Peter Thiel last August Photo: Art Streiber for Fortune The famed investor says the fracking revolution, fuel efficiency standards, and slowing demand have only bought us time in the search for a true technological breakthrough Peter Thiel, whom we profiled in September in the cover story “ Peter Thiel Disagrees With You ,” is the founder of two billion-dollar companies (PayPal EBAY 0.46% and Palantir), a venture capitalist (his flagship Founders Fund now manages $2 billion in assets), a hedge fund manager, the first outside investor in Facebook FB -0.15% , and the author of the recently released book about launching startups, Zero to One . When his hedge fund, Clarium Capital, launched in 2002, Thiel followed a peak-oil thesis, which paid off splendidly as oil prices rose from about $40 to $140. But prices fell off a cliff in 2008, the fund got clobbered, and institutional investors fled. […]