“Competition is for losers.”

That’s Peter Thiel talking, again and again, about his big rule for success.

It means go where other people haven’t yet, something he famously did in the 1990s by co-founding PayPal Holdings Inc., and then even more famously, in the 2000s, by throwing $500,000 at a hoodied Harvard kid and something called TheFacebook.

His iconoclastic streak has made Thiel a rich man -- richer than ever, in fact, with his data-mining company, Palantir Technologies Inc., soaring on the stock market. Today he’s worth $5.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

But if, after a point, money is just a way to keep score, even his latest coup with Palantir can’t disguise this fact: Peter Thiel may be one of the best investors in Silicon Valley, but his track record is decidedly mixed.

The same against-the-grain approach that has paid off so handsomely, with early bets on SpaceX, Spotify Technology SA and Airbnb Inc. has also backfired spectacularly from time to time. Next to that Harvard kid, Mark Zuckerberg, Thiel’s fortune is a pittance. Zuckerberg is worth $104.1 billion while Elon Musk, another techno-contrarian whose initial fortune was born from PayPal, has a net worth of $102.9 billion, up $75 billion this year alone.

Thiel didn’t respond to multiple emails and calls to a spokesperson requesting comment.

His biggest win, Facebook Inc., was also his biggest miss. He sold most of his stake in 2012 through a prearranged stock-trading plan at an average price of less than $20 a share. His foray into hedge funds ended in disaster after he misread the global economy and the markets.

Thiel founded Clarium Capital around the same time he sold out of PayPal. He started the hedge fund with $10 million, mostly his own money, and positioned it to profit off market swings caused by global events, placing bets in line with his contrarian worldview.

Clarium initially thrived as several of Thiel’s predictions bore out, particularly the rising cost of oil and the collapse of the U.S. housing market. At its peak in mid-2008, the fund managed $7.2 billion.

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