Apr 14, 2026 · 1h 24m · invest-like-the-best
From SpaceX to Founders Fund to Solving America's Nuclear Fuel Problem · Invest Like The Best
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In this episode of 'Invest Like The Best,' former SpaceX engineer and Founders Fund partner Scott Nolan discusses his career evolution, contrarian venture investing principles, and his new venture, General Matter, which aims to solve America's nuclear fuel enrichment bottleneck to power the future.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Patrick holds 19% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Patrick as informed peer 4.5 Guest teaching 6.1 Guest disagreement 1.3 Patrick pushing back 0.2
speaking balance: gold is Patrick, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 19:42 Scott rejects value investing in venture capital
Scott forcefully dismisses searching for 'value deals' in venture capital as a dumb strategy, asserting that cheap valuations reflect unviable businesses unable to raise at market rates.
Hardest push from Patrick ▶ 37:20 Patrick challenges energy causality on GDP growthPatrick pushes Scott on whether expanding energy supply automatically creates demand and prosperity or if macroeconomic innovation drives energy expansion.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 54:20 Scott details the three looming American nuclear fuel cliffsScott educates Patrick on the precise 5-step fuel cycle and the cascading cliffs facing the US: HALEU scarcity for SMRs, the 2028 Russian import ban, and depleted naval reserves.
Patrick holds their own ▶ 31:40 Patrick articulates the empirical learning-by-doing curvePatrick demonstrates deep domain insight by explaining how outsourced manufacturing offshores the core technical iteration curve and domestic innovation capacity.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Patrick as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Patrick pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Career Framework and Early SpaceX Experience | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Patrick sets up a broad philosophical query mapping Scott's career trajectory across SpaceX and Founders Fund. Scott details his initial career decisions and the stagnant cost-plus nature of incumbent aerospace. | |
| Transition to Founders Fund and Thesis on Physical Tech | 3 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Scott recounts meeting Peter Thiel at Stanford and pivoting Founders Fund's thesis toward funding neglected 'atoms' over purely digital 'bits'. Patrick gives him full runway to articulate the thesis. | |
| Mentorship and Contrarian Thinking from Peter Thiel | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Patrick asks about the bidirectional intellectual influence between Scott and Peter Thiel. Scott elaborates on Thielian orthogonal thinking and layers of abstraction. | |
| The Principle of Avoiding Trends and Stagnant Industries | 4 | 6 | 2 | 0 | Scott breaks down the mechanics of avoiding competition both at the company unit level and the venture investor pricing level, dissecting cost-plus oligopolies. | |
| Mid-roll Sponsorship: Ramp, WorkOS, and Rogo | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | After mid-roll sponsor reads, Patrick asks for examples outside cost-plus stagnation. Scott uses Sean Parker's analysis of Spotify and early Airbnb as case studies of deep founder conviction. | |
| Investor Intuition and Empirical Data Validation | 4 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Patrick probes whether gut intuition ever clashed with empirical diligence. Scott describes how early Airbnb seemed niche until granular cohort data proved dominant market takeover. | |
| Venture Valuations, Capital Intensity, and Up-Round Dynamics | 6 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Patrick cites Peter Thiel's aphorism regarding steep up-rounds indicating greater undervaluation. Scott explains how investors fall prey to anchoring bias rather than exit math. | |
| Domain Passion and the Inception of General Matter | 5 | 7 | 2 | 0 | Scott distinguishes investor dispassion from operator obsession and details how portfolio investments in Radiant and Crusoe led him to discover the domestic uranium enrichment choke point. | |
| Government Collaboration and Fast-Paced Engineering Execution | 4 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Patrick asks about the historic relationship between defense/government and deep tech. Scott outlines his direct SpaceX COTS experience working with mission-driven NASA personnel. | |
| Vertical Integration and Manufacturing Co-location | 6 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Patrick highlights the 'learning by doing' manufacturing paradigm. Scott argues that subcontracting layers calcify system architecture, advocating co-locating design engineering with first-of-a-kind manufacturing. | |
| Energy Abundance, Economic Prosperity, and AI Demand | 5 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Patrick asks about the causality between energy supply and GDP. Scott cites tight R-squared correlations and warns that flatlining US grid capacity leaves the country vulnerable during the AI compute surge. | |
| Mid-roll Sponsorship: Vanta and Ridgeline | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | After ad reads, Patrick asks Scott to assess the macro state of US energy. Scott notes labor responds flexibly to wage signals, while physical infrastructure and permitting remain rigid bottlenecks. | |
| Case for Nuclear Power: Reliability, Safety, and Economics | 5 | 7 | 1 | 0 | Scott provides a comprehensive defense of nuclear power as the cleanest and safest baseload source, explaining that physical energy density means it should theoretically be the cheapest. | |
| Advanced Reactor Taxonomy and Behind-the-Meter Power Models | 5 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Scott lays out the advanced reactor taxonomy spanning gigawatt, SMR, and microreactors, introducing his BYOE (Bring Your Own Energy) model for hyperscaler data centers. | |
| General Matter's Role in Nuclear Fuel Supply & American Fuel Cliffs | 5 | 8 | 1 | 0 | Scott delivers an in-depth breakdown of the 5-step nuclear fuel cycle and outlines the three looming American fuel cliffs: HALEU for advanced SMRs, the 2028 Russian import ban for LEU, and naval propulsion reserves. | |
| Enrichment Technology, Nonproliferation, and Global Uranium Reserves | 5 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Patrick asks about the boundary between commercial enrichment and weapons-grade material. Scott explains the 20% enrichment threshold under international nonproliferation standards and global ore availability. | |
| Business Strategy and North Star Metric ($/kg SWU) | 5 | 7 | 1 | 0 | Scott introduces General Matter's North Star metric: dollars per kilogram Separative Work Unit ($/kg SWU). He explains how enrichment constitutes the dominant variable cost for advanced reactor economics. | |
| Building Engineering DNA and EPC Capability | 4 | 7 | 1 | 0 | Scott explains why General Matter located in Southern California for aerospace hardware talent over nuclear specialists, outlining an in-house EPC model borrowed from Tesla. | |
| Operator Execution and Culture-Focused Hiring | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Scott details his operational time management, emphasizing his role as the final interview filter for culture, grit, and mission commitment. | |
| Public Perception, Acute Risk Bias, and Cost Drivers | 5 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Patrick brings up public fear of nuclear disasters. Scott contrasts acute vs chronic cognitive risk perception, arguing that radical cost reduction is the true catalyst to public adoption. | |
| Venture Investing vs. Startup Incubation | 5 | 7 | 2 | 0 | Scott contrasts venture investing (a high-comfort, low-labor job of ideas) with entrepreneurship (an inescapable harness of operational duty), explaining why incubation remains rare. | |
| Final Reflections and Peter Thiel's Board Support | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Scott answers the closing tradition question, praising Peter Thiel's rigor in stress-testing General Matter's thesis and joining its board. Patrick wraps up the interview. |
Statements from this episode (38)
Nolan Believed SpaceX Would Own Space Launch at 30 Employees
“I know the incumbents are not going to make an impact, but there's this new company, SpaceX, that is going to ultimately own the entire space launch industry, which I believed even when it was 30 people.”
Nolan: Incumbent Aerospace Stagnated for Decades on Subsidized Cost-Plus Contracts
“So that was an industry that had stagnated for decades. Nobody, no incumbent was doing anything interesting. They were all just writing government cost plus contracts. The U S assumed that space launch was a nation state capability. That would never be a comme…”
Nolan: Non-digital hardware and physical tech was an ignored venture opportunity
“Hey, I think there's a huge set of, you know, physical world companies, hardware companies that could be really valuable, and this could span biotech, computer chips, satellites, like space launch, transportation, infrastructure, almost anything that was not d…”
Nolan: The US suffers from a total lack of uranium enrichment capacity
“And then came across this problem of Enrichment of uranium and the US's total lack of capacity in the space, which essentially forced me to go start General Matter.”
Nolan: Investing in Startup Trends Destroys Returns
“And so if there's a trend inherently, you have many companies going after the same trend, you're going to have new entrance. It's become a thing. It's not about one company. It's about the theme. And if there's a theme, that's not about one company, then it's …”
Nolan: Stagnated, cost-plus oligopoly industries are prime for venture disruption
“I think the thing that's most linked to stagnation is probably being a cost plus industry where there's very little incentive for progress, not much incentive to bring the cost structure down. And therefore you end up with this, like this fixed market size tha…”
Nolan: Outlier Founders Often Sit on Ideas for 5 to 10 Years
“And so I think it's often just like a really deep interest in something that's of a personal interest to a founder. And they're just, they believe it should exist. They believe there should be some way to solve this and everyone's done it the wrong way. And he…”
Nolan: VCs Should Concentrate Capital Rather Than Indexing
“And in fact, you should just concentrate into the fewest number of companies possible and don't dilute your average returns by indexing.”
Nolan: Seeking "value deals" in venture capital is a flawed strategy
“The low competition thing typically would be associated with lower valuations, but I think that's trying to find value deals in venture is dumb idea. It's not the right plan.”
Nolan: Steep Venture Up-Rounds Are Often Underpriced Due to Anchoring
“If you've got a company that was like growing steadily, but then there's a big up round, it's probably the case that that up round is not even enough up. That if it's like a two X up round, maybe it should be a four X up.”
Nolan: Investors falling in love with ideas causes team compromises and failure
“I don't think you want to be in love with an idea. I think that's a risky thing because then you're going to try and find a way to express that by investing. And you're going to maybe make some compromises on the team because you know, this idea is just so goo…”
Nolan: Advanced Nuclear Startups Cite Russian Fuel as Primary Bottleneck
“And then all of them said the exact same thing. We want, you know, we're going to make nuclear affordable. We're going to make it scalable. We're going to take this from huge construction projects to factory built. And yet the one thing that's the hardest is n…”
Nolan: Government Agency Believers Eagerly Collaborate With Credible Companies
“And so I think my takeaway was in, in industries where you have true believers who are in the government agencies and who have been doing this for a long time, they're there because they want it to happen. And there's a lot of openness and excitement to workin…”
Nolan: Hardware Teams Should Aim for 90-95% Readiness and Iterate Later
“So it was really use good engineering principles. Think from first principles, move fast, get it to 90, 95%, not 99%. We can, and it's like get operational and you can make it better later. But if we just never launch, if we never get operational, this isn't g…”
Nolan: Subcontracting Creates Calcified Architecture With Rigid Interfaces
“Every one of those interfaces that crosses another company is typically a fixed interface that's not going to move very quickly. And so you have to treat it as fixed. And so everyone's designing their individual piece against preconceived interface requirement…”
Nolan: Co-locating Engineering and Initial Manufacturing Is Mandatory
“I think you need to, at a minimum, put your first of a kind manufacturing co-located with engineering and then better yet small scale manufacturing, mid scale manufacturing, maybe a large scale. You can push it somewhere else and go to a lower cost center as o…”
Nolan: Energy production and use is the ultimate proxy for human prosperity
“Energy use and production is the ultimate proxy for human prosperity, for economic activity, for all these things.”
Nolan: The US Electrical Grid Has Stagnated Since the 1990s
“We grew our grid for a long time. And then starting around the nineties, essentially no growth until today”
Nolan: China's Energy Production Will Triple the US's This Year
“China was growing a long time, like. We were equal neck and neck. I think this year they now will be triple us on total energy production.”
Nolan: Data Centers Could Consume the Entire US Electrical Grid by 2030
“And you look at some of these curves and it looks like data centers can consume if they were allowed to the entire grid by 20, 30 at this growth rate.”
Nolan: Physical infrastructure and permitting lag behind labor responsiveness
“I think labor responds. It probably takes a few years, but it's faster than building infrastructure. And so infrastructure is probably the bottleneck and then Is it just energy? Probably not just energy, probably permitting can take a while.”
Nolan: Nuclear Power Poses Far Lower Statistical Risk Than Other Baseload Sources
“And there have been high profile accidents with nuclear. You think of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima. But the actual risk associated with nuclear, despite those high profile incidents is still far, far lower than any other form of baseload energy.”
Nolan: Nuclear Power Should on First Principles Be Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels
“And so on, on first principles, nuclear should be an extremely affordable thing, potentially much more affordable than fossil fuels.”
Nolan: SMRs will find their niche powering data centers behind the meter
“And so if gigawatt scale is for the grid and megawatt scale is for remote communities or, you know, government installations, then the middle scale, I think is going to find its niche behind the meter with data centers over the next five to 10 years.”
Nolan: Modern data centers can use closed-loop cooling to eliminate water issues
“And the modern data centers can do completely closed loop cooling. So the water issue is not an issue.”
Nolan: US Ban Will Eliminate 25% of Enriched Uranium Imports by 2028
“And today Russia's about 25% of U.S. Imports. And so 20, 25% immediately goes away. In 2028.”
Nolan: US low-enriched uranium market for existing grid reactors is $2B-$2.5B
“And then phase two is go into LEU production, low enriched uranium for the 94 reactors on the grid today and supply them with the fuel that they need, which today in the U S is a two, two and a half billion dollar market.”
Nolan: Global uranium ore reserves offer hundreds of years of supply
“We've got, yeah, certainly hundreds of years of supply in the ground.
U S has supply.
We have active mining in the U S Canada has even more supply, higher grade ores enough to supply us for a very long time.
Same as Australia.
And then Kazakhstan's a huge depo…”
Nolan: HALEU Fuel Accounts for Over Half of Advanced Reactors' Costs
“So some of the, some advanced reactors, the cost of the fuel, the halo fuel that goes into it enriched further to 19.75%, which requires more input material to refine it all the way there. As you filter through more and more and more material, that fuel can be…”
Nolan: US was world leader in enrichment during 1980s before losing capability
“This was like, this step of enrichment was why we didn't have the more enriched fuel that advanced reactors needed. And you realize the U S had lost the ability despite being the number one in the world during the eighties by far. And it was something we were …”
Nolan: Nuclear Engineers Make Up Single Digits of General Matter's Team
“And it turns out the number of the percent of the team that's nuclear engineers is single digits. You don't need, we're not doing a reactor. There's actually no nuclear reactions in our process. We need to make sure that there's no nuclear reactions, but to do…”
Nolan: Building In-House Construction Teams Beats Hiring General Contractors
“Don't hire a GC and outsource everything. You lose total control. The schedule could be, it's not in your hands anymore. You need to build your own in-house engineer, procure, construct, EPC firm as a team to go run your construction projects because it's one …”
Nolan: General Matter Aims to Deliver Nuclear Fuel by End of Decade
“We're trying to do this mission that requires us to go as quickly as possible and to deliver before end of decade for both The advanced reactor industry and the existing reactors on the grid”
Nolan: Lowering cost is the key to winning public support for nuclear
“I think the way to make nuclear really compelling to people is actually to check the final box, which is cost.”
Nolan: Large-scale nuclear is not cheaper than coal, gas, or hydro
“The schedule to bring it online for the large gigawatt scale projects has been uncertain. The costs are often above what's projected. And when you look at the total package, it's not cheaper than coal. It's not cheaper than natural gas. It's not cheaper than h…”
Nolan: Founders Fund selects specifically for investors, not aspiring entrepreneurs
“Founders Fund recruits for people that want to be investors, that don't want to be entrepreneurs. If they want to be entrepreneurs, they should go be entrepreneurs. And the two roles are extremely different.”
Nolan: VC is a job of thinking rather than labor
“All that ultimately matters is a few companies per vintage, and you just have to be into those. And so certainly as a VC, much more than even private equity or hedge funds, as a VC, you don't actually have to work that hard meeting everybody. You can dive in a…”