Brian Singerman
Partner Emeritus, Founders Fund. On 3 shows, 5 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorengineerexecutivefounder@briansin ↗LinkedIn ↗foundersfund.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Singerman spent over 15 years as a General Partner at Founders Fund, leading high-profile investments in companies including Anduril Industries, Stemcentrx, Affirm, Oculus, and Oscar Health. Before entering venture capital and co-founding GPx, he was an engineer and executive at Google, where he created iGoogle.
3shows
5appearances
88statements
11resolved
9supported
1contradicted
82%fully supported
141said about them ↓ Everything Brian Singerman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Prior founder experience matters less than raw talent and ruthlessness
“I actually put almost no weight on did they do it before and put all the weight on are they super unique, insanely talented, ruthless in a way that they understand how business is and can actually really get things done. I just invest in the founder regardless…”
High startup valuations will drive down VC return multiples
“The valuation inflation is extremely real, and you will make less multiples because of that.”
The media prefers virtue signaling over authentic founders like Palmer Luckey
“The media likes people who virtue signal, not necessarily people who speak their minds. Palmer has always been good about speaking his mind.”
No other Silicon Valley company was innovating in defense before Anduril
“At the time when we did this, there was no other company in Silicon Valley innovating in defense.”
Maximizing VC Returns Requires Horizons Longer Than Standard 10-Year Funds
“I think if we're going to maximize returns, it would be over an even longer period of time.”
Singerman Bases His Venture Investing on Gut Feel and Reaction
“I am a reaction, a reactive VC, a gut feel based VC”
Eliminating Monday Partner Meetings Accelerates Founders Fund's Investment Decisions
“One thing that that gives us an advantage of is let's say somebody meets a company on a Wednesday. They don't have to wait till the next Monday morning partner meeting that has time to schedule for that team to come meet. We can do it much quicker than that.”
Singerman calls Peter Thiel the best global macro thinker he knows
“Peter's usually pretty right on the macro things at the end of the day. Timing, timing does come into this stuff, and he's not always exactly right on timing, but at the end of the day, he's pretty good at being correct on, especially on, on macro Global macro…”
Singerman believes space launch applications like telecom hold the real value
“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.”
Singerman backs emerging managers only if they could beat him
“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 going to be the same as mine. You're not going to beat me at my game, but playing their game,…”
Singerman was the first investor in Oculus
“So I was the first investor in, in Oculus and Oculus was a company that I invested in, not just on the street. I mean, I obviously Brennan Palmer great, but like, I was like, try the actual product and I'm not a product person, but I tried the actual product a…”
Singerman predicts human artifacts will become more valuable in the AI era
“Like, I think 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, Mindshare perspective, from like a you know, from an emotional perspective, right?”
Singerman made money betting against doomsday with famous people
“I've actually made a lot of money betting against the end of the world. With some pretty famous people.”
Brian Singerman says headsets need multi-user presence to be transformative
“For this to truly be transformative, it will have to start working in a way where you're either interacting with multiple people over a network who are wearing one, or even next to you and you're just watching different movies”
Brian Singerman says VC fundamentals don't change because few companies matter
“What we see though is no matter what the era, there's just very few companies that matter. And this is what all venture capitalists kind of have to try and figure out and make sure they see, pick and get into the very few companies that matter.”
Brian Singerman says founders are moving past the AI company label
“For a while, I think the pendulum was already being on the shift, but for a while, it was close to 100% Of companies would say AI or LLM by, you know, minute two of the pitch or page one of the deck. And I think that that's changed. It's now just you know, a t…”
Singerman: Private startup valuations lag public market corrections
“There's such a huge price mismatch between, let's say a company's last round of financing and what the macro Is that it's really difficult to invest right now simply because private companies lag public markets in terms of pricing by quite a bit.”
Singerman: I never buy public stocks
“This is why I don't do public. I don't buy any public stocks ever.”
Singerman: Founder quality accounts for 80% to 90% of investment thesis
“Founder quality is still 80 to 90% of my investment thesis, right?”
Singerman: Founders Fund clearly saw Airbnb's huge network effect early on
“We definitely saw at the time that the network effect on Airbnb was, at the time, was huge, and yeah, the market was it was clear that they could penetrate into the travel market, or even the lodging market, which I guarantee you, Harry, is huge.”
Singerman: VC fund returns earn complete freedom from LP interference
“When we've made money for people, you have a lot of more latitude on how you can invest money. So you've got. The freedom to do whatever you want without people breathing down your neck.”
Singerman: Founders Fund partners each execute distinct individual strategies
“The way that we do things at Founders Fund is everybody runs their own strategy based on what they are the best at.”
Singerman: 3x returns on $10M checks are meaningless for multi-billion dollar funds
“Our funds are multi-billion dollars, right? Like if we have a. Ten million dollar check, there's no real difference between that going to zero or that going to. Thirty million. I mean, there's just no difference between those numbers.”
The other half of the tape: Brian Singerman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 129 times in 59 episodes across the shows. 12 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 74Delian Asparouhov 14Molly O'Shea 13Keith Rabois 6Bastian Lehmann 5Kevin Hartz 4David Weisburd 3Trae Stephens 2
Statements about Brian Singerman, by other people (12)
Asparouhov: Brian Singerman pulled me aside six times over controversial tweets
“Oh, a multitude of times. I mean, I probably had at least, you know, sort of six, you know you know Singerman, you know, sort of one-on-ones where he has to be like telling what the fuck.”
Asparouhov: Founders Fund partners Singerman and Stephens offer no post-investment help
“Obviously there are people within Founders Fund that explicitly choose to not work on the fifth one, you know, sort of whatsoever, right? You know, Brian and Trey's, you know, sort of strategy is we believe the best founders, you know, sort of need no help, an…”
Founders Fund is the multi-billion fund most likely to return 3x
“I said founders fund, and I said it because of something that Brian Singerman told me, which is like, we are unparalleled in the willingness to have extreme revenue, extreme capital concentration on a per company basis, which means we could lose a lot. But if …”
Singerman: In-person meetings were necessary to invest during COVID
“Brian Singerman at Founders Fund said on the show recently about how he was unable to do his job in COVID as he could not meet founders in person”
Geoff Lewis: Capital concentration limits per company harm venture returns
“I think Brian's a hundred percent right on that, and I've learned a lot from him on how to concentrate capital into companies.”
Boyle: Venture Capital Resembles a Multiplayer Strategy Game
“And so I think the big takeaway from my thinking there is that, you know, he was the first person to tell me that investing is much more like a multiplayer strategy game than it is like any other asset class.”
Hartz: Brian Singerman's Stemcentrx deal is a historic biotech outcome
“Brian Singerman is a computer science, you know, major from Stanford that worked at Google that led the STEM-centric steel, which was one of the best outcomes in biotech history, but even more so, it's done some groundbreaking work at curing cancer, and that's…”
Stebbings: Brian Singerman automatically invests when a fund manager is all in
“Brian Singerman, who invests in funds and then invests in the companies beneath those funds, has a rule that if the manager's like, balls to the wall, I am all in on this company, he'll automatically write the check.”
Peter Thiel and Brian Singerman were Postmates' only early backers
“When we started out, when Postmates started out, this thing sounded so crazy that the only people that wanted to give us money were Brian Singerman and Peter Thiel.”
Weisburd: Founders Fund invests up to 25% of a fund in single positions
“He puts in every fund founders fund, I think puts up to 25%. Somebody could correct me, but up to 25%, a single position, they've done that with SpaceX, Airbnb, all these, you know, iconic companies.”
Stebbings: Top VCs prioritize upside maximization over downside risk
“When I think about Brian Singerman and Pat Grady, They're not worried at all about it going to zero, but they are very worried about upside maximization, and I think you get that uncapped upside lack of fear of downside through immense success.”
Boyle: Brian Singerman Is Silicon Valley's Best Reactive Investor
“The flip side of that is someone like Brian Singerman, who I think is one of the best reactive investors in the Valley, where he has no theses, doesn't think about the future, and just listens to the founder and the story and uses his own frameworks and is abl…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 113
Sourcery 16
2026 16 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- "Dig Through Your Couches. SpaceX Needs It." Cyan Banister on Luke Nosek's Pitch · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- David Friedberg Explains America's Economic Crisis in 60 Minutes · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Accel: The Quiet Firm Behind Facebook, Cursor, Nebius, Lovable, Vercel · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Town vs Instinct vs GrokBot | Why the AI Assistant Market Is Not a Bubble
- The Early Days of Anthropic & How 21 of 22 VCs Rejected It | The Four Bottlenecks in AI | Anj Midha · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 21 mentions in 12 episodes 2 per episode
- How Do All Providers Deal with Anthropic Dependency Risk & Figma IPO Breakdown: Where Does it Price? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Benchmark vs a16z: Why Stage Specific Firms Win · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Mike Maples: Three Frameworks to Evaluate Startups and Founders | E1242 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- KKR's Head of European PE, Philipp Freise: Do Andreessen & General Catalyst Scare KKR? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- a16z's $20BN Fund & Founders Fund's $4.6BN & Why Josh Kushner Has Mastered the Game · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- a16z's David George on the Most Controversial Bet at a16z & Do Margins and Revenue Matter in AI? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Max Altman on The New Seed War: Can Anyone Compete with Sequoia and a16z | Leaving $2BN on the Table with Reddit | Lessons from Backing Rippling at $25M Post | Why Climate Tech is a Mirage and Disaster
- Sequoia Partner, David Cahn on Who Wins in AI, Defence & The New $0–$100M Playbook · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 4 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 46 mentions in 18 episodes 3 per episode
- Delian Asparouhov: Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | E1183 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Bastian Lehmann: How the Uber Deal Went Down and How a $2.65BN Deal Turned into $5BN | E1137 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Kevin Hartz: "How I Lost Airbnb at Seed Because of an Exploding Term Sheet" | E1180 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Trae Stephens: Why No Company is Successful Because of their VC | E1135 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- David Weisburd, 10X Capital: Finding Alpha and LP Bias · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Mark Goldberg: Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | E1219 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- David Schneider: Why the Worst VCs are "Seagull VCs" & VC Value Add - Is it Real? | E1200 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- David Clark: Lessons from 32 Years of Fund Investing - Why Exits Will Be Larger | E1131 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 10 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- Keith Rabois & Mike Shebat: Creating an Olympian Mindset to Work Ethic| E1087 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Ryan Petersen: Why Velocity not Speed is Most Important in Company Building | E1081 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Beezer Clarkson: Are LPs Open for Business & Why Do LP Incentive Mechanisms Need to Change? | E1073 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 15 mentions in 8 episodes 2 per episode
- Keith Rabois: The End of Woke Capitalism; Time Allocation Tips; Silicon Valley vs Miami | 20VC #891 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Geoff Lewis: Why I Put $200M into Rippling; Uncapped Notes; "Compound Startups" | 20VC #933 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Wesley Chan: How I Created Google Analytics; The Founding Story of Gmail & Canva | 20VC #919 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Why the Traditional Seed Fund Model No Longer Works, Why Multi-Stage Funds Investing at Seed Bring Signaling Risk but also Less Pressure, The One Criteria All Potential Sales Hires Need to Have and The Clear Signs of 10x Sales Hires with Jason Lemki
- 20VC: Bedrock's Geoff Lewis on Whether VCs Actually Provide Value or Not, Why Bedrock Does Not Have An Ownership Focus and The Difference Between Principles and Rules When Building a Firm or Company
- 20VC Special: How To Fundraise Like a Pro: How to Size and Price a Round, How to Create FOMO and Urgency in a Fundraise, How to Structure Angel Allocations, The 7 Deadly Sins of Fundraising Decks, The 3 Signs a Potential Investor is Bad News
- Peter Singlehurst: The Most Powerful Investor You've Never Heard of | 20VC #907 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Mike Chalfen: How to Build Anti-Fragile Venture Portfolios Today | 20VC #904 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Aleph's Michael Eisenberg on Why Generalists Over Specialists, Why Boutique Smaller Firms Over Multi-Stage Firms, Portfolio Construction Theory, Capital Concentration Limits and How To Think Through Reserve Allocations with Market Cycles in Mind?
- 20VC: Why VCs Should Care More About Cost of Capital and Less About Ownership, Investing Lessons from working with Peter Thiel at Founders Fund, Why Liquidity Aligns Incentives Between Founders and Investors & Why It Is The Last Double That Matters in Ven
- 20VC Special: Accel Founders Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz on Building Accel Into One of the Most Prominent Venture Firms Over Four Decades, How Today's Market Compares To The Dot Com Bubble, How To Do Generational Transition Well and Why Accel Will Nev
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 13 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Cyan Banister on Her Relationship To Money, Risk, Her Investment Decision-Making Process, Why We Will See A Reckoning in the Early Stage Market, Her Biggest Takeaways from HQ Trivia & The Future of Silicon Valley
- 20VC: What Is Founder Narrative Fit and How to Detect and Invest In It, How To Avoid Consensus Thinking When Investing, Price Sensititivity; When To Pay Up vs Stay Disciplined & From New York Times To General Catalyst; Why Venture and Journalism are Not S
- 20VC: Anduril Founder, Palmer Luckey: "I Am Here To Build a $50Bn Company", How Palmer Evaluates His Relationship To Money Pre & Post Oculus' $2.3Bn Exit & Why The US DOD Needs To Be More Like China in It's Approach
- 20VC: SPACs. What Are They? Why Now? How Do They Change The Venture Landscape? Are They Better Than IPOs & Direct Listings? How Should Founders Think About Them? Kevin Hartz & Troy Steckenrider @ A*
- 20VC: 8VC's Joe Lonsdale on How To Foster Contrarian Thinking Within Venture Partnerships, Why The Best VCs Are Company Builders & Why It Is Not Possible To Build Multi-Billion Dollar Companies and Have Worklife Balance
- 20VC: Portfolio Construction, Optimising SPVs, Opportunity Investing "Between Rounds", Being Distribution-Centric Over Product-Centric and Capital Concentration Within Funds With Sumeet Gajri, Chief Strategy Officer @ Carta
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 2 mentions in 1 episode
2017 6 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Raising Over $700m From The World's Best Investors, How To Innovate In Highly Regulated Markets & The 3 Superpowers of Insurance Companies with Mario Schlosser, Founder & CEO @ Oscar
- 20VC: Founders Fund's Chief Scientist on Why AI Is Mostly A Scam, Why The Value of Large Datasets Is Mostly Overplayed & The Societal Effects of 4m Truck Drivers Being Unemployed with Aaron Vandevender
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Brian's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Partner Emeritus, Founders Fund | 3 | 64 | 78% 7/9 | full record on 20VC → |
| SOURCERYLEDGER | Partner Emeritus, Founders Fund | 1 | 18 | 100% 2/2 | full record on Sourcery → |
 MORE OR LESSLEDGER | Partner Emeritus, Founders Fund | 1 | 6 | — | full record on More or Less → |