Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, introduces the SpaceX Dragon V2 spaceship at the SpaceX headquarters on Thursday, May 29, 2014, in Hawthorne, Calif. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong Peter Thiel worked with some impressive talent back in the early days of PayPal, but one person stood out from the rest of them.

On the second day of the Launch Conference in San Francisco, Thiel was asked by moderator Jason Calacanis about which member of the Paypal cohort impressed him the most.

He hedged at first, explaining that he found all of them extremely talented, but he caved at the last moment, citing Elon Musk as the one who impressed him the most.

He said:

"Elon is super impressive, because he's done something outside of the IT space... I also think it's harder to do things in the world of atoms."

Earlier, when asked about Tesla, Thiel said that "he would never bet against Elon in anything."

Notable members of the 'PayPal mafia' include: