Uncapped #56 | Brian Singerman from GPx

24:46Brian Singerman:But there has to be, it can't be like some, oh, I'm like no deep tech and founders like me. That's way too generic, right? Like every name of venture capitalists who doesn't say that, right? It's got to be something specific, but I don't really care what it is as long as I've been, oh yeah, that might give you a way to win this game. Give me some examples of strategy, not naming firms or people, but give me a flavor for types of strategies that a new emerging manager. Here's a differentiated one. Let's say you know these guys. These are called 10Xers in Silicon Valley lore or end of one guys, whatever you want to call it.

25:16Brian Singerman:They usually were like these growth hackers or whatever, right? Okay. Let's say you've got There are 100Xers now with AI. Right, exactly. That's why I said it with a cheeky whatever. You know these guys, right? Everybody in Silicon Valley knows these guys. So it's like you've got one of these 100Xer kind of guys and back in what they would do in the past or one of the things they probably still do is pick a company where maybe their skill is not relevant for every company. That's totally fine. They know where their skill is relevant. And it's like a really good company. And they know they go in and make that company just do ridiculously well.

25:44Brian Singerman:And they pick one company and they go all, they work at that company. Okay. But what if you're one of these hundred extra guys, and especially in these days with AI, like, and you can like actually leverage yourself. So we know, so I know a couple, one guy who's doing this, he's one of these hundred extra guys, it's a niche skill, like not useful for every company, but for the ones that it is, it truly is. And he's like, why don't I leverage myself? So his portfolio, his investment portfolio is like going to be like five, six companies, all of which he is actually operating at. They're not competitive with each other.

26:12Brian Singerman:Yeah. Right. Yeah. But going and operating, doing his hundred X thing for all these companies, making them all worth that. That to me is pretty freaking novel. Like most venture capitalists do not do that. Right. Like I would never go operate. The other thing that's good about that is it's not the type of strategy that's exploitable by some, like, correct. Like it's not something where it's like, I can have a great fund one, but then if other people realize it, they're going to swoop in. You can't copy this. There are strategies that will like work for a fund, but then won't keep working. That's right.

26:38Brian Singerman:And this is not one of those. This can work because it's like you can be like, well, good luck cloning me. It's like if you're truly one of these end of one guys, then that strategy can play for a while. You don't have to choose this one. You leverage yourself. So I love that. That's just one example. But like there's lots of people that I'm working with. Maybe they – again, it's tough with me because I'm so gut-based that when I meet somebody, if they just like it happened recently I'm not going to name any names and I can't name names but like it happened I met some GP and I was just like I can't put my finger on exactly what it is like I can't in that other GP's case I can put it like that's a brilliant strategy and yes you're the perfect person to do that great I'm in right there's ones that just you talk to and you're just like oh yeah you absolutely were going to crush me like honestly like stories like when I met and like even when I met like Kushner like 15 years ago like i was like oh this guy might be able to like beat me one day right so like i invest in oscar join the board of oscar and invest in thrive yeah right like it's a similar kind of thing same with like when i met a lot yeah i was like like a lot a lot did this like thing on the strike deal that we did that was so impressive especially for like a soul let alone but impressive would have been impressive for a fun little soul just being like you're like these guys are good this guy is and it takes a lot to make me think yeah this person could beat me in And so when I meet one, I'm just like, I need to invest.

28:01Brian Singerman:Yes, yes. Yeah, and I guess a lot of it is, will your strategy mimic sort of like the founder's fund thing in some sense where you're going to invest in a bunch, but then at some point will you be concentrated mass? Like if you find in a lot or in a Josh, and then seven years in, you've got this great relationship, and now you can write them$500 million? Maybe. Yeah. Like that's the idea. Like on GPX, so a portion of GPX, like 20 % or less, is we're going to be writing checks into funds directly. But we're not taking any – that's pass through to our LPs. I'm not making any money off that. We're not charging any carry on that.

28:32Brian Singerman:Most will come from the double downs? Everything is going to come from our automatic checks when one of these GPs bets their career on something, right? So like in Founders Fund case, there's like some obvious – I don't want to – I'm not going to speak in terms of exacts with Founders Fund, but you can imagine that the ones that Founders Fund went like kind of really, really, really big on were like SpaceX and Palantir and Airbnb and Stripe and StemCentrics and Andurl. and, you know, open an eye, right? Like, and so these kinds of things, when they have one of this, and it doesn't happen every, you can't put 20 % of your fund in every day.

29:03No.

29:03Brian Singerman:And that's fine. No, I put no pressure on, right? You know, that would lead to adverse selection. But when it happens, you - When it happens, I'm in. Yeah. If you are, if you were a not ULP, you're an endowment of, you know, what is your approximate approach to venture right now? Yeah. What I tell LPs, even though I'm pitching them on this, it's like, okay, if I'm running some endowment or whatever, some pension fund or whatever, and I'm going to bother with venture capital, which you should, right? You absolutely should. I put it into two buckets. It's like the tier one, and I'm not going to name names here, Jack, but you put it into the tier one multi-stages, but only the tier one, right?

29:42Brian Singerman:You figure out who's currently tier one. And the good news for those is like, you can see the performance, you know who they are. It's like the hard part is just getting a big enough check-in, right? Like I can use Founders Fund's case here. It's like, yeah, you should definitely, whatever you can put into Founders Fund, you should put into Founders Fund, right? But good luck getting a big enough check-in. That's the problem. Okay, then my say part two of the optimal venture strategy. So one is this tier one and only tier one, right? Part two is put your money into the most elite emerging managers.

30:12Brian Singerman:This is great for lots of reasons, right? Number one, like you can totally, as they become the next Founders Fund, as they become the next. You'll hit something and you'll be a hacker. You can scale with them. At Founders Fund, if you invested in our first institutional fund, you got to scale as much as you wanted with us, right? Everybody loves their first backers, right? Everybody loves their true believers. Okay. Same with GP world, right? So as these GPs become the net, and this is why we don't, by the way, this is why we don't charge carry on the fund investments. We want our LPs to be able to scale with these elite emerging managers, right?

30:43Brian Singerman:That's the whole point. They can co-invest with us. It doesn't matter. We're not a gatekeeper for it. Use our impression. Use our opinion of who is the elite and go for it, right? Okay. So it's really important to invest in the most elite, but you can scale with them. And the returns at the top end can exceed the returns of the most, just because like the fund sizes are smaller. Yeah, but it's just not enough dollars. Yes. There's two problems with it. A, it's not enough dollars, but B, there's thousands of emerging managers. Yep. It's like really, really, really, it's like not like the top tier multi-stage VCs where you kind of know who they are, right?

31:10Brian Singerman:Like this is really hard. Yes. This is what I love. Yes. So this is what we're doing. Yes. Makes sense. on the topic of spotting talent do you think that in order so taking aside all the other imbalances that you can create as a solo which i actually want to go to because you know i thought about this a bunch when i was doing that but on talent spotting itself do you think that you must be a sort of an imbalanced report card yourself to spot another imbalanced report card even if it's in a different step this is a great question or can a somebody who is an a minus at everything still spot an A plus FFFFF?

31:44Brian Singerman:It's a great question. I don't know. I can tell you that for me, I think it's really critical that I think that I'm really good, that I'm one of the best at something in order to spot that. Because then I can sense like, I know when I'm talking about something that I know really well that I think I'm really the best at, right? Like I know how it makes me feel. I know how it makes me sound or whatever versus when I'm trying to like, you know, a little bit unsure. So that part I think is a good game attracts game, if you will. Yeah. Because you can tell when somebody is speaking about something in a way that – They truly know they know.

32:14Brian Singerman:It's like when I was a competitive gamer. If I'm playing against somebody who like – I can spot if they're really, really, really, really, really good at a game just by talking to them. Yeah. Right? So I do think that's it. Now, is that the only way to do it? I have no idea. Yeah. I know it helps me. Maybe there's somebody who can be really good without – who's more well-rounded. Like I'm not a well-rounded person by any stretch, right? I focus on what I'm good at and I've said this is – I think it's a really good skill in business. It is not a good skill necessarily in a marriage where you need to be a little bit more well-rounded.

32:47Can you name a provably elite venture capitalist who you would say that's a well-rounded person who happened to just be an elite venture capitalist?

32:56Brian Singerman:I don't know but I would imagine that there is one maybe. But you can't think of one. No, I can't. Everybody who I would say is elite venture capitalist, I'm like, that person is elite because they are really, really, really good at whatever it is. And they can crush the game by playing that game. Like, yeah. Why did you say SPVs are dead, by the way? A couple reasons. In Silicon Valley, everything, the founder is king. And all hierarchies go through the founder. So if you're an elite founder, like you're the founder of, say, you know, OpenAI, Anthropic, Endural, SpaceX, whatever, like the next generation of top tier founders listens to you.

33:39Brian Singerman:And what I've seen the top tier companies dealing with now is they're so miserable. Like, look at all the news on like Anthropic and SPVs, Endural and SPVs. It's so bad. But once you open that pair doors box, it's like open. Yeah. And there's really not a whole lot you can do about it. So they're telling all the next generation founders, yeah, do this, never do this, never do this. So it's like, it's not one of those things that's dead right now, but it's like in a couple of years, people realize, oh yeah, only tier four companies are doing it. Well, it's interesting because it connects to the fact that we're in a massive oversupply of capital right now.

34:11And so in an undersupply, you take the capital you can get.

34:14Brian Singerman:This game change, this thesis changes in an undersupply world. Like I'm very much open to adapt or die. Yeah. Okay. And so, but I'm talking about for right now, we are not in an undersupply of capital, right? So we're in a massive oversupply moment of capital, particularly for the companies that are working. Yeah, correct. And these things humongously change how founders update their preference set. What is your best read on what great founders prioritize most now? I mean, obviously you're thinking about this a bunch because you're deciding what managers do. I think the best founders prioritize who they trust most.

34:48Brian Singerman:And that trust can come from either, oh, this person actually is an expert in this thing. or it could come from this person co-founded this company with me. I think that's a big one actually. This is why I love, if you're a manager and you're actually co-founding companies, two of the best companies in founders in history, maybe third, we've got a couple more that people have found, like Dallian and Scott founded companies that are really freaking good. And so that is a way of learning trust. If you're an investor who also co-founded the company, look at what Frankel does. right? And so that I think goes a long, long, long way.

35:25I appreciate the clarification because I think a lot of times people hear the trust and they interpret it in the sort of personal sense of trust. Like, oh, our families have gotten together and we had a dinner together. Maybe that could be it.

35:36Brian Singerman:But I think it's like, I think it's like, that might be, that's why I agree with you. That's why I say maybe that's it, but I think that's table stakes. No, I mean like really trust, like the GPX GPs that we have, when they go all in on a company, I am not expecting it to be some random company that they've been chasing along with every other big it's like you trust that their advice is good you trust that they can help you it's like that form or they have been helping you yeah like i'm expecting that these guys are going to win the kind of company the big round and the kind of company because they co-founded the company right and the founder just has like yeah it's more than just like oh lose trust it would be like absurd to do anything other than yes as long as they have the capital yeah yeah and enter me that's right yeah um the uh you know One of the things when I was doing AltCap before that LPs were asking about a lot and I would contend with too in practical scenarios was that trust being earned weighed against, let's say, a brand where they didn't have that.

36:31And so the common scenario frequently that I lived and thought through constantly was you've earned the type of trust you're talking about and that's now being weighed against a brand with a partner that they don't really care who it is, let's say. Yeah, I get it. How do you think that plays out right now? Like how important do you think that trade is?

36:51Brian Singerman:I think that the tides have turned towards right now the pure, if the established real, as long as they have the money, the real trust. Look, the Endural board is like, I'm a board observer at Endural. The actual board of directors is like the three of the four founders. Right. It's like nobody else because it's like, no, they need that level of trust. Right. And that I think does win. Now, do I think the tier one brands have a huge edge in venture capital? So of course, that's why I say like, in my optimal venture capital strategy is like that. But so it's kind of like a, that's the heavyweight.

37:22Now, even though a tier one,

37:25Brian Singerman:I think right now if you're a tier one brand and you're going up against one of these true trust people, I think it's still gonna be hard because the tier, here's why, here's why. In a world with somewhat less capital, this might change because the reason, one reason to go with the top brands, like, oh, the signaling and like, oh, it's helpful in raising your - The kin making. The king making. It's helpful in raising your next round. But I think we're in a time right now where that does not matter for the tier one companies. Right? So maybe for the tier four companies, it still matters. You need the, oh, I need benchmark to invest so that like I can get the signaling for the next round.

38:00Brian Singerman:Whatever. For the tier one companies where they know, it's like, no, capital is not going to be a problem. Again, not counting the like companies that need to raise a trillion dollars or whatever. And that's a little bit different. Right? I'm talking about like the real, we can get into that separately. but like you know these other companies where i think they probably have to raise less than they had to in the past maybe right maybe i'm kind of waiting for that you know everyone says that everyone's going to need to raise less and then the companies keep raising more so you keep raising what you're saying makes sense to me but they don't necessarily have to though but either way we can do that separately but point being that i think that in this world with the abundance of capital wanting to invest in those companies i think the trust wins out even over the brand yeah but again the only thing that can defeat the trust is maybe the toppest of top tier brands like Like, there's no world where a second tier brand beats that.

38:44No, but I think you're right. I mean, you know, taking a Zach Frankel example or something like that, like, he's still always going to get to invest. Yeah, he's going to always get to invest whatever he wants. And then the other firm can also invest. Correct. Zach probably got a better price.

38:55Brian Singerman:But like, if you ask, like, you know, the Ramp guys or Scott at Cognition, like, they're going to be like, yeah, Zach gets to invest what he wants and then you. It kind of beats everyone. But think about this. Those are tier one companies. Yeah. And the reason they're totally comfortable saying that because it's like, yeah, great. We can do that. We don't need the signaling. We don't need any of this nonsense. sense like you guys can put in money or not right the tier one companies just want the trust yeah i mean i guess the only um i agree with your point the only um the only wrinkle i think maybe is sometimes you know on the tier four you know whatever i i do think sometimes early early on in a company's life airbnb is a good example yeah there's there's a lot of these companies that are in fact great but it takes people a little bit of time to see it we took for us forever to see it yeah you know we but that's what we did with airbnb this is the this is the this is i I love talking about Airbnb because it's like we were slow or we didn't see it.

39:40Brian Singerman:We didn't see it. We didn't see it. Once we saw it, we went real big. Yeah. Right? Like I was like, I think we made, we were behind, we were probably the 30th investor in Airbnb, but I think we made the second most amount of money. Which by the way, if you're founder's fund and you're like, we're founder's fund, which you know, it comes both with good and bad things. It actually takes a lot of ego to put aside. We passed. These other people made a good decision. Yep. We're not going to come on top of them and they're going to get it. we are admitting that they deserve a way better multiple on this than we're going to have.

40:09And we're going to put a crazy amount of money.

40:10Brian Singerman:That actually takes putting your ego aside. Adapt or die. This goes back to one of my earliest stories. A whole bunch of people would have offers from Google like in 98, 99, various reasons you turned down. In Stanford, 98, 99, a lot of people had offers from Google that they would turn down and do other startups or whatever it was. Come 2004, right? And it's just like they're still hiring and your startup didn't work out, right? Like there's certain people that were like, oh, Google's already fully baked in 2003, 2004. It's like a billion dollar company. There's no way. There's a lot of like self-soothing happening.

40:45Brian Singerman:Yeah, oh, it's too late. It doesn't matter. And then there's people like, no, no, I think this is actually still really good. And you go there in 2004. Gotta go fix my mistake. Yes. I don't care. Like the past is the past, man. Like this is the whole good money after bad. Like just like we were slow on Airbnb. She's a great point. It's the inverse of good money after bad. And I think like people are very good at realizing that on not putting more money in if they don't like it. But I think people struggle in the other direction. We struggle in the other direction. We didn't struggle in the other direction.

41:11Brian Singerman:We're like, oh, yeah, Airbnb is really good now. Let's just fix this by putting the most money we possibly can to the company because we know how good it is. Yes. And so I think we made the second most amount of money on Airbnb, even though we were like super late. And you did it at like$2 billion or something, right? We did something at$2 billion, but we put like$150 million into the company. Yeah. Right? And so like exactly. Multiply that by 50, it's a big number. Hence my GPX strategy. If like, I don't actually care at all about your ownership percentage. It's people, managers, when they talk to me, oh, well, we get this about your ownership and I don't care.

41:39Brian Singerman:How much of your fund are you putting in? Because like, that's what's going to actually determine your, your, your multiples. Like on the Airbnb thing, it's like what I tell people is like, well, billions minus 5 million is the same as billions minus 50 million. The same as billions minus 150 million. It's like the answer is still billions. Yes. And so like, that's the thing. You need the billions regardless of how much you put into, to, to get it. Right. That is the crazy thing where you're like, hey, if we spent, you know, you put in$150 ,000 at$2 ,000, you could have bought that same stake for less money.

42:06But who cares? But who cares?

42:08Brian Singerman:It turned into$5 billion. The gain is identical. Let's say we made it. The gains are identical. And actually, you know, it's actually, yeah. I mean, this is one of the two. You have to be, the most important thing on this, Jack, is you have to be right. Like when we went into Airbnb, right, when we went big, it's because we knew we were right at that point. And I think that's totally fine. We didn't know before then. so we didn't put a lot of, you know, putting money in. Once we knew, we're like, yep. Okay, so on that topic, on the concentration topic, I feel like very central to what Founders Fund has been all about is these crazy concentration bets.

42:44Maybe Airbnb is not one of them exactly, but, you know, it'd be probably more in. That was pretty high concentration. And did you do multiple? I don't even know what, but, like, you know, I hear stories about SpaceX where it's like, not only was a huge percentage of the fund, but it was fund after fund after fund and Anderil and Ramp, and I'm sure there's more in Airbnb. And I think it's great, but I think the strategy, it is probably the sort of most cited and copied strategy that I hear right now. Like the amount of managers who talk about concentration seems very high and it might be good, but it does seem to me that to do the Founders Fund strategy, it requires both A, having a SpaceX in the portfolio and B, knowing you've got one when you've got one.

43:24Correct. And those seem kind of hard.

43:25Brian Singerman:this is all about that whole look in the mirror thing, man. This is all about the be honest with yourself. Like, this is why I don't put pressure on my managers. I don't want, it's like, at first we were like, oh, we want the best of the best, the best company from the best managers. Like, nope, that's not necessarily true. The best may still not be good enough from this perspective, right? Like, that's the key thing. It's like, you've got to know, we were really good at knowing when to actually do this, even though like we had a lot of great companies and this and that. It's like, when to actually do this is the most critical thing.

43:52Brian Singerman:And you can't just be like, well, you're going to lose a lot of money if you're like, oh, well, this is my best one. It's the best in this basket. Right, right. So all in. You're going to lose a lot of money if you do that. That's right. Right. And so you've got to be, this goes back to be honest. It's like, which one of these, if the answer is no, that you don't have one, as you were pointing out, if you don't have a SpaceX in your portfolio or whatever it is, okay. Just keep doing your thing. Part of what I think is hard is if you're not calibrated to what an Elon or a SpaceX looks like. and so you know one of the things i thought about this for myself you know i tried to i tried to get myself calibrated as much as i could but just knowing that like you probably are not calibrated to real greatness when you're a year or two or three into your venture career you just can't be i don't think i mean unless you got really long people like having me as a consigliere yeah i'm really good at pushing them on that and like comparing it to like the elons to the cheskis to the levchins of the world i mean i think that calibration is really important right because otherwise it's critical but then so there's that and then the other piece is like you know so So there's both having one, but then there's also trusting yourself to know you've got one.

44:55And we've talked about this, and this is a known thing. I mean, Peter seems uniquely brilliant and able to see greatness when he has it. I think all of you guys were. And so separate from having a SpaceX, there were a lot of other investors in SpaceX who didn't invest 100 times. They kind of could have, but they maybe didn't. And so when you see this strategy, what do you need to believe to believe that a manager is going to be good?

45:21Brian Singerman:the concentration strategy oh man this is where i do need to see something of myself in them for from you know to to be blunt about that like i can't if i see an element of like oh they're just doing the concentration thing because they know that's what i want to hear i i'm very good at sensing when people are saying something because they know i want to hear it and i just get allergic to that it's like when i i have to sense this natural ability to be do it but also and this is what i don't talk about with people now it's going to get blown after this podcast But like they also need to be reserved enough and honest enough to know that they might not have that.

45:56Brian Singerman:And that's okay. Like I'm not going to name names but like one manager that I worked very closely with that I love like was recently – like she was recently evaluating whether to go to do this. And I had a conversation with her and like she at least – you could tell and she could tell that it's not the right – it's a hyped company. It's having an amazing up round. It's like, oh man, like if you're playing the Silicon Valley game, she was like honest enough with herself to be like unsure. So I'm like, don't do it. Yeah. Right. I'm like, if you are not sure, then there's absolutely, do not do it just because to play in the Silicon Valley game.

46:32Brian Singerman:And I would, Jack, 90 plus percent of managers are going to do it to play the Silicon Valley game. Yes. And what I think is, it's probably true that even Founders Fund, Sequoia, like it doesn't matter who you are. most of your vintages are not going to contain a SpaceX level company. And so even if you're them, you should, in most of your funds, not be putting 40 % on it. Two did this with SpaceX. Three did this with Palantir. Four did this with Stripe, Airbnb, and Samsung. Five didn't have one. Yeah. Six and Earl. Yeah. Seven didn't have one. Yeah. I mean, like, you're much better off in those scenarios, I think.

47:05Brian Singerman:But you're so much better off in those scenarios, not forcing it. Just go take way more initial bets. Yes. Yes. Yes. You were better off in those scenarios, not forcing it. YC has proven that it works great if you take a lot of bets at sea. I still think that the ones that had one of those that concentrate are going to perform way better than the ones that didn't. Of course. But if you don't want to do is force. Yeah. Yes. That's critical. It's like maybe you have a fund that's not as good as Fundish Fund 2, okay, or whatever. But like that's okay. You don't want to force it because forcing it loses you a lot of money.

47:31Yes. Yeah. I mean I think definitionally what you're saying must be true because in order for the broad portfolio to be really good, it must have contained something great. And if it must have contained something great, it would have technically been better to dump it all in.

47:43Brian Singerman:Yes. Correct. But definitely, that's true. And if it doesn't, then forcing would be a terrible idea. Yes. Yes. In the sort of, you know, earlier years of your time at Founders Fund, just because I think those are kind of, you know, interesting and very formative. How close was Founders Fund to the CEO, you know, the strong CEO model, you know, one end of the spectrum to the equal partnership model on one end of the spectrum? You mean like in terms of like how Founders Fund worked? Yes. Not equal partnership. Yeah. Can you tell me, like, how did something actually – I think it's the opposite of benchmark.

48:18Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was very strongly, you know, it's got to – you know, it's trusted people. But at the end of the day, Peter's going to call it.

48:25Brian Singerman:Peter's going to call it. But Peter didn't even have the most – Peter wasn't, like, saying he gets the most. Yeah, so tell me how it worked. Like, Peter had the final call. Peter's the CEO of Founders Fund. Peter found a Founders Fund. But, like, at the end of the day, like, it ended up – it probably ended up working where, like, your carrying current fund was driven a lot by your actual returns and prior couple. Interesting. Right? It's probably not the exact formula, but it was certainly based on actual performance. And it's tough to go back in history in venture capital, right? You have this carry numbers.

48:56Brian Singerman:But you get more. Wow. So carry can fluctuate up and down? Yeah, 100%. Oh, wow. And I'm good with this. I'm very good with this. It's just because it's like the principle being like, well, first you make a lot of other people money, and then you can start making real money. I very much believe this, right? I don't believe in entitlement. and it's like you first have to like do really good and then you can start making real money. And so I think the, no, yeah, carry went up and down at Founders Funds, but it meant you didn't have to necessarily like fire somebody. Like if you're in an equal partnership like Benchmark and somebody's not pulling their weight, the only way is to.

49:31Brian Singerman:It's the only escape valve. It's the only escape valve. Whereas Founders Funds, like you can be like, well, maybe this person's not like doing it, but you can give them a smaller amount of carry and they can still add value or whatever it is, right? Like that's the good news about that. It's actually a good point. The downside is freaking negotiation every single time. That's right. I've thought about this a bunch because I mean like, you know, obviously, I'm obviously biased. I really enjoy the equal partner model for a bunch of reasons. But this is one of the cons is that there is, you can't sort of like have the franchise model where you're like, we would still rather have you than not have you.

50:01But not at this level. And there's a world where we'd both rather you be in the next fund at half the carry. So let's do that.

50:06Brian Singerman:I also think that the benchmark is the example of the people that do it best because you are able to, you know, do that whole transition or whatever. If you're not, imagine doing the equal partnership model and you're not good at that. Yeah. You lose a lot of money. Okay. It's just not going to work. You have to be really, really, really good at that. So my point being like all firms are different and you need to play to your firm's strength. For us, it would have been a disaster to have an equal partnership. How about the way a decision got done? Like – Depends on the check size. Yeah, so tell me, what was the rough, not in numbers because I'm sure I moved around, but kind of how did it work, shape-wise?

50:41Brian Singerman:If it was a small check, you probably could just get it done with one other person just giving a, okay. If it was a really, really, really big check, then it needed, depending on when we're talking about, it would require me and Peter or just whatever. If it was for a really, really, really big check, I think it's pretty standard. Do you think there's more managerial fund CEOs and more CIO type of fund CEOs? Like, Peter strikes me as extremely CIO-like, you know, very much like, you know. So some ways, but Peter is also, the thing that makes Peter Thiel the best venture capitalist in history is not necessarily even because, and I think he is, is not because necessarily his, like, individual decision making at the CIO level, right?

51:23Brian Singerman:It's more, I mean, it's the inspiration of the GPX model. Like he was really, really, really good at taking very, very, very driven and smart people who are very different, figuring out what their strengths were, letting them play to their strengths. Now, what he needed to find was people who are really, really, really, really good and smart who could also push back on him. Yeah. Because like I think Peter is extremely self-aware that he is not always correct. And therefore, you want to partner with people who you think are going to be correct in ways that you're not that are also able. and let's be clear, not everybody in the world can push back on Peter Thiel.

51:57Brian Singerman:But if you are the type of person who can and you're right, this is the most important thing, though. You have to be right. But if you can do that, I think he was just the best in history at assembling a team of ridiculously talented people that are able to push back on him and leveraging their strengths. This is why Founders Fund is the greatest, in my opinion, team. This is very different than a solo GP thing. It's the best team venture capital firm that there is. But like, not of course, I'm biased. Yeah. But he's the reason for that. How important was the way that the team worked to get like, did the team need to like each other?

52:35Did the team need to respect?

52:36Brian Singerman:What need to be true for the team to work the way you're saying? Probably more of the respect thing. You had to realize, like, I think the life thing. I mean, I think that we, you know, when you're dealing with a bunch of chaotic, outspoken people, sometimes people are going to do things that confident yeah that you don't like so the question is like well okay but are they actually really really really good do they it's like you have to not cross a line you can't cross this line of being like you know we always used to you know we always used to be like you know does a founder cross the line from being like just really good to like something more yeah worse that you don't want to deal with right yeah and I think with the team at Founders Fund, it was like, they're going to do their crazy things.

53:25Brian Singerman:They can't go over a certain line. But otherwise, you just have to respect them for their work. Yeah. Because this is the thing. You have a bunch of individuals. I actually think this kind of happens with founders too. It's very easy to say in theory, oh, yeah, I want people who are awesome at something. And I want the spikiness. But then I think in practice, a lot of those people are uncomfortable in experience. You know, in the day-to-day experience of a lot of the people we're talking about, founders or VCs, they're actually uncomfortable to be around. They do things that are uncomfortable.

53:56I think a lot of people then can't actually sit with it. And I think that's part of what prevents people from investing in or partnering with these kinds of people. It's because the rest of the report card doesn't, like, you know, when someone is that mismatched, which, you know, is sort of like definitional when someone's that good at something. Like, they just behave in uncomfortable ways a lot of times. Yeah, I think it's true. But I think the flip side is also true.

54:15Brian Singerman:Like, what you don't want to do is just work with somebody because you just like them. Yeah. Yeah. Like, cause then you get blinded by like, Oh, I really like being around this person. But if they're not pulling that, if they're not actually really good. Yes. So we're like company decisions, like confrontational. Was it like aggressive? Sometimes. Yeah. It was like more aggressive than you imagine other places that might be like more like I think so because we did, we also didn't have, and I think that, you know, post me being there, I think like, you know, it's probably run pretty differently right now, but they may have memos or they think the growth team runs with like a ton of diligence.

54:44Brian Singerman:Now, like Napoleon runs a tight ship on that. Right. but like for me when I was there like especially on the venture side there was like no memo so the way they would get done would be like well you'd have a debate just like talk about like you have to get people like the first step was always like well can you convince other people to meet with the company right like that was like a requirement and then like if you did then you would have like a debate and sometimes these debates would take like five minutes and that was it a decision was made in five minutes on a yay or nay on it was not some long process unless the person who was really driving it was unsure.

55:20Brian Singerman:I could always tell if somebody was doing a long process, the answer was probably not to invest. But there would just be a conversation around a table or a text message conversation. It was really ad hoc, man. Especially in the early days, it was really ad hoc. With all this talk of teams, and you think about your investing in the next great fund, do you want to back a team or do you want to back a solo who's going to later build a team? It's a great question. I think for now, I know how to do this with solo. I'm taking some, here's why. You're a solo GP. Again, I have to, I have to, all of, these people are essentially calling my capital.

56:01Brian Singerman:And so getting this whole ultra high conviction thing correct is everything. And if you're a solo GP and you invest 20 % of your fund or whatever, it's like, there's nowhere to run. There's nowhere to, it's just you, right? Like you have that there's no play there's no playing game whereas i've been in i was in a partnership for a long time and i'm not going to need specifics but like sure there was always this element of like oh well that person wanted to do it so i kind of supported them or oh i didn't really want to do this is the blame game i hate that and so the if you're playing this like blame game like i i don't want to deal with that in partnerships i'm trying to figure out how to make the gpx model work yeah with partnerships but i think it probably works better with solo gps just because you get the ultra high conviction stuff just nailed yeah all right well maybe last thing um then i'll let you go i saw on molly's podcast you were doing it in your home music studio i play a lot of music or do you play a lot of music i write a bunch of my own songs but i can't play anything so how do you write it um i mean i know enough music theory and you can use daws and you can like use midi controllers to get notes into the computer and and play around but you're not like playing on piano know where it's not live no i like i i theoretically know how to play all those things but like i can't physically like i'm trying to learn guitar and it like hurts but like i do have a pretty big studio and i love it and like in fact it was awesome like my kids band my eight-year-old band had like a practice rehearsal in the studio that it was like everybody the parents that were there like all of our hearts just like melted but this the studio has to support everything from like band practice to karaoke, which our family loves, to like professional tracking, professional mixing.

57:41Brian Singerman:Like it has to go from pro to kid. So do you work with pro musicians on stuff you wrote? I have. And that's the plan. Not stuff that I wrote. No, no. Here's what I like to do. So we can get into this whole like, you know, I'm bullish on human happiness and going forward in the AI world. And so it's like what I get at. So my plan and what I've been doing is letting artists use the studio for free because I don't care about making money on the studio. So they get to use the studio for free. I'll even create a label for them where they own 100 % of the IP and everything. But the exchange, I get to be a fly on the wall.

58:14Brian Singerman:So I get to be part of the experience. So total win-win. They don't have to pay anything. They get to own all of their own personal everything. But I get to watch. I get to feel like I'm part of it in a way that feels real. because I'm at the studio with them while they do it. And I've had this like ever since like, you know, I dated somebody in high school and she had a band. And like, I remember the time that I got to go to the studio and like, but that was like, it felt so cool. So that's what I'm trying to kind of like relive here. It's just amazing to me that you're doing it without being able to like play somewhat.

58:46Brian Singerman:Don't know how to play anything, but I can. It's like you're Rick Rubin. I know enough about like production now that I can get that done. I just can't. I think that the physically playing stuff, man, I just haven't practiced. But you feel able to get to a good song. I mean, I'm trying to get better at doing that. But yeah, that's my goal. My goal is to like be like part of the process. So maybe I can even like help. I mean, I'm a huge music fan. It's almost too on the nose to connect to being an investor, you know, who doesn't play the music, but just, you know, get to the outcome. It's the similar kind of thing, man.

59:18Brian Singerman:Like this is why I could never found a company, right? I'm not going to be in a band. I can't found a company. But like, yeah, I can enable that. I do. No, it is. it actually is somewhat similar i can't believe you're the first to like mention this but it is somewhat similar like i want to enable that band to be the best they possibly can while i get to be part of the experience i love the experience of it and there's it doesn't matter how good something at ai better than you at something it doesn't matter like yeah experience human experience is like i mean it almost doesn't matter whether or not you think ai is going to be better it doesn't matter making music right i don't care i'm sure the ai is going to be better this is like i you It doesn't matter.

59:56I spoke to a chess grandmaster recently, which was super cool. And he was just like, you know, we've been losing to computers of chess for 20 years. And people love watching Magnus Carlsen. 100%. I like watching Magnus Carlsen. Like, I don't, whereas I don't watch the stock versus whatever fish. 5 ,000. You know, battle fish. Like, yeah, yeah. I don't watch those games. Whereas I watch the Magnus games. The other crazy, and I don't know if you're a chess player at all, but the other crazy thing is if you watch those, you know, if you watch stock fish, the moves are alien moves. They're alien moves, man.

1:00:22They're just like, you watch it with like a, huh. That move makes no sense. Then it just turns out that it's good.

1:00:27Brian Singerman:It's like the AlphaGo thing. It's like when it beat Go, you talk to this GoPro. What? It works? Then you watch a YouTube video of Magnus Carlsen. I don't understand that move. I'm not going to try. Totally. Maybe he adapts and maybe he can learn, understands why. But no, to me, the human experience, it does not matter. This is why I'm not anti-A. It's a long conversation. But I think the human experience survives regardless of how good AI gets at something. Do you think, is the math thing any different? you know like and this is you know recent that open ai had the thing where they you know solved all this open math stuff and there were a bunch of mathematicians who were like expressing sadness over it is that somehow different than the chess thing or do you think it was like you know the chess players in 2005 were also really sad and they thought you know that this was the end and then it all turned out that like people want to see humans play anyway it's a great question because there's a difference right the math stuff i guess they have to move on to something else because the thing about chess is even if it's human.

1:01:22Yeah, exactly.

1:01:24Brian Singerman:Math wants to solve. It's PvP or PvE, right? And if math is PvE and the E is solved, you need to move on to a different E, whereas PvP... Well, this is like, you know, I know that we can make a machine that throws a baseball way better than a pitcher. 100%. We can make a thing that rips a baseball at 400 miles an hour. And you can certainly watch robots play baseball and it'd be a different sport, right? But yes, yes, yes. The PvP nature of it is probably what makes that a little bit different than the math thing, where it may be PVE because once a proof is solved, it makes no point. There's no point solving that proof again.

1:01:56That's right. So there could be a little sadness in some of those domains.

1:01:59Brian Singerman:And then PVE, the AI might take away some of that. The PVP, though? But broadly, you're like AI optimist. This is going to be very good. I'm a tech optimist in general. I generally think that there's struggles, but we figure it out. I'm bullish on humanity. I am a tech optimist. I think tech is going to like, like, I'm not crazy. Like, I think that's going to create a lot of like struggles over the next whatever many years, but like, no, I am a tech optimist. Yeah. That's why I can remain happy in this, but I'm also like a human experience optimist. Right. Yep. All right. Well, Brian, this was super fun.

1:02:33Brian Singerman:Awesome. Thanks Jack.