Uncapped #53 | Trae and Delian from Founders Fund

**Trae Stephens** (0:00)
It is less important to be exactly true than it is to be directionally true, because it's really hard to shift the overton window. Most people are like, they try to sort of moderate their approach to something. Because of that, they're not directionally pulling hard enough to shift any strategy. Whereas I think Peter is just like, I'm gonna get like super, I'm gonna dig in my heels on this. Just to move the window a little bit. And that tiny adjustment that ends up being made is really powerful.

**Jack Altman** (0:29)
All right, well, very excited for this. What a crew we have here. Delian, you excited to be here?

**Delian Asparouhov** (0:33)
Oh yeah.

**Jack Altman** (0:34)
Yeah, I've been looking forward to this for a while.

**Delian Asparouhov** (0:36)
In the lines then.

**Jack Altman** (0:37)
100%. It's gonna be hard. And Trae.

**Delian Asparouhov** (0:40)
Oh sorry, Tiger Dunn.

**Jack Altman** (0:40)
The Tiger Dunn, yeah.

**Everett Randle** (0:42)
That's right.

**Jack Altman** (0:43)
Can we run that back?

**Trae Stephens** (0:46)
There was a lot of discombobulated commentary there.

**Jack Altman** (0:50)
We're gonna try to. We're gonna try to have a serious conversation.

**Everett Randle** (0:53)
That's gonna be this whole two hours.

**Jack Altman** (0:54)
No, I got to do this with Trae and that was amazing. We wanted to bring it all together. My first question is actually for Ev. And we're gonna start in a really positive place. We really respect what you guys have done and what you do as a firm. I hope that's the same. But Ev, you've worked at both. You've talked a bunch about like what makes Benchmark unique. I've obviously gotten to hear a lot about that from you. But I'd be curious for you to talk about what you loved about Founders Fund.
Maybe compare it a little bit to like what's different from other places, maybe Benchmark. But I'd just be curious for you to start here.

**Everett Randle** (1:20)
I think when people that aren't in the investing business think about what investors do and like what the day to day like what an investment committee looks like within a venture firm or any investing firm, I think they have this idea in their head that like, you know, the team comes together, they've done a bunch of research, they've done a bunch of work, and they have this like very intellectually honest debate about the merits and considerations of the investment and like weighing the risk reward and then coming to some like intellectually perfect decision about that investment given all the information that they've gathered. And that's just like not how basically any firm actually operates. There's so many other, you know, politics or organizational structures and incentives that like push you away from this like truth seeking place. And so I think that the really unique thing about Founders Fund that when I came in, I thought was just so amazing and unique was like not only that it was like a culture that bought like truly bought into the like process of truth seeking and like really putting like truth seeking on a pedestal above like, you know, the hierarchy of who's a GP and who's not a GP or any of these other things. But then also there was like even like organizational incentives and structures in place to like keep that the same, basically no matter who is, you know, in the halls of Founders Fund. To the one that I've mentioned before is this like 1%, you know, like the 1% mechanism or provision or whatever, whatever it's called, which is for any investment that you do at Founders Fund, 1% of that investment on a dollar basis is set aside for the people that worked on the investment to basically angel invest up to 1% of the total dollar amount.
And it's not just like some, you know, workplace benefit. The entire idea of that mechanism is to basically measure the conviction of the partners or the investors that are sponsoring a given investment. You guys still do that?

**Trae Stephens** (3:09)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

**Jack Altman** (3:09)
Like if somebody doesn't want to do it, are you, is that like a thing?

**Trae Stephens** (3:12)
No, I think like it's really important to be mindful to liquidity constraints, obviously. Like, you know, people on the team have very different personal financial situations. So it's not super prescriptive, but it is like a useful tuning, because you don't have to do the full 1%.

**Jack Altman** (3:30)
Yeah.

**Trae Stephens** (3:31)
You can split it up between the different parties that work on the deal, or you can say like, hey, I have five grand or whatever that I want to put towards this. It's not a signal of lack of conviction. It's just like based on liquidity constraints.