Brian Singerman: "If SpaceX Didn't Work, Founders Fund Wouldn't Exist"

23:21Brian Singerman:Like put every penny that you can. Like that's the way to beat the market in venture capital. Everything else just ties it or loses to it. And you spread that across funds. You don't even think about like, oh, we did in this fund, we're maxed out, we'll do that. You know, there were some advantages. Now, we didn't have that advantage early on. Like let's just be clear. If SpaceX didn't work, Founders Fund would not exist. Like we bet our careers essentially on SpaceX. And I love that, which goes into why I'm doing what I'm doing now, like is exclusively that. Right. But I love elite athletes, like betting their career on something.

23:57Brian Singerman:Right. Truly elite, talented people, like betting their career on something. That's what I love. And I think we were just really, really, really good at that. At Founders Fund, we didn't really. yeah we weren't we weren't trying to do portfolio management we were trying to put the most money in to the best companies possible i think it was really funny when i talked to you on the phone the other week you're like i think this was maybe the day the spacex s1 came out you're like yeah whatever i'm not gonna read that why am i gonna read that i don't know i don't i wouldn't i wouldn't really understand what i was reading there's probably a lot of financial uh stuff in there and to me it's just like oh rocket's cool elon greatest founder in history great right like It's a different calculation for me than pouring over a prospectus.

24:40Brian Singerman: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. And then when you invested into SpaceX, this is 2007, 2008? 2008. 2008, they had three failed rocket launches. How did you gain that conviction? You met Elon. What was he like? I didn't really know Elon back then. I remember I had just started at Founders Fund. I did get to sit through like one meeting with him.

25:10Brian Singerman:I've since met him several times. But back then I was like a new junior person starting at Founders Fund. But I did get to like talk with a group about it. And back then it was just like the most amazing thing. It still is, right? There's still no other rocket companies that get up with that kind of, like didn't, I don't know. I don't know when it's going to be there, but like a Blue Origin thing just did not work. Like it's still pretty amazing. And so, and one of my greatest startup camaraderie moments in history in my career was being able to like go to the Hawthorne office when we did get the first successful Falcon 1 to actually complete a launch.

25:48Brian Singerman: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 to be part of what do you think the key traits are that he has that he implements within his teams obviously vertical integration there's no other person like elan 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?

26:25But it's very, very uncommon to be the best from a, you know, novel business, understanding the execution side, as well as the technical side.

26:38Brian Singerman:And, you know, he's just, he's, and there's no, there's never been anybody like that in the history of business. Are you surprised at all by how much progress he's making now with all of the new launches? Not just like rocket launches, but TerraFab and... Oh, no, nothing surprises me. Nothing surprises you? No? No. I mean, it's got the best team in the world. It's got like... These things snowball, right? And so when you're committed, and plus when you're somebody like that who's truly mission-driven and you know truly driven to like achieve all these things from a not from like not even just from a oh I want to make more money probably the richest person in the world right like that's not what he's like from an actual what the company is doing perspective yeah you tend to hire really really really good people and yeah no not not surprised at all with what that company's doing now we just did a walkthrough tour of impulse oh yeah and I did a sit down with Eric promo as well but we did a walking tour through their first facility with tom yeah and not their el segundo one but we did a walking tour of that facility at like towards the end we got into some spacex questions i was like i mean starlink is like 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 to be this big he said absolutely let's get as many as we can out immediately all of us knew like we a lot of us have been talking about like oh starlink is the true like you need the launch business in order to do this but like we all knew that starlink was the the business for a long time market wise though like like why because you thought old telecoms and all these yeah it's an end of one company and like launch is like you know i'm bullish on launch going forward but like the applications of launch are where the where everything is at right and like telecom and global telecom i mean it's pretty huge so we talked about we talked a bit about teal we talked about um elon another okay of your portfolio that you you were involved in early investments was um and i will repeat this but i'm sure you'll correct me it was spacex palantir i mean i didn't need like spacex or whatever you were part of it part of the team yeah i mean not many people can say that they were no that's true on those i just wanted to be clear it's not like i'm trying to sit here and say oh i led space no way congratulations but sorry go on the other big ones that i was a part of the team because the other thing is a founder's one we tend to not do individual credit on things right yeah a lot of people are involved but yes we can talk about it from a perspective of like yes was helping drive the team on some of these investments so you were helping drive the team on spacex palantir airbnb you were on these deal teams you were involved here yes but remember that palantir peter is a co-founder of palantir so that one was like you know yeah we put a lot of money into it i think we put like 30 something percent of You put 33 % of fund investment,$75 million of a$240 million fund at a billion dollar valuation.

29:58Brian Singerman:Yeah, very good, Molly. That's something like that, right? And so, yeah, that was pretty bold. Now, Peter was a co-founder there. So I think I put that one in a special bucket because Peter's a co-founder there. But then, yeah, I mean, Airbnb, Stripe, StemCentrics, even things like Andurl. Sure. Affirm, obviously. And STEM Centrics was one of your first exits? Maybe. It was one of the first bigger exits. But I don't know anything about biotech, right? That was just a bad idea because I knew how good the team was. That's crazy. I just never seen it. There's never been another CEO of a biotech company like that.

30:37Right. I think the biggest thing that I was looking at all these names, and I've listened to you on interviews and listened to you speak, and 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 i know what i'm good at and i know

30:54Brian Singerman: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 like do the whole vc oh i know about everything nonsense so what are you looking for in these founders like what are the main what was i looking for i mean i'm not doing pitch meetings anymore um what i mean i was looking for it's hard to put into words like i think we had a one time i had an author come into founders fund to try and help us put into words what these found what what what is the founders fund founder and we never could figure out the proper words for it right like it was just always a we all kind of the one thing about us is like we all approach these things from slightly different perspectives but we could all generally agree on, whoa, this person is actually really good.

31:41Brian Singerman:Right. And I think that's what the other part that made founders fund work is like all these contrarian people with no cohesion around the type of business, right. Other than the monopoly thesis and all that. But where we all did come together was we were all a lot on somewhat the same page with, oh, this is an actual A plus founder, not just like an A minus founder, but an actual A plus founder of which I think there's very few. Does that, like, do you, do you get them at maturity or do you think that they have potential? Like what is the, um, you probably see the potential, but like to me, my style was a little bit later.

32:21Brian Singerman:Like I, you know, you probably can see that somebody is really good, you know, 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 I can like take it uh I can 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 like the strategy versus tactics thing it's right like I couldn't actually never run a company right um it's one of the reasons I like wanted to retire from venture capital like 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, right?

33:03Brian Singerman:Right. Like I've never founded a company. I don't, I have no idea. I couldn't, I don't try and claim that I could run a company. Right. And so you'd always find people who could in really, really, really good ways. Why you, when you run into like a Max Levchin, you're like, oh, this person can run a company. You're like, great. Right. Because I could never do it. But on the thing that I'm doing now, right. Like, no, there's no imposter syndrome. Right. And so that I can do. Yeah. I wanted to ask about that. So of the individuals I, I reached out to Scott Nolan was one of them and he, he was curious how you're applying that framework to investing in funds into fund investors, specifically like these, like emerging or whatever you want to call it.

33:43Brian Singerman:Um, same thing. It's the same thing, but without the imposter syndrome, when I like, 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 be like oh like what I'm actually looking for is hey is there some chance this person could have beaten me in my prime right as a game like playing their game their game is not gonna be the same as mine you're not gonna 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 right like I'm spending a whole bunch of time with these GPs I'm thinking like, I'll know immediately if they definitely are not.

34:28Brian Singerman:But like, it'll take spending a bunch of time with them to think, oh, this person actually could have beaten me. Like we would have hired this person at Founders Fund if there was, but they're not hireable, right? And so that's who 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 for minute one. there's no it doesn't have to be like a sense of politeness and i 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 right 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 just rip whatever they're doing from immediately right this i can i can rip immediately like with these like i guess like what what are the main themes that you're seeing out of this new cohort of gps and funds what do you mean like in terms of what they're investing in i don't know i mean like or in terms of like like like their style i mean i think all different i think like though for for a fact a lot of people are trying to rip off the the founders fund concentration strategy.

35:44Everybody all of a sudden, like, let's go after vertical integration. Let's go after concentration bets.

35:49Brian Singerman:Like I'm very good at spotting when something is somebody's natural strength versus when they're trying to say things they think that I want to hear. Like you have to, I think that is one of the things that you have to get really good at. It's like, okay, it's the bullshit meter, right? Like if somebody's saying something because you, 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 them their natural self is can be dominant like that's what i love like just talk naturally because you don't know what i'm looking for like i'm open to any strategy under the sun um i'm open to somebody being the best in the world that whatever it is i just have to be convinced that they're like the best that they're at their strategy who do you think the most naturally authentic people are oh i don't know we've talked about some of them like authentic people.

36:40Brian Singerman:I mean, I think I'm fortunate to be around a lot of authentic people. So one of the things I always say though, is like, Cyan Bannister is one of the most authentic people. Oh my God. One of the most pure authentic people, like in the world. She is just her. She's one of my best friends and her husband Scott, right? Like those are two extremely authentic. They are who they are, you know, people as one example, but I know a lot of. That's a really, I literally, That was the top person that I thought of. Yeah. 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.

37:15Shout out to Long Journey.

37:17Brian Singerman:Shout out. They're great. Last fall. And we just bonded so well. We think very similarly about things. Like we were going through this exercise. Like we were doing lots of like thought experiments. Like kind of like opening your mind and then reflecting and 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 like a cloud of things i could just pop into any location i love that be there um now with uber eats you can do that you can literally order clothes on uber eats it's great this is not a plug i swear but um so we bonded over that but like i've never i she is one of the most successful female investors and for me being in a male-dominated industry there's really like few of them but she is like such a purely authentic person and then she's extremely talented and such a good investor yes it's great agreed agreed um she's phenomenal when i spend time and it's great because i have like the fortune like or the i guess like the opportunity to spend time with these individuals like over the last year or so doing these interviews i spent i spent with her i did the andrel tour palmer lucky you cannot replicate that guy he was literally going to be the other person that i would have said really like talk about somebody who's like

38:40Brian Singerman:just caricature portrayed by the rest of the media as like totally not like palmer lucky is one of the most like honest like real people that there is and like from an insane talent like 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 in Oculus and Oculus was a company that I invested in not just on the straight I mean I obviously Brendan Palmer great but 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 right so i had to invest just and i never do that from a product perspective right i'm much more of a individual person but like to have that kind of thing he's such an honest person and he is also palmer also knows what he is really good at and what he needs to supplement right like so the i talk about the there's no other founder in history like elon right but as one person who could do it The Andurl founding team are all so complementary 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.

39:58Brian Singerman:But I do think that the cohesive founding team is better than Elon. Not one person, but the team is. And Palmer is such a huge part of that. And he's just like a genuine guy. He was a, besides Cyan, he was like the next person I thought of to say in the answer to your question. A hundred percent. 100%. It's like, also, you could throw anything at him. He has a reference for it. Sure. I was like, oh, this will be a funny question. What would War on the Moon look like? He will have studied that. He was like, well, I read that in a book. It's called blah, blah, blah, blah. That's an easy one for him because he definitely would have studied that one.

40:30That's an easy one. But he's truly authentic and very cool. Alex Karp is definitely another one.

40:37Brian Singerman:There's a 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. And you will 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 kind of nonsense. But there 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, like genuinely them. They're not trying to be somebody else.

41:19They're not trying to like fit apart.

41:22Brian Singerman:Right. They're just being them. And I love that. And I do actually. Yeah, I and 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. 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? I don't think it's all... Because who cares about people on the inside? That's not who you're trying to like... Sometimes you're trying to win over LPs. Maybe you need to do the posturing for LPs. I don't. But that could be one reason to do it. One reason is you're building your career.

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44:07Brian Singerman:Yep. We had some really fun conversations before we started because we're in this, like, I mean, you have some beautiful guitars back there. Oh, yeah. Those are prized possessions. My wife's karaoke guitars. Really? When my wife and kids like to, we do karaoke in this room all the time. We love karaoke as a family. And those are our karaoke guitars. They look like they've seen some. see some better days no i think they've seen some they've seen some great days oh yeah if those guitars could talk yeah but you do have some empty cases and we were talking about why you're so interested in collecting physical things like human relics i am so what is the i'm very bullish on end of one human cultural iconic artifacts like as a class i've never been a big art person like trey is a big art person like just paintings and you know, all that kind of stuff.

44:58Brian Singerman:I've never been really into that, but what I am into is functional art and like art in the form of like artifacts, right? I love that stuff. And so, you know, music memorabilia is a, you know, category that I'm extremely interested in, as long as these are truly end of one human cultural iconic artifacts. And I think that that's really growingly important in a world that's dominated by machines in so many ways. like i think the the true human like iconic things are just going to be more and more valuable from not just from a monetary perspective but from a mind share perspective from like a uh you know from an emotional uh perspective right like i don't really care if like the algorithm of some nft made this one thing algorithmically rare like i don't care about that but do i love a jerry Garcia guitar that he played for like 10 years hell yeah right like do do I love things that people could recognize like from minute one of seeing them that are true end of one artifacts yeah I I love that kind of stuff and so I you know I do have some some pieces that will that will be going in here but yeah how did you like how did this collection start was there one particular piece that you saw?

46:16Brian Singerman:Yeah, we started with, we do have some kind of movie memorabilia, which I'm very bullish on also, because it's still iconic human, you know, stuff. And you don't want to start a band. I do not want to start a band, but I hope my kids are in one if they want to, right? Like, you know, I really like this whole going to a world where businesses kind of AI dominated the reason I built this music studio was I don't care if a machine can make music better than me who cares I love doing it right and so I like humans figuring out and using this next you know using whatever comes next as a way to figure out like well how can we be truly happy and how do we focus on the things that make us truly happy and truly who we are and so like for instance like if my kids are super into music which they might be right and they want to join to start a band?

47:09Brian Singerman:Hell yeah. Right. If they want to, you know, any, I'm, I'm, I'm as bullish on them being involved in anything creative arts as I am like academics, right? Like I would almost say that like having an awesome music department or an awesome art department is even more important than having an awesome math program right now. That's really cool. So I, I went to college for studio art yeah and like I transitioned to business and all that kind of stuff so I got it in my jeans yeah but there there was like a really interesting moment in time I think I think it was when Studio Ghibli launched on ChatGBT and there was this like existential crisis of oh artists are over like this is over I think we did a segment on this I was on Pirate Wires at the time and like it was a podcast and we did a segment on this and I was like guys like I went to art school like you can't stop artists yeah artists are always going to create it's like in their blood it is what wakes them up every day like yes i can get lost in a drawing for literally eight hours and not want to eat and who and that is totally irreplaceable for by a machine yeah like the what you get out of that what you get out of doing your art what you get out of doing something you truly love that is crazy theories i know but that is going to be what defines us like what we get like more than like oh well i need to do this pie chart because no machines gonna be able to do that better than you but like if you're getting that kind of emotional reaction from doing your art who's going to replace that i'm a tech optimist right and so like i have actually made a lot of money betting against the end of the world really some pretty famous people yeah because it's like the way they might see it it's just like i'm going to be an optimist because in the who cares about the other side of that bet right like in the world where it's like oh we're all dead or zombie apocalypse world, who cares if I lost a bet on that regard, right?

49:01Brian Singerman:Like I'm much more of a tech optimist and an optimist that like will figure it out. And so from a tech optimist perspective, like, yeah, I think that we'll eventually, eventually, I have no idea when this will be like have some basic needs met and people can try and focus on what they actually love. That's amazing. Well, to wrap it up, what are you most looking forward to in the next 12 months well i'm looking forward to a few things um my daughter starting kindergarten oh i'll get teary for that um spending more time in hawaii yeah and this music studio actually opening up like you know this this filming this podcast in here this is the first time other people have been in here but my intention is to have bands and artists that are doing something that i love get to come in and they get to use the studio for free I'll even create a label for them and they get to own all the IP and I'll pay all the money to have them distribute their stuff and they get to do use everything for free and own all of it because I don't care about making money off of this I get to be a fly on the wall right so that's how I drive my happiness here right from this is like I love being just like a part of the creative process right and so I look forward to putting that into reality it's like having some band or artists can like do something awesome here where the win-win for them is they don't have to pay a cent for it.

50:28Brian Singerman:I don't have to take any sort of ownership of their IP of their stuff at all. They get to own it all, but I get to be a fly on the wall. So I'm looking forward to that also. That's amazing. Well, that's a great place to end. Thanks. Thank you so much, Brian. All right. Thanks, Molly. Appreciate it. Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen.

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