00:23:28 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:23:28] S1: And you spread that across funds. Don't even think about like, Oh, we did in this fund, we're maxed out, we'll do it. [00:23:34] S0: Well, mean, you know, there were some advantages. Now, didn't have that advantage early on. Let's just be clear, SpaceX didn't work, Founders Fund would not exist. We bet our careers essentially on SpaceX. And I love that, which goes into why I'm doing what I'm doing now, is exclusively that. But I love elite athletes betting their career on something. Truly elite talented people betting their career on something, that's what I love. I think we were just really, really good at that. At Founders Fund, we weren't trying to do portfolio management, we were trying to put the most money in to the best companies possible. [00:24:14] S1: I think it was really funny when I talked to you on the phone the other week, I think this was maybe the day the SpaceX S1 came out, you're like, Yeah, whatever, I'm not going to read that. Why am I going to read that? [00:24:25] S0: I wouldn't really understand what I was reading. There's probably a lot of financial stuff in there, and to me, it's just like, Oh, Rocket's cool. Elon, greatest founder in history. Great. It's a different calculation for me than pouring over a prospectus. There are other people who are great at that. Some of my partners at Founders Fund are great at that. Napoleon is probably one of the best in the world at being able to really do that and understand the company. Great. There's his edge. It's not my edge. I don't put skill points into it.
00:24:25 · Brian Singerman, Molly O'Shea
[00:24:25] S0: I wouldn't really understand what I was reading. There's probably a lot of financial stuff in there, and to me, it's just like, Oh, Rocket's cool. Elon, greatest founder in history. Great. It's a different calculation for me than pouring over a prospectus. There are other people who are great at that. Some of my partners at Founders Fund are great at that. Napoleon is probably one of the best in the world at being able to really do that and understand the company. Great. There's his edge. It's not my edge. I don't put skill points into it. [00:24:51] S1: And then when you invested into SpaceX, this is 2007, 2008? [00:24:55] S0: 2008. [00:24:55] S1: 2008, they had three failed rocket launches. How did you gain that conviction? You met Elon, what was he like?
00:24:55 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:24:55] S1: 2008, they had three failed rocket launches. How did you gain that conviction? You met Elon, what was he like? [00:25:04] S0: I didn't really know Elon back then. Remember, I had just started at Founders Fund. Did get to sit through one meeting with him. I've since met him several times, but back then, I was a new junior person starting at Founders Fund. But I did get to talk with the group about it and back then it was just the most amazing thing. It still is, right? There's still no other rocket companies that get up with that kind of I don't know when it's going be air, but a Blue Origin thing just did not work. It's still pretty amazing. And one of my greatest startup camaraderie moments in history in my career was being able to go to the Hawthorne office when we did get the first successful Falcon to actually complete a launch. It was like the most amazing camaraderie experience of my life, even more than the startups that I was at or Google or whatever. And yeah, it's just like one of those things. It's like an end of one historic thing to be part of. [00:26:03] S1: What do you think the key traits are that he has, that he implements within his teams? Obviously vertical integration.
00:26:03 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:26:03] S1: What do you think the key traits are that he has, that he implements within his teams? Obviously vertical integration. [00:26:09] S0: There's no other person like Elon because he's the only person that truly could be the CEO and CTO of a company like SpaceX. Nobody else exists like that. It's like, Levchin kind of, right? In some ways, because he's that he could be a CTO and he is a great CEO, right? But it's very, very uncommon to be the best from a novel business, understanding the execution side, as well as the technical side. There's never been anybody like that in the history of business. [00:26:44] S1: Are you surprised at all by how much progress he's making now with all of the new launches? Not just rocket launches, but TeraFab? [00:26:54] S0: Oh, nothing surprises me. [00:26:55] S1: Nothing surprises you? [00:26:56] S0: No? No. I mean, it's got the best team in the world. These things snowball, and so when you're committed, and plus when you're somebody like that who's truly mission driven and truly driven to achieve all these things from a, even just from a, Oh, I want to make more money. I'm the richest person in the world. From an actual what the company is doing perspective, yeah, you tend to hire really, really, really good people. Yeah, no, not surprised at all with what that company is doing now. [00:27:30] S1: We just did a walkthrough tour of Impulse. [00:27:33] S0: Oh yeah.
00:27:33 · Brian Singerman, Molly O'Shea
[00:27:33] S0: Oh yeah. [00:27:34] S1: And I did a sit down with Eric Roma as well, but we did a walking tour through their first facility with Tom Not their El Segundo one, but we did a walking tour of that facility. Towards the end, we got into some SpaceX questions. I was like, Starlink is the topic du jour right now because they're hitting inflection point scale. And so I asked him, I was like, did you know when you started rolling out Starlink that it was going be this big? He said, absolutely. Let's get as many as we can out All [00:28:07] S0: of us knew. A lot of us have been talking about, oh, Starlink is the truth. You need the launch business in order to do this and that, but we all knew that Starlink was the business for a long time. [00:28:19] S1: Market wise though, why? Because you thought old telecoms and all these [00:28:24] S0: others It's would just an end of one company. I'm bullish on launch going forward, but the applications of launch are where everything is at, right? And like telecom and global telecom, I mean, it's pretty huge. [00:28:42] S1: So, talked a bit about Teal, we talked about Elon. Of your portfolio that you were involved in early investments was, and I will repeat this, but I'm sure you'll correct me, it was SpaceX, Palantir, [00:28:58] S0: Airbnb Well, I didn't need Space X or whatever. [00:29:00] S1: Maybe you [00:29:01] S0: were a part of it? [00:29:01] S1: Was part of the team. Many people can say that they were
00:29:01 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:29:01] S1: Was part of the team. Many people can say that they were [00:29:04] S0: I on those just want to make it clear. It's not like I'm trying to sit here and say, Oh, I led SpaceX. No way. [00:29:09] S1: Congratulations. [00:29:12] S0: But sorry, go on. The other big one is that I was a part of the team. The other thing is that Founders Fund, tend to not do individual credit on things, A lot of people are involved. But yes, we can talk about it from a perspective of like, was helping drive the team on some of these investments. [00:29:29] S1: So, you were helping drive the team on SpaceX, Palantir, Airbnb. You were on these deal teams. [00:29:38] S0: Palantir, yes, but remember that Palantir, Peter is a co founder of Palantir. So, that one was like we put a lot of money into it. I think we put like 30 something percent of [00:29:50] S1: You put 33% of fund investment. [00:29:53] S0: Think that [00:29:53] S1: sounds $75,000,000 of a $240,000,000 fund at a billion dollar valuation. [00:29:58] S0: Very good, Molly. That's something like that. That was pretty bold. Now, Peter was a co founder there. I think I put that one in a special bucket because Peter's co founder there. But then, Airbnb, Stripe, StemCentrix, even like things like Anduril, Affirm, obviously. [00:30:18] S1: And StemCentrics was one of your first exits? [00:30:21] S0: Maybe. It was one of the first bigger exits, but I don't know anything about biotech. That was just a bet on it because I knew how good the team was. [00:30:28] S1: That's crazy.