e-mail to Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and billionaire.
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