Patrick Wolff 
Grandmaster Capital Management 

For Patrick Wolff, CEO of San Francisco–based hedge fund firm Grandmaster Capital Management, investing is like a game of chess. A U.S. International Grandmaster and two-time U.S. national champion in chess, Wolff played the game professionally from 1989 to 1995. After graduating from Harvard University in 1997 with a BA in philosophy, he took a job with Mercer Management Consulting before moving to Silicon Valley. 

By 2005, Wolff was working for Capital One Financial Corp. when he was asked by Peter Thiel to join his hedge fund firm, Clarium Capital Partners. Last year, Wolff left Clarium to launch Grandmaster Capital — which employs a long-short equity strategy, overlaying macro insights onto fundamental analysis — with $50 million from Thiel.