Tom Currier

An October 2026 article in First Round Review, published by First Round CapitalFirst Round CapitalVenture capital firm.Open the full entry, writes that he was a Stanford UniversityStanford UniversityStanford University is a research university in California founded by Leland and Jane Stanford in 1885 and opened in 1891.Open the full entry sophomore when he applied to the first class of the Thiel Fellowship, and that his application crystallized a lot of what the selectors were looking for.⁠[1]

Sources differ on what he studied at Stanford University: a November 2013 Associated PressAssociated PressThe Associated Press is a cooperative news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it is the oldest and largest news agency in the United States.Open the full entry story says he dropped out of Stanford’s computer science program, while a January 2015 SFist article says he was in Stanford’s physics program and left after his sophomore year when he earned a $100,000 Thiel fellowship. A June 2015 SFist article also writes that he left Stanford with $100,000 and no degree after being selected as a Thiel Fellow.⁠[2][3][4]

First Round Review writes that in his application he described growing enough bamboo in his parents’ backyard to build a house; the application also included a pitch for robotic solar panels that followed the sun, but the article says it stood out less for that pitch than for his creativity, ambition and progress and for all the ways he had been a builder and maker. Danielle Strachman contrasted it with applications that read, “If I get this, I’ll do X, Y, and Z,” saying that his was like, “I’m in school right now, I’m doing this thing, I’m really excited about it.”⁠[1]

On May 25, 2011, TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry published the list of the first 24 Thiel Fellowship fellows, chosen from more than 400 applicants under 20 (20 had originally been planned); each was to receive $100,000 from the Thiel Foundation over a two-year tenure. The list places Tom Currier in the “Energy” group, together with Jim Danielson, Eden FullEden FullEden Full (also Eden Full Goh) is a Canadian engineer, inventor and entrepreneur who invented the SunSaluter, a low-cost device that makes solar panels track the sun using water and gravity, and founded the nonprofit of the same name; she left Princeton University in 2011 as a member of the first class of the Thiel Fellowship and in 2018 founded Mobot, a company that tests mobile apps with mechanical robots, of which she is CEO.Open the full entry and Sujay TyleSujay TyleSujay Tyle is an American entrepreneur and angel investor and one of the first Thiel Fellows; he co-founded and led Frontier Car Group, a used-car marketplace for emerging markets, and later co-founded Merama, a Latin American e-commerce brand company, of which he is chief executive officer.Open the full entry.⁠[5]

Inc. described him in April 2016 as a serial entrepreneur and a Thiel Fellow, one of the students who took $100,000 from the venture capitalist Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry to drop out and pursue entrepreneurship.⁠[6]

In the First Round Review article, Dylan FieldDylan FieldDylan Field is the co-founder and CEO of Figma and an angel investor. He studied computer science and mathematics at Brown University, explored browser-based design tools with Evan Wallace, and founded Figma in 2012 with support from the Thiel Fellowship. His personal history also includes collecting digital art and investing in companies such as Mercury and Socket.Open the full entry recalls that Tom Currier, a fellow from the first class, said to him something like, “You have two years when you can do anything you want...so why aren’t you trying to do something really hard and meaningful?”⁠[1]

Inc. wrote in April 2016 that he was a co-founder and the chief technology officer of the solar energy technology startup QBotix and that his LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry page says he left in 2012. The article adds that QBotix had shut down operations the previous September and that, by his account, its intellectual property was sold in a deal whose details he could not disclose.⁠[6]

Among the patents assigned to QBotix, Inc. listed by Justia Patents, U.S. Patent 8881720 was issued on November 11, 2014, with Thomas Currier as the sole inventor; its abstract concerns real-time control of a heliostat array or CPV/PV module that reduces actuation cost. U.S. Patent 8442790, a robotic controller for the autonomous calibration and inspection of solar surfaces, was issued on May 14, 2013; its inventors are Daniel Fukuba, Jos Goble, Salomon Trujillo, Thomas Joseph Currier and Wasiq Bokhari, and an application with the same inventors and abstract was published on September 12, 2013 (publication 20130238271).⁠[7]

SFist writes that he worked on his first startup in East Palo Alto and later joined friends at Black Box Mansion, a community house for startup builders in Atherton, an experience that inspired him to start Campus.⁠[3]

An Associated Press story of November 18, 2013, writes that he, then 22, ran four large tech houses in the San Francisco Bay Area: Dragon Stone, the Lodge, Olympus and Founder’s Nest.⁠[2]

TechCrunch wrote on April 21, 2014, that Campus, which he ran, was a networked community of nine coliving properties around San Francisco, including a new 21-bedroom house near the Panhandle; each house had a hot tub and a budget for monthly group events, members could reserve a community cabin in Tahoe, and some houses had themes such as meditation or yoga. He put rent at $1,000 to $2,200 per room. Members could switch rooms within the network for a night, a month or beyond, and Campus had a grant program for people who were “cash poor but project ready.”⁠[8]

In the article he asked, “How connected are you to your neighbors or your current roommates?” and said that Campus “only seems like tech because I, and those involved, have a strong tech network here,” adding, “But this is really an answer to those seeking a sense of community.” He also said that a communal space focused on journalism might someday exist.⁠[8]

TechCrunch wrote in July 2015 that Campus, founded by the Thiel Fellow Tom Currier, had been raising about $5 million in funding the previous year.⁠[9]

His profile page on the Daring Collective website says that he was an entrepreneur in residence at Founders FundFounders FundFounders Fund is a venture capital firm founded in San Francisco in 2005 by Peter Thiel and his former PayPal colleagues Ken Howery and Luke Nosek. Run by partners who were entrepreneurs themselves, it argues that founders should keep more control and is known for betting on difficult technology projects in areas such as space, defense, and artificial intelligence. It was Palantir’s first institutional investor, has invested in SpaceX many times since 2008, and its other notable investments include Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril; as of March 2026 it had raised nine early-stage funds and four growth funds.Open the full entry, where he focused on building Campus and helped the team make investments.⁠[10]

SFist wrote on January 9, 2015, that he, then 23, was the CEO and co-founder of Campus, an investment-backed property management startup that operated 20 houses in the Bay Area and four in New York, holding 4 to 24 residents each, all remodeled and furnished and many with yards and hot tubs. Members paid a small membership fee plus $1,000 to $2,200 a month for a single or shared room on month-to-month terms; Campus employees handled repairs, cleaning, supplies and conflict resolution, and membership included shared access to vacation houses in Tahoe and Napa. Applicants went through a video call and open houses, and residents chose new members on “personality fit”; members were mostly recent college graduates aged 22 to 24, many working in tech.⁠[3]

The article writes that he believed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; he said, “In college, all your needs are met, and that’s one of the happiest times in your life.” He said that Campus did not own its properties and was “much more like AirbnbAirbnbAirbnb is a travel platform for booking stays, experiences, and services, co-founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk and headquartered in San Francisco, United States; its Class A common stock trades on Nasdaq under the symbol ABNB. The business began with hosting guests in the founders’ home in 2007, then joined YC’s Winter 2009 batch, and gradually expanded into local experiences, services, and boutique hotels.Open the full entry, an interface and the organizing force behind the community living”; he held that “even entrepreneurs don’t always want to live with entrepreneurs” and said that Campus was for anyone, though he admitted that couples with newborns might want to “own their own space.” Answering critics, he said, “There’s absolutely no Ellis Act stuff going on here,” and that the company only moved into large single-family homes and never evicted anyone.⁠[3]

The article adds that he lived in an eight-person Campus house in San Francisco; he wanted to keep growing, with more houses in San Francisco and expansion to other cities, and the company was considering a name change so as not to be seen as only for recent graduates. A resident, Fontenot, said, “Tom has a radical vision.” Critics, including the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, called such houses “digerati dorms.”⁠[3]

SFist wrote on June 18, 2015, that he, as CEO, had announced that Campus would dissolve, affecting upwards of 150 residents of roughly 30 co-living houses in San Francisco and New York City. The notice to members read, “We very regretfully announce that Campus Coliving will cease operations on August 31, 2015,” said that “we were unable to make Campus into an economically viable business,” and mentioned continued attempts to alter the business model. The article writes that the company grew out of his own co-living experience.⁠[4]

TechCrunch wrote on July 16, 2015, that Campus had worked on a concept similar to Common’s, with leases for large shared houses in the Bay Area, and had announced that it would fold its nearly 30 houses; Brad Hargreaves, the General Assembly co-founder behind Common, said that Campus’ mistake was to sign short-term leases, while his own deals ran for five to 15 years.⁠[9]

Inc. wrote in April 2016 that Campus had managed 30 properties with five to 23 residents each in San Francisco and New York and had shut down in August; he said that Campus transferred the leases of roughly 25 of the houses to residents.⁠[6]

On Campus’ size and closing date, Fortune wrote in March 2016 that Campus had 34 houses in New York and San Francisco and ceased operations in June after two years of business, while an Uncubed article published by Fortune in May 2016 says that Campus had 34 spaces in San Francisco and New York City and shut down in August 2015.⁠[11][12]

In “Build Something People Want,” published on Medium on February 22, 2016, he wrote that he was “slowly, but surely” building a community of people who wanted to build new cities, with about 40 supporters, the biggest two being Luke NosekLuke NosekLuke Nosek is an investor and entrepreneur, one of the co-founders of PayPal, who launched the venture capital firm Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, later co-founded the venture capital firm Gigafund with Stephen Oskoui, and has long served as a director of SpaceX.Open the full entry and Dave Fontenot, and that his frequent Facebook posts brought inbound interest from contacts. Asking himself what he would do as the boldest version of himself, he answered “building better living environments,” and he wrote that he wanted to be “a pioneer in founding new cities.” He wrote that he had “a proven track record of being able to rebound from large scale failure,” pointing to Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry’s three failures as an example, and acknowledged that his ideas sounded “crazy” to people, some of whom were concerned about his well-being.⁠[13]

Inc. wrote in April 2016 that he had planned Kudavi, a city that would ultimately be populated by about five million creative workers and remote employees, possibly founded with about 50,000; in mid-March 2016 he said he thought it a good idea to put Kudavi on hold while virtual reality technology gained traction. The article writes that he was then focusing on SleepBus but was not giving up on Kudavi.⁠[6]

Inc. wrote on April 19, 2016, that SleepBus was born of his city-planning work; the night before the article, its first contracted bus had run from San Francisco to Los Angeles, with 11 passengers paying $48 each for bunks in a 20-bed Volvo sleeper coach. The bus left at 11 p.m. from the Caltrain station in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood and arrived at 6 a.m. at the Santa Monica Pier, with checkout at 7:30 a.m.; it offered a lounge area, free coffee and tea, free WiFi and Casper sheets on twin-sized cots, with no intermediary stops. The article puts tickets roughly in the $100 to $200 range, against $38 for Greyhound’s overnight San Francisco–Los Angeles ticket.⁠[6]

The article writes that about one in 25 people who saw SleepBus’s Facebook ads clicked through, with one ad receiving up to 203,000 views, and that as of early Tuesday morning 177 tickets for scheduled trips had sold. He estimated revenue of about $1,500 per full load and costs of about $780 per run. The plan was to run one bus every other night for two weeks and then add a second Volvo coach for daily service, and to retrofit double-decker Van Hool buses with 28 to 32 beds each. He had not raised funding; he, two Bay Area friends and two contractors in Los Angeles were running the project on money from his past ventures.⁠[6]

LAist wrote in July 2017 that about a year earlier Gaetano Crupi and his Cabin co-founder Tom Currier had tested the idea by renting a coach ordinarily used by a traveling hockey team and rechristening it the Sleep Bus; they later pulled the plug and spent a year raising capital while working out what customers really wanted. Crupi said it was a total surprise when they sold out all their tickets within 36 hours, and 20,000 people joined the waiting list. The article writes that the original concept for Cabin was not a bus but self-driving cars.⁠[14]

Hotel Designs wrote on July 4, 2017, that Cabin had announced $3.3 million in seed financing, led by Founders Fund’s FF Angel with participation from SV AngelSV AngelSV Angel is a San Francisco venture capital firm cofounded in 2009 by angel investor Ron Conway and former Google executive David Lee. It typically writes small follow-on checks in seed rounds and has invested in companies such as Airbnb, Pinterest, and Dropbox; in 2018 it said it would no longer raise new funds from outside investors, and from 2022 it set up growth funds.Open the full entry, Floodgate, Box Group, Brainchild Holdings, Justin Rosenstein, StartX, FJ Labs and 1517 Fund, and that the company had first run a pilot called SleepBus in early 2016. The article names him as Cabin’s CEO and co-founder and quotes him: “By eliminating the travel time from traveling, Cabin is giving people the freedom to get where they need to be.”⁠[15]

A September 2017 report in Bus & Motorcoach News quotes Luke Nosek, a partner at Founders Fund: “Cabin will turn costly and draining regional trips into affordable, comfortable, enjoyable experiences.”⁠[16]

TechCrunch wrote on July 22, 2017, that Cabin got its start as SleepBus, whose pilot sold out with over 4,000 attempted reservations, and that after the pilot Gaetano Crupi (co-founder and president) and Tom Currier began thinking about what nerve they had struck and raised some money; the reporter’s trip was Cabin’s first-ever voyage. Cabin then had three buses, one in each direction plus a backup, each with 24 sleep pods, running between San Francisco and Santa Monica in the Los Angeles area, leaving San Francisco at 11 p.m. and arriving in Santa Monica at 7 a.m., for $230 round trip, with bedding, free Wi-Fi, water, nighttime tea, coffee, earplugs and a melatonin supplement; the article says that Cabin was fully legal in both San Francisco and Santa Monica and that the company was considering Portland and Las Vegas.⁠[17]

LAist wrote on July 20, 2017, that Cabin’s maiden voyage had run from San Francisco to Los Angeles the previous Friday and that nightly service in both directions would start on September 1, at $115 each way; travelers checking in for the 11 p.m. trip were offered a cup of chamomile tea, and on arrival at 7 a.m. an espresso. On when Cabin launched, a September 2017 report in Bus & Motorcoach News gives June of that year.⁠[14][16]

In an Inc. column of August 30, 2017, Scott Mautz writes that Tom Currier calls the travel gap Cabin targets the “500-mile problem,” trips between two major hubs far enough apart to be a big hassle, and that 48,000 people make the Los Angeles–San Francisco trip every day, with other services accounting for only 1,000 of those journeys. Currier said demand came from value, since the bus replaced the cost of a flight, a hotel and getting to the airport; he called the travel method “teleportation” because you wake up already there, and said that combined with ride-hailing services such as UberUberUber is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco, United States, whose legal name is Uber Technologies, Inc. Co-founded by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, it uses digital platforms to connect riders with drivers, delivery consumers with merchants, and shippers with carriers, with main businesses in Mobility, Delivery, and Freight. Dara Khosrowshahi has been chief executive officer since 2017.Open the full entry in the destination cities it could eliminate the need for a car. He said other city pairs could follow, including Chicago and Minneapolis, Atlanta and Orlando, and Boston and Washington, D.C. The column writes that the prototype, a 53-foot bus pulling a 20-foot luggage trailer without suspension, failed, after which the founders switched to a high-end Belgian bus shell with a fully customized interior and suspension; the pilot sold out in three days and collected 20,000 waitlist names, and the service started at $115.⁠[18]

Bus & Motorcoach News, on September 2, 2017, names him as CEO and co-founder of Cabin and quotes him as saying that the company’s focus on sleep “separates Cabin from other forms of transportation” and that “We’re taking these 300-500 mile trips and turning them into an experience.” The report writes that Cabin called itself “the first hospitality transportation company on a mission to make the most of every waking and sleeping moment,” and that it offered service on double-decker buses between San Francisco and Los Angeles for $115 each way; it adds that the earlier SleepBus pilot sold out of tickets in three days and amassed a waitlist of more than 20,000 people.⁠[16]

On July 16, 2018, 1517 Fund published the interview “Subversion 013. Thiel Fellow Tom Currier on the Future of Transit” on Medium, introducing him as a Thiel Fellow and co-founder of Cabin, which then provided service between San Francisco and the Los Angeles region; the interview covers why the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry lacks reliable inter-city regional transit, why regional airline flights are poor, and how he envisions regional transit in a country full of highways and freeways.⁠[19]

On January 17, 2019, Streetsblog San Francisco published an article headlined “Cabin Sleep Bus is in Hibernation” about Cabin’s overnight bus service between Santa Monica and San Francisco; it writes that CEO Gaetano Crupi had earlier described in a Medium post a bump-canceling technology called Cabin Cloud that he claimed could “eliminate 80–90% of the bumpiness you feel on the road,” and said the fleet would triple in the new year.⁠[20]

His profile page on the Daring Collective website lists him as a member and co-founder of Cabin, with the tagline “Inventing new solutions to long-term travel experiences that reclaims the tiresome, unconsidered, and stressful spaces in between,” and says that he is focused on experiences that improve the environment people inhabit, from where they live to how they travel. It lists three companies: Campus Coliving, which aimed to take the pain out of moving to a new city without a social network; Qbotix, which made solar power accessible; and Cabin, “a moving hotel that transports you to your favorite places while you sleep.”⁠[10]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[21]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-currier-831a411b/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]