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

Brian Singerman spent 17 years at Founders Fund, where he helped drive large concentrated investments into companies like SpaceX, Palantir, Airbnb, Stripe, Stemcentrx, Anduril, and Affirm. He recently left to co-found GPx, a new fund backing emerging managers. In this episode we break down the philosophy behind Founders Fund's concentration strategy, how a lifetime of competitive strategy gaming shapes the way he reads founders, and why he is now applying the same framework to GPs instead of companies. "When I did get to meet Elon and learn more about SpaceX, it was extremely clear that there was nobody else like him on the planet who could actually pull something like SpaceX off." The conversation runs from his 2008 start at Founders Fund and what he learned from Peter Thiel, to the SpaceX bet the firm staked its career on, why he has never read a financial report, and his read on genuinely authentic founders like Cyan Banister, Palmer Luckey, and Alex Karp. Plus a round of questions submitted by Max Levchin, Trae Stephens & Scott Nolan, his views on wealth taxes and asset seizure, and his bet on N-of-1 human cultural artifacts. **Brian Singerman: **https://x.com/briansin Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊 YouTube: https://youtu.be/Il5dCTkIF_M 𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒 • Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, & travel. https://brex.com/sourcery • Turing—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. https://turing.com/sourcery • VCX—VCX is the public ticker for private tech, allowing investors of all sizes to invest in venture capital. View The Portfolio at http://GetVCX.com • Deel—Deel is the global people platform that helps startups hire, manage, pay, and equip anyone, anywhere. Trusted by more than 35,000 fast-growing companies, Deel is the people platform that just works, so teams can scale without the chaos. Visit: https://www.deel.com/sourcery • Public–Investing platform Public just launched Generated Assets, which lets you turn any idea into an investable index with AI. With Generated Assets, you can build, backtest, refine, and invest in any thesis with AI. Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all ETFs. https://public.com/sourcery • Merge—The leading provider of customer-facing integrations and agentic tools for frontier LLMs, Fortune 500 organizations, and B2B SaaS companies. Visit https://merge.dev Follow Sourcery for the latest updates! https://www.sourcery.vc Disclosure Paid Endorsement. Brokerage services by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors LLC, SEC-registered adviser. Crypto trading provided by Zero Hash LLC, licensed by the NYSDFS. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time.