00:33:39 · Brian Singerman
[00:33:39] S0: Specifically, like these emerging or whatever you want to call it, Same thing. It's the same thing, but without the imposter syndrome. I'll know in the first five minutes if I don't think somebody is an A plus GP, and the work is I'll meet with somebody and be like, Oh! What I'm actually looking for is, Hey, is there some chance this person could have beaten me in my prime? Playing their game. Their game is not going to be the same as mine. You're not going beat me at my game, but playing their game, could they beat me in my prime? If the answer is maybe, right? Then I want to spend more time with them and I want to work with them. And so that's what I'm doing now. I'm spending a whole bunch of time with these GPs. I'll know immediately if they definitely are not, but it'll take spending a bunch of time with them to think, Oh, person actually could have beaten me. We would have hired this person at Founders Fund if there was, but they're not hireable. And so that's what I'm looking for now. And it's the same motion as when I was dealing with Founders pitching other than there's no imposter syndrome. So it can be like very much no holds barred from minute one. It doesn't have to be like a sense of politeness and I don't like small talk and I don't like preamble. Like I'm very much into, okay, let's get to the meat. So I like getting to the meat like real quick with these GPs and like challenging them on this kind of stuff. And it's harder to do that with founders because you always need to be much more respectful and genuinely because I had never done it. So who am I to like, rip whatever they're doing from immediately? This I can rip immediately.
00:35:22 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:35:22] S1: With these, are the main themes that you're seeing out of this new cohort of GPs and funds? [00:35:29] S0: What do you mean, in terms of what they're investing in? Don't know. [00:35:32] S1: No, their style. [00:35:35] S0: All different. [00:35:36] S1: I think, though, for a fact, a lot of people are trying to rip off the Founders Fund concentration strategy. Everybody, of a sudden, let's go after vertical integration, let's go after concentration bets. [00:35:49] S0: I'm very good at spotting when something is somebody's natural versus when they're trying to say things they think that I want to hear. I think that is one of the things that you have to get really good at. It's okay, it's the bullshit meter. Is somebody saying something because you can tell they think you want to hear it? Right? Or is somebody truly being themselves? I love when people are truly themselves. And when I can see that their natural self can be dominant, that's what I love. Just talk naturally because you don't know what I'm looking for. I'm open to any strategy under the sun. I'm open to somebody being the best in the world at whatever it is. I just have to be convinced that they're the best at their strategy. [00:36:34] S1: Who do you think the most naturally authentic people are? [00:36:36] S0: Oh, I don't know. We've talked about some of them like authentic people. I mean, I think I'm fortunate to be around a lot of authentic people. One of the things I always say though is like, Cyan Bannister is one of the most authentic people. [00:36:46] S1: Oh my gosh.
00:36:46 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:36:46] S1: Oh my gosh. [00:36:47] S0: One of the most pure authentic people in the world. She is just her. She's one of my best friends and her husband, Scott. Are two extremely authentic. They are who they are. You know people, as one example, but I know a lot of. [00:37:03] S1: That's a real, I literally, that was the top person that I thought of. Cyan Cyan was the first person that came to my mind. I spent a really good amount of time with her and the Long Journey Ventures team. Shout out to Long Journey. [00:37:17] S0: Shout out.
00:37:17 · Brian Singerman, Molly O'Shea
[00:37:17] S0: Shout out. [00:37:18] S1: They're great. Last fall, and we just bonded so well. We think very similarly about things. We were going through this exercise. We were doing lots of thought experiments, kind of like opening your mind and then reflecting in all this kind of like cool, down to earth conceptual frameworks. And I was like, I travel so much. I don't want to own anything. I just wish, like, I had a cloud of things I could just pop into any location and would be there. With Uber Eats, you can do that. You can literally order clothes on Uber Eats. This is not a plug, I swear. So we bonded over that, but I've never she is one of the most successful female investors, and for me, being in a male dominated industry, there's really a few of them, but she is such a purely authentic person, and then she's extremely talented and such a good investor. Yes. Great, agreed? Agreed. She's phenomenal. When I spend time, and it's great because I have the opportunity to spend time with these individuals, over the last year or so doing these interviews, I spent, I spent time with her. I did the android tour Palmer Lucky. You cannot replicate that guy.
00:38:33 · Brian Singerman
[00:38:33] S0: Literally going to be the other person that I would have said, really, like talk about somebody who's like, just caricature portrayed by the rest of the media as totally not. Palmer Luckey is one of the most honest, real people that there is, and from an insane talent. Palmer though. So Palmer is one of the most talented from a like visionary, crazy product idea that could actually work. Like Oculus was one of the very first companies. So I was the first investor in Oculus and Oculus was a company that I invested in, not just on the straight, I mean, Brendan Palmer, great, like, I was like, try the actual product and I'm not a product person, but I tried the actual product and was like, Oh, I'm blown away by this. So, had to invest. And I never do that from a product perspective. I'm much more of an individual person, but to have that kind of thing, and he's such an honest person, Palmer also knows what he is really good at and what he needs to supplement. There's no other founder in history like Elon, but as one person who could do it all. The Anduril founding team are all so complimentary to each other and different, but respect each other so much and are good in different ways that not any one of them, not any one of the four of them could have like pulled this off. But I do think that the cohesive founding team is better than Elon. Not one person, but a team is. And Palmer is such a huge part of that. He's just like a genuine guy. Besides Cyan, he was like the next person I thought of to say in the answer to your question.
00:40:12 · Molly O'Shea, Brian Singerman
[00:40:12] S1: A 100%. It's like, also, you could throw anything at him. He has a reference for it. [00:40:18] S0: Sure. [00:40:18] S1: I was like, Oh, this will be a funny question. What would War on the Moon look like? [00:40:22] S0: He will have studied that. [00:40:23] S1: He was like, Well, I read that in a book. It's called blah blah blah blah. [00:40:26] S0: That's an easy one for him, because he definitely would have studied that one. Yes. [00:40:31] S1: That's an easy one. But he's truly authentic and very cool. Alex Karp is definitely an [00:40:37] S0: author There's of lot of actual authentic people in this business. As we were talking about off camera, there's a lot that are not, But there really are, you never be able to tell from how tech media or mainstream media characterize people who genuinely is you'd think, Oh, that's a villain or whatever, like just by reading this, you know, this kind of nonsense, but they're genuinely are amazing. Awesome, talented, really true to themselves, like genuine real people. Like, you use the term down to earth, I don't know about if I'd use that same term, but I like to use the term genuine. Genuinely them. They're not trying to be somebody else. They're not trying to fit apart. They're just being them. And I love that. I'm attracted to when I meet that in a new GP, I'm attracted to that. Somebody who is just being them, not trying to play the game. [00:41:38] S1: As a master of games or a lover of games, why do people play the posturing game when it's so obvious to everybody who's on the inside?