Keep pulling the thread on Trae Stephens.
The vast majority of Founders Fund's returns have been generated by investments in SpaceX, Palantir, Facebook, Airbnb, Stripe, and Anduril.
Anduril has a deliberate policy of offering a tender opportunity to its employees every 12 to 18 months at a new, higher valuation.
Founders Fund's investment thesis, particularly at the seed and Series A stages, is to invest in founders they have conviction in, rather than focusing on specific markets or ideas.
Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir, predicted in Anduril's first year of operation that the company would eventually be worth tens of billions of dollars.
Trae Stephens estimates Palantir's current market capitalization is between $350 billion and $400 billion.
Trae Stephens believes Anduril would not have been a viable company if it had been founded in San Francisco in 2017 due to the political climate at the time.
In 2017, Palantir's headquarters at 100 Hamilton in Palo Alto was the site of almost daily protests.
Trae Stephens asserts that the war in Ukraine has increased public awareness of geopolitical instability and shifted sentiment to be more favorable towards the defense industry.
Anduril manufactures a reusable counter-air system named Roadrunner.
Palantir's 'forward deployed engineering' strategy involved embedding engineers with security clearances directly with customers in classified environments.
During Trae Stephens' tenure, Palantir grew from a few dozen employees to approximately 1,000.
Trae Stephens claims that venture capitalists often fabricate reasons for passing on an investment to avoid the difficult conversation of telling a founder they lack belief in their ability to succeed.