Last month, J.D. Vance flew to San Francisco to hold a fund-raiser for Donald J. Trump and to host a private dinner afterward with two dozen tech and crypto executives and investors.
The location was the opulent Pacific Heights mansion of David Sacks, an entrepreneur and podcaster whom Mr. Vance had met through the tech investor Peter Thiel. Mr. Vance, now 39 years old, had worked for one of Mr. Thiel’s investment firms in San Francisco in 2016.
During the $300,000-a-person dinner that night, Mr. Trump, seated between Mr. Sacks and another tech investor, Chamath Palihapitiya, informally polled the room about whom to choose as his running mate. Even with another vice-presidential hopeful, Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota, in attendance, Mr. Sacks, Mr. Palihapitiya and others all had the same answer: Pick Mr. Vance, they told Mr. Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the exchange.
Mr. Vance, the Ohio senator selected by Mr. Trump this week to be his running mate, spent less than five years in Silicon Valley’s tech industry, where he worked as a junior venture capitalist and a biotech executive. But while he made little mark on the tech scene, it was a formative period that has powered Mr. Vance’s stunning ascent in the Republican Party — and is likely to influence his political future.
Mr. Vance’s stint in tech was crucial for forging connections with billionaire executives and investors, including Mr. Thiel, Mr. Sacks and Elon Musk, who owns X. Over and over, those men have funded Mr. Vance’s political ambitions, raised his profile among other wealthy donors and on social media, and lobbied Mr. Trump to choose him as his running mate.
Before the 2022 midterm elections, Mr. Thiel gave $15 million to support Mr. Vance’s campaign for the Senate. Mr. Sacks donated $1 million to a political action committee backing Mr. Vance’s run. In a post on Truth Social on Monday, Mr. Trump cited Mr. Vance’s “very successful business career in Technology and Finance” as one reason he was chosen as his running mate.
“His experience in tech has absolutely influenced his thinking,” Nathan Leamer, the chief executive of Fixed Gear Strategies, a tech policy consulting firm, said of Mr. Vance. “He built rapport with some important influencers now onboard with Trump.”
Yet if Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance are elected to the White House in November, it is unclear whether Mr. Vance will be on the same page with Silicon Valley’s interests. He has praised the Federal Trade Commission, which has brought antitrust cases against tech’s biggest companies, and called for the breakup of Google because it was an “explicitly progressive technology company.”
Representatives for Mr. Vance, the Trump campaign and Mr. Sacks did not respond to requests for comment.
“J.D. is an exceptional pick,” Mr. Palihapitiya said in a text message. “We will all be better off as he works on all of our behalfs.”
Mr. Vance’s path to the tech industry began when he was a student at Yale Law School. In 2011, he met Mr. Thiel after the investor delivered a speech at Yale, where he derided the professional prospects of law students and argued that their time might be better spent in Silicon Valley.
“Peter’s talk remains the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School,” Mr. Vance wrote in a 2020 essay for a Catholic literary journal.
Mr. Vance, who graduated from Yale Law in 2013, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and worked as an executive at Circuit Therapeutics, a biotechnology company.
Frederic Moll, Circuit’s chief executive at the time, said he hired Mr. Vance because “he was a very smart guy with an impressive background in the law, but also it was a favor to Peter,” referring to Mr. Thiel. Mr. Thiel’s venture capital firm had previously invested in one of Mr. Moll’s companies.
Mr. Vance kept in touch with Mr. Thiel, who wrote a promotional blurb for Mr. Vance’s 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” Mr. Thiel also encouraged the hiring of Mr. Vance for a role at Mithril Capital, a venture firm that Mr. Thiel co-founded, a person with knowledge of the situation said.
Mr. Vance joined the firm in 2016 as a principal. Colleagues mostly remember him for introducing them to the ultra-sweet Big Red soda, a far cry from the La Croix seltzers that define Silicon Valley culture, one fellow investor said.
Around then, Mr. Vance’s profile began rising as “Hillbilly Elegy” became a best seller. While Mr. Thiel had gained attention for his support of Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance went in a different direction, calling himself a “never-Trump guy” in an interview with Charlie Rose that fall.
Several months later, Mr. Vance left Mithril Capital after butting heads with the firm’s managing partner, Ajay Royan, three people familiar with the situation said.
“J.D. is a friend, and he was a talented, valued member of the Mithril team,” Mr. Royan said in a statement.
In 2017, Mr. Vance became a partner at Revolution, a venture firm founded by the America Online co-founder Steve Case, and began splitting his time between Ohio and Washington, where the firm was based. He worked there for about 18 months.
In interviews, Mr. Case has said Mr. Vance “wasn’t really working that much” at Revolution. Mr. Case declined to comment through a spokeswoman.
In 2020, Mr. Vance founded his own venture firm, Narya Capital, in Cincinnati. He turned to his tech connections, including the former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, the billionaire investor Marc Andreessen and Mr. Thiel, to raise a $120 million fund. Mr. Thiel agreed to serve on Narya’s leadership advisory committee, a person with knowledge of the relationship said.
During this time, Mr. Vance became interested in backing tech platforms favored by conservatives, including the social network Parler. He advised Rebekah Mercer, Parler’s controlling shareholder and a major Republican donor, and considered investing in the company, two people with knowledge of the discussions said.
Narya did not ultimately invest in Parler, but invested alongside Mr. Thiel in Rumble, a YouTube competitor favored by conservatives, in 2021. Narya also invested in AppHarvest, a Kentucky-based indoor farming company, which went public in late 2020. AppHarvest filed for bankruptcy last year.
Around that time, Mr. Vance co-founded a network of major conservative donors with some tech leaders, called the Rockbridge Network. In July 2021, he announced a run for Ohio’s soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat. Mr. Thiel agreed to back him and brokered talks between Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance, who sought support from the former president.
“Like some others, J.D. Vance may have said some not so great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades,” Mr. Trump said when he eventually endorsed Mr. Vance’s Senate run.
Mr. Thiel’s relationship with Mr. Trump has since soured while Mr. Vance’s ties to the former president have strengthened. At a conference in Aspen, Colo., last month, Mr. Thiel said he would vote for Mr. Trump only “if you hold a gun to my head.”
With Mr. Vance now Mr. Trump’s running mate, Mr. Thiel is significantly more likely to back the ticket, two people close to the investor said. After Mr. Trump announced Mr. Vance as his pick on Monday, Mr. Thiel messaged close associates to express his excitement, the people said.
Mr. Vance “was very much a friend of the Thiel network going back years,” said Crystal McKellar, a venture capitalist who worked with Mr. Vance at Mithril Capital. “It seemed like Peter saw something really special in him and wanted to encourage it.”
Mr. Musk also encouraged Mr. Trump to choose Mr. Vance in private communications recently. On Monday, Mr. Musk called Mr. Vance’s selection an “excellent decision.”
Mr. Vance has relied on Mr. Sacks, whom he called “one of my closest confidants” in politics at a gala this spring. After that event, Mr. Vance introduced Mr. Sacks to Mr. Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
The former president has been impressed by Mr. Sacks’s wealth and media profile, a person familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking said, and Mr. Sacks spoke on Monday at the Republican National Convention.
At the San Francisco fund-raiser for Mr. Trump last month, Mr. Sacks returned the favor to Mr. Vance. The high-profile event, which raised $12 million for Mr. Trump’s campaign, would not have happened without Mr. Vance, Mr. Sacks said, according to a person with knowledge of his remarks there.
“This is who I want by Trump’s side,” Mr. Sacks posted on X on Monday, adding, “God bless JD, God bless Trump, and God bless the USA.”
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