For the first time, a Brazilian tech entrepreneur can be found among the university dropouts set to join the Thiel Fellowship. The initiative, set up by billionaire Peter Thiel, has been giving out $100,000 to people to skip college and start a company since 2011.
Felipe Meneses, a 23-year-old hailing from the northeastern state of Sergipe, who abandoned his undergraduate degree at Stanford University, has been selected for the 2024 intake of the two-year acceleration program. “It is an exceptional opportunity,” he noted.
In 2022, Meneses joined Felipe Lamounier, Daniel Silva, and Rohan Ramanath to co-found Hyperplane, a data intelligence firm that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help banks use the data they have to take companies to enhance their customer experience under the hyper-personalization approach.
Headquartered in Silicon Valley, Meneses’s company started out in Brazil and claims to have contracts with 12 of the country’s main financial institutions. So far, Hyperplane has received 30 million reais ($6 million) in investments from backers including Lachy Groom, SV Angel, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Latitud, Atman Capital, Crestone VC, and Norte. It has also been selected to take part in Endeavor’s Scale-UP acceleration program in the first half of 2024.
Meneses is the only Latin American founder to join the Thiel Fellowship this year – in 2023, there were no entrepreneurs from the region on the list.
Latin names can be found in the 2022 list of Thiel Fellows. Entrepreneurs joining the initiative that year included Ian Lee, founder of Chile-based healthtech Examedi, which allows patients to access healthcare by connecting the availabilities of healthcare providers. The other Latin founder from the 2022 cohort is Tamara Chaya Romo, a Mexican entrepreneur leading MEDU, a company developing reusable personal protective equipment.
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