Founders Fund

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• neutral fact_claim Dave McClure

  we have a network of over 120 mentors in Silicon Valley and around the world

• neutral fact_claim Dave McClure

  we work with Gundersen and we do a very high volume of deals

• neutral fact_claim Dave McClure

  we do two forms of um investment at the accelerator we do either typically a 50 000 investment on a one million dollar valuation structure so basically five percent

• bullish assessment Dave McClure

  we're a lot more operationally focused than most other VCS

• bullish assessment Dave McClure

  we like to hit singles and doubles

• bullish assessment Dave McClure

  you might think of us as kind of the money ball for startups

• bullish assessment Dave McClure

  we do investments in what I would consider to be more Revenue focused less growth focused companies

• bullish assessment Dave McClure

  we're kind of a hybrid approach between an incubator and a seed fund

• neutral fact_claim Dave McClure

  running FF Angel which was the internal Angel fund for Founders fund

• bullish endorsement Dave McClure

  they were kind enough to sort of help me off the ground with a new vehicle

• neutral fact_claim Naval Ravikant

  This is our fourth attempt at it, by the way. Really? There are no overnight successes. There are no overnight successes. Um and what would you What was the What were the other two? Venture Hacks, just doing the blog? Venture Hacks in 2007, we actually launched a little social network called the Pound Deal Flow Network. Mhm. Which died in obscurity. Um and then in '08, uh we had a Google Group and in '09, we had a Yammer mailing list. And then 2010, we launched it just as a straight email list a

• bullish endorsement Naval Ravikant

  the critique of AngelList which even saying there's a critique of what you're doing No, but I mean that for people to critique the fact that you have and your partner have created a platform that a you know, is funding a person a day and at this place point it's probably three or four people a day. The fact that anybody could critique it to me, they're missing the point. I mean this didn't exist before and you willed it with your team into being. So it it deserves, you know, reverence as far as

• neutral assessment Naval Ravikant

  the sloppy entrepreneur who's not really thinking about that stuff, it's a little bit of a tell that maybe they won't even be there in 2 years. They'll sell when they get the first offer or they'll shut down when they hit the first road speed bump.

• neutral assessment Naval Ravikant

  unless you're extremely forward-looking and for the long haul and you and you ooze that with every fiber of your being, um you're never going to build a great business.

• neutral assessment Naval Ravikant

  the entrepreneurs were extremely deliberate in every early decision that they made. They were not haphazard. And the reason is because they really felt like they were laying the foundation for a 10-year business. None of them was thinking of it as something that they would try and flip.

• neutral assessment Naval Ravikant

  I definitely believe that as an entrepreneur you'll never accomplish anything great in life unless you stick with it through the end.

• neutral assessment Naval Ravikant

  It's also frustrating and painful as an investor cuz then you just don't know. You don't know what's going to work till it works. Maybe it goes back to the adage of, you know, you bet on great people and then you cross your fingers and you hope for the best.

• neutral assessment Naval Ravikant

  there are times when investor will look at you and say, 'Okay, you tried your best. You tried that thing. Didn't work. Pivot.' Mhm. And that'll be the right answer. Other times they'll say, 'Shut it down.' And that'll be the right answer. And other times it'll they'll say, 'Keep it going.' And that'll be the right answer. And it's highly contextual based on who you are, how big the space is, how well you know it, how many ideas you've tried, how good your iterations are, etc., etc.

• neutral assessment Naval Ravikant

  it's highly contextual, right? It's like I could tell you the 10 great pieces of advice for building a startup, but you'd have to apply them each in just the right way, just the right time, and know when to ignore half of them.

• neutral assessment Naval Ravikant

  the startup industry is now such an incredibly complex and diverse ecosystem that all generalizations like these are idiotic.

• neutral fact_claim Jason Calacanis

  the Facebook fund was part of Founders fund or was Facebook and Founders J JV between Excel and Founders fund who each put in 5 mil and then administered by Facebook until I came in and busted their chops and took it over right

• bearish assessment Peter Thiel

  I suspect the fears are a little bit overdone at this point. I think that uh I think you know full strong AI is still you know in my my judgment somewhat further away than people think.

• neutral fact_claim Peter Thiel

  we had a we had an LP meeting at Founders Fund I believe in uh 2012 where Demis the Deep Mind CEO spoke

• neutral fact_claim Peter Thiel

  we were actually seed investors in Deep Mind

• neutral fact_claim Peter Thiel

  we on the Founders Fund side back in 2007, we thought, you know, we should start doing more in biotech, more in, you know, transportation, all these sort of futuristic sci-fi like technologies. And we've maybe 20 to 25% of the capital's been invested in that. You know, 75 to 80% is still it.

• neutral fact_claim Peter Thiel

  we do everything from seed to series A to B, C, D, you know, all the way all the way up the spectrum.

• neutral fact_claim Peter Thiel

  we once went at Founders Fund, we once went through a list of absolute rules and there were about 20 or 30 of them and they add up and eventually you don't look at anything anymore.

• bullish endorsement Unattributed

  I got the call from Brian Singerman from Founders Fund. And I've co-invested with them for the past decade. And for me, it was a dream come true. Because, you know, one of the best ways to work with your friends is to collaborate with them. And, you know, I would only see Brian and Luke and, you know, all of those guys like maybe once a quarter. And now I see them every day. And to me, that is so much better. And we're working on things together. And so, I'm part of a family team that I really l

• neutral fact_claim Cyan Banister

  And at the time we were very, very stringent about investing in our backyard.

• neutral fact_claim Cyan Banister

  I have the email where I emailed Scott and I'm like UberCab we need to put money in now. Yeah. And he was like how much? I'm like 75k. Yeah. So we have we offered 75 we got pushed back to 50.

• bullish fact_claim Cyan Banister

  One of the nice things about it is you can place that bet again. Try it again. Right. And in the business we're in you only need to have one hit. You have a couple of them and the two I think probably ranked one and two. Uh we have the same one and twos which is Uber and Thumbtack.

• bullish endorsement Cyan Banister

  I really do like that cuz I didn't I wouldn't say that I was the most disciplined investor before coming here.

• bullish assessment Cyan Banister

  Here it doesn't work that way. There's, um, it's consensus-based, and we have different thresholds, uh, that require different sign-offs. And so, you have to argue sometimes with another partner about the merits of the deal and whether or not it's a fit for the funds and whether or not we think it's going to get the venture multiples that we're looking for. And so, that's harder, but at the same time it creates more discipline.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  the idea of a founder selling secondary shares was unprecedented really a warrant extremely controversial yes I remember Ron Conway and Fred Wilson I believe both came out when this started happening we're like don't this is gonna ruin startups it's had the opposite effect right

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  that's why I want to funding them as I knew them from PayPal days

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  I agree with that a funded one autonomous driving company yeah and I think the progress is out sweating we haven't announced it yet publicly so it's not one of the super famous ones but they have a differentiated approach with an awesome falender and we'll be ready to talk about it more publicly sooner rather than later

• bearish assessment Michael Kim

  someone like Founders Fund or Lightspeed would come in and write a four million dollar check at sixteen pre whereas everyone all the other seed funds we're talking about doing like three on nine right and so the founders are like well we're gonna take them we're gonna take the larger round and we'll be off to the races and so that was actually a material impact on some of our fund managers

• bullish assessment Delian Asparouhov

  I think for us, it really comes down to either teams like that, or fundamentally distribution, I think a lot of our, you know, sort of conviction around the open AI investment was the fact that they stepped into this distribution hack of chat GPT, it was totally unexpected. But to have the basically fastest growing, you know, consumer app in human history, to us, it was less of a bet on, you know, how much capital is this company raised, what is the scale of their models, etc, is that this is on

• bullish endorsement Mel Williams

  there's 15 other devins on the market, if there were, there'd be a lot more people doing the types of demos that, you know, Devon's been able to do.

• bullish assessment Delian Asparouhov

  the only two AI investments that we've made is open AI, which is, you know, probably the sort of best called, you know, the late stage incumbent. And then, you know, the second investment after that is cognition labs with, you know, Devon, the, you know, basically only, you know, sort of truly functional AI agent, you know, to, you know, replace software engineers. And so, you know, it's not like we have 15 different investments across the category, it's, you know, where do you actually see, you

• neutral fact_claim Delian Asparouhov

  at Founders Fund, we generally don't believe in telling our companies how they should run themselves, what tools they should use, what makes it most effective. The one thing that we do tell them is we do tell them to all use RAMP.

• neutral fact_claim Unattributed

  So we just led, you know, around in a poly market, poly market was obviously, you know, sort of had regulatory action against it, and it was effectively, you know, sort of banned from the United States, we still think that's a, you know, sort of platform that, you know, sort of deserves to exist, and one day should be allowed, you know, sort of back in the United States.

• neutral fact_claim Mel Williams

  A little like Founders Fund, we began taking a hard look at the blockchain or crypto markets back in 2016 or 2017, when we saw a lot of our core venture managers, including Founders Fund, investing in the sector.

• bullish assessment Delian Asparouhov

  One thing that I love about our crypto strategy at IFF is we allow people to run with very independent convictions. Myself, personally, crypto is not my area of expertise. It's explicitly an area that I sometimes critique extensively publicly on Twitter. But at the same time, I love the fact that we are strong, independent thinkers in this area. We don't let hype cycles really affect our investment strategy. As an example, in the true lowest part of the market when everybody was the most pessimi

• bullish assessment Unattributed

  founders fund is investing in this company. There's probably 10 X upside left after this.

• bullish assessment David Friedberg

  so and then Benchmark or Sequoia being the Tiffany, like, you know, or Founders Fund or Founders Fund.

• neutral fact_claim Andrew Farah

  founders fund believes in small markets and drawing concentric circles around ownership of a small market, such that you can become a more dominant force long-term.

• bullish assessment Brian Singerman

  Part of adapt or die is play the game. Don't cry about the game. And so we love the founders that don't cry about the game.

• bullish assessment Brian Singerman

  but remember, venture capital is upside maximization. So sometimes if you're an investor who's like, Oh, maybe don't take that chance. Cause we don't want this investment to go down. Honestly, I don't ever think about that. I just don't think about that. It's like, Oh, great. Yes. If, as long as it's legal and as long as, you know, playing within some guidelines, it's like, okay, yeah, take that risk. I'm all about it, right? Like we are all about the founders who also want to take that risk wit

• neutral fact_claim Brian Singerman

  we've put SpaceX in multiple funds, we don't really think through reserves in a fund, we think through make put most money into best companies possible at best price possible. And maybe that's one of our own companies. And maybe we've invested a previous fund, but great. So we'll put it in the next one, like founders on two owned 10% of SpaceX or whatever that didn't stop founders from four founders from five founders from growth, founders from growth to, you know, from investing in SpaceX, righ

• bullish assessment Brian Singerman

  I think the smart founders, the best founders get to know you as much as you're getting to know them. And then it just becomes clear. Nope, they want to work with us. I mean, it was the same with the Stripe Round and the same with all of these amazing companies that it was just clear that they wanted to work with us as much as we wanted to work with them.

• mixed assessment Jordan Stein

  funds like injuries and horowitz or founders fund or light speed uh they're a little bit bigger and so they're not going to benefit quite as much from the power law uh i think they're going to generate fantastic returns for us and i think they're absolutely brilliant do they have a shot at the you know 50x i think it's a lot harder the math is a lot harder to get there uh to

• bullish fact_claim Jordan Stein

  instead of cutting my allocations to you know the founders funds and the fpvs and the cowboys and uh crafts into the world right they're like i'm still gonna re-up to those but i'm investing less in the category so i'm gonna cut out new managers and i'm gonna cut out some of the you know maybe fluff underneath

• neutral fact_claim Keith Rabois

  I don't think we ever really wanted to keep up. But there's a there's a gap, like some band, let's say we're 25% more discipline or whatever, we can't be 50% and still work with the best founders on the planet. So I think there, there was, you know, some pricing pressure that the people who weren't seeing prices definitely posed a real challenge to our normal discipline, we're not immune from the entire world.

• neutral fact_claim Keith Rabois

  So I'll speak for founders fund first, we are definitely much more disciplined than we were six, nine, 12 months ago. So we will not fund things at valuations that don't make any sense given the public market comparables.

• neutral fact_claim Keith Rabois

  typically, as founders fund runs a growth fund, we would typically have a few days to make a decision about a new investment. Currently, for growth rounds, even for very attractive companies and potential investments, we have days to weeks to make an investment decision.

• neutral fact_claim Delian Asparouhov

  Peter Thiel basically tells everybody at the firm like stop investing for six months

• neutral assessment Delian Asparouhov

  the sort of founders that choose to work with founders fund are predisposed to, you know, some level of, you know, being extremely aligned with, you know, Brian Armstrong. And so, you know, they sometimes can also use this as a bit of an excuse too, which like, Oh, well, we can't do x, y, or z initiative, because like, you know, founders fund is on our board. And like, obviously, like, they're gonna vomit all over that, but it's really like, the CEO just doesn't want to do it. But you know, he g

• bullish assessment Delian Asparouhov

  founders fund was very early to this trend, you know, in 2004, double down in 2016.

• bullish assessment Delian Asparouhov

  I would say our model is unique and distinctly different in that. I wouldn't say it's our practice to be regularly incubating companies. If you look at how often we're doing it over the past like 23 years, it's probably once every like three or four years on average, that an incubation is happening. And I typically say at Founders Fund, it's not, it's not our practice. We're only going to be doing it when there's like a handful of things that are true. One, when this company basically like would

• bullish fact_claim Delian Asparouhov

  Ryan Peterson, obviously, you know, somewhat different in that he started the company before joining, but he is still quite actively involved in Flexport. And he actually recently did an interview with Bloomberg or CNBC, uh, where he talked about how actually joining Founders Fund, uh, re-motivated him to like work even harder, uh, you know, at Flexport. So he's been, you know, sort of picking that up. Peter always has, you know, sort of some, you know, uh, you know, project going for a while. H

• bullish fact_claim Delian Asparouhov

  Yeah, still an investment partner. We at this point have almost half the team that are both investment partners and, you know, building companies. And so it's a thing that we actually, you know, are leaning into and is literally in the name, right? You know, Founders Fund, we want to be a fund filled with founders basically.

• neutral fact_claim Delian Asparouhov

  we obviously come from a you know sort of more you know sort of libertarian you know sort of point of view where it's you know sort of light technology accelerate and you know sort of deal with the societal implications you know sort of later

• bullish endorsement Michael Kim

  founders fund clearly absolutely top tier firm um and they've done very very well with their model um you know one one example um to just to amplify what jason was saying you know when they raised founders fund three they immediately put a quarter of that into palantir and that was a brilliant move um and in founders fund two you know they uh sold well so yammer was in there uh david sax's company prior company they took the proceeds from that and then peter went and you know basically uh took c

• neutral fact_claim David Weisburd

  i think at founders fund brian singerman's approach has been hire really smart people make bets that they have conviction on or let them start their own companies and then in every fund put a third or some crazy number he's told me into one giant bet

• bearish criticism Keith Rabois

  coastless culture of weekly partner meetings which included debate and coastless hands-on investing approach and founder mentorship was a better fit for him than founders funds more individualistic approach

• bullish prediction Mike

  we've returned a little over 350 million in the last two years. Uh, but, but like our, you know, that's nothing compared to what founders fund will get from SpaceX, but our fund is tiny compared to founders fund.

• bullish endorsement David Friedberg

  when i had a board issue at founders fund and there were some board members that did not like my strategy they had issues with what i was doing with the company at climate corp at the time founders fund actually stepped up and protected me and they got the board the rest of the board together to protect me uh in a way that was like actually at a very kind of crucial moment for the for the business and as a result we had a massive exit within a year

• neutral assessment David Friedberg

  founders fund they have this kind of mantra they find great founders and just get out of the way let them run and they don't want to be helpful that's not their objective they feel like if they have to be helpful it's not the kind of founder

• bearish criticism Keith Rabois

  i like company building like i think part of my role is to help the founder increase the amplitude or probability of success and i enjoy that at ff that's very controversial

• bullish assessment Keith Rabois

  ff is a momentum investor and is maybe the best on the planet as at being in a momentum investor so almost every successful investment of founders fund over eight funds was invested at 500 million dollars or more entry valuation