# Stephen Oskoui Managing partner and co-founder of [[Gigafund]], the Austin firm he launched with [[Luke Nosek]] in 2017 after both left [[Founders Fund]]. Oskoui is the **political half of the Gigafund partnership** — the partner with a documented super PAC record, and the direct channel through which [[Peter Thiel]] money reached [[Ron Paul]]'s 2012 presidential campaign. ## Background Oskoui studied computer science at Stanford. Before venture capital he founded and ran **Smiley Media**, a performance-marketing company he grew to roughly **$50 million in annual revenue with no outside funding**, earning two *Inc.* 500 listings. Earlier, he published laser-fusion research and was a **1997 Westinghouse Science Talent Search finalist**. He later joined [[Founders Fund]] as a venture partner, which is where the working relationship with [[Luke Nosek]] formed. As an angel investor he put **$3 million** into Rover and brokered its merger with Revcontent. ## Endorse Liberty and the Thiel-Ron Paul Channel In 2012 Oskoui **co-founded and served as president of [[Endorse Liberty]]**, the super PAC supporting the [[Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign]], and helped secure **$2.6 million** in donations from [[Peter Thiel]]. **The commonly cited figure for his own giving is wrong.** Secondary sources describe "$125,000 in personal contributions plus $296,000 in media services." The FEC record shows **fourteen contributions to Endorse Liberty totaling roughly $688,718** — about **2.4 times** the reported amount, and **17.5% of everything the committee raised**. The two familiar numbers are real but partial: the $296,230.04 in-kind media services (Jan 15, 2012) and the $125,000 cash contribution (Jan 24, 2012) are the two largest of the fourteen, not the whole. Together, Oskoui and [[Peter Thiel]] supplied **83.5%** of the PAC's $3.94M. The full donor ladder is on [[Endorse Liberty]]. Two details deserve emphasis. First, roughly **$196,000 of Oskoui's money arrived in July and August 2012** — months after Paul had stopped campaigning — funding down-ballot and delegate-adjacent work rather than a nomination bid. Second, the PAC's spending was **digital-first** (Facebook, Google, StumbleUpon) at a time when super PACs bought television, which is recognizably the instinct of a man who had built a $50M-a-year performance-marketing company. This is load-bearing for the vault's chronology of the [[Tech Right]]. Endorse Liberty is the earliest large-scale instance of Silicon Valley [[Libertarianism]] being converted into organized electoral money through a super PAC — years before the same network converged on [[Donald Trump]], and structurally a rehearsal for it. ## The Rest of the Record Oskoui's FEC record runs to **21 entries, 2007 through 2021**, and it is ideologically consistent in a way [[Luke Nosek]]'s is not: | Date | Recipient | Amount | |---|---|---| | Dec 16, 2007 | Ron Paul 2008 Presidential Campaign Committee | $2,300 | | Jun 30, 2011 | Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign Committee | $2,500 | | Sep 28 & Oct 21, 2011 | Revolution PAC (pro-Ron Paul) | $10,010 | | Dec 2011 – Dec 2012 | **[[Endorse Liberty]]** (14 contributions) | **~$688,718** | | Mar 23, 2015 | [[Rand Paul]] for US Senate + Rand Paul Victory Committee | $5,000 | | Dec 14, 2021 | **[[Blake Masters]] for Senate** | **$2,900** | Every single contribution goes to the Paul family, its super PACs, or a [[Peter Thiel]] candidate. Where Nosek gave to both parties for two decades before turning Republican, Oskoui has been funding one continuous libertarian-to-Thiel-network project for nearly twenty years. The [[Blake Masters]] contribution is the point of convergence: **both [[Gigafund]] partners funded Thiel's 2022 Arizona Senate candidate** — Oskoui in December 2021, [[Luke Nosek]] in March 2022. ## Gigafund (2017-) Oskoui and [[Luke Nosek]] founded [[Gigafund]] in 2017, initially seeking **$100 million** and organized around long-duration concentrated positions — above all in [[SpaceX]], where Gigafund states it has invested **over $1 billion**. Oskoui is listed as **managing partner**; Nosek as partner and the holder of the SpaceX board seat. The division of labor is visible in the public record: Nosek carries the [[PayPal Mafia]] pedigree, the board seat, and the Musk relationship; Oskoui carries the firm's operating structure and the longer, more ideologically consistent political history. Both, by 2022, were writing checks to the same Thiel candidate. ## See Also - [[Gigafund]] - [[Luke Nosek]] - [[Endorse Liberty]] - [[Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign]] - [[Founders Fund]] - [[Peter Thiel]] - [[Ron Paul]] - [[Rand Paul]] - [[Blake Masters]] - [[SpaceX]] - [[Libertarianism]] - [[Tech Right]] - [[Dark Money]]