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.
00:30:28 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:30:28] S1: That's crazy. [00:30:30] S0: I just never seen it. There's never been another CEO of a biotech company like that. [00:30:37] S1: Right. I think like the biggest thing that I was, I was looking at all these names and I've listened to you on, on interviews and listened to you speak. It's like, you're so down to earth about it. Like, you're very clear that like, you're not an expert in these things. You have high conviction on the founders. [00:30:53] S0: I know what I'm good at. And I know what I'm not good at. And I don't try and pretend to be good at most things. I don't feel the need to do the whole VC, Oh, I know about everything. Nonsense. [00:31:06] S1: So, what are you looking for in these founders? What are the main capabilities?
00:31:06 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:31:06] S1: So, what are you looking for in these founders? What are the main capabilities? [00:31:09] S0: What was I looking for? I'm not doing pitch meetings anymore. It's hard to put into words. Think we had a one time I had an author come into Founders Fund to try and help us put into words what is a Founders Fund founder? And we never could figure out the proper words for it. The one thing about us is we all approach these things from slightly different perspectives, but we could all generally agree on, woah, this person is actually really good. I think that's what the other thing, part that made Founders Fund work is like all these contrarian people with no cohesion around the type of business, other than the monopoly thesis and all that. But where we all did come together was we were all on somewhat the same page with, Oh, this is an actual A plus founder. Not just like an A minus founder, an actual A plus founder, of which I think there's very few. [00:32:08] S1: Does that avoid Do you get them at maturity, or do you think that they have potential? You
00:32:08 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:32:08] S1: Does that avoid Do you get them at maturity, or do you think that they have potential? You [00:32:17] S0: probably see the potential, but to me, my style was a little bit later. You probably can see that somebody is really good at the very start, but I need to see that paired with execution just because I don't know how to do execution. And so, I can take the whole like, Oh, this person's probably A plus and maybe make an investment. But from an execution perspective, I need to kind of see the execution because I don't know anything about execution. This goes back to the strategy versus tactics thing. Couldn't actually never run a company. It's one of the reasons I wanted to retire from venture capital. When I would talk to these founders, I was always pretty good at corporate strategy and I was really good at figuring out if the person was A plus but there was always some sense of imposter syndrome. I've never founded a company. I have no idea. I don't try and claim that I could run a company. So you'd always find people who could in really, really, really good ways. Why when you run into like a Max Levgen, you're like, Oh, this person can run a company. You're like, Great. Because I could never do it. But on the thing that I'm doing now, no, there's no imposter syndrome. So that I can do. [00:33:25] S1: Yeah. I wanted to ask about that. So of the individuals I reached out to, Scott Nolan was one of them, and he was curious how you're applying that framework to investing in funds. Fund investors.