Founders Fund partner and Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens outlines his moral framework evaluating tech products on whether they feel good versus whether they are actually beneficial.
“Only fans you know, gambling, I think falls in the feels good is bad camp. This is like society has somehow managed to convince ourselves that there's some like freedom of expression or something like that that should be protected. And I agree, like freedom of speech. I'm all for it. But that doesn't mean that there's no moral judgment of like what that's doing to society. I would actually even put online dating in that category.”
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More from Trae Stephens
Opinion
Wealthy founders retiring into passive angel investing is a moral failure
“And they've taken, like, the route of Big Head in Silicon Valley, the HBO show, where they're just kind of, like, resting, investing, just kind of chilling out, making lifestyle decisions while writing angel checks. And that feels like a real moral failure of …”
Trae StephensMar 15, 2025▶ 20:21Trae Stephens talks Flock Safety, Anduril, and American Dynamism.
Opinion
Authoritarian regimes hold a massive advantage by conscripting elite engineering talent
“They have a massive advantage against democratic governments because they can mandatorily conscript their most talented people into working on the society on society's greatest problems.”
Trae StephensMar 15, 2025▶ 27:24Trae Stephens talks Flock Safety, Anduril, and American Dynamism.
Disclosure
Anduril targets tech-heavy, sales-poor defense startups for M&A acquisitions
“I won't say publicly on the Technology Bros podcast that we want cool technology companies to fail because they're bad at business development. But those do present interesting opportunities for us from an M&A perspective, for sure.”
Trae StephensMar 15, 2025▶ 6:12Trae Stephens talks Flock Safety, Anduril, and American Dynamism.
Opinion
Microsoft is much more willing to support US defense than other tech giants
“They, as you said, they have been much more willing than the other big tech companies to think of themselves as an American company, which is incredibly important and also be willing to work with the government on programs where, you know, there's potentially …”
Trae StephensMar 15, 2025▶ 9:37Trae Stephens talks Flock Safety, Anduril, and American Dynamism.
Insight
Two years of mandatory civil service would reduce America's ideological tribalism
“To get our best and brightest kind of in the way that Israel does to do two years of civil service coming out of high school. I think that would do a couple of things. First, it would actually, like, give us the people that we need to execute on national prior…”
Trae StephensMar 15, 2025▶ 27:44Trae Stephens talks Flock Safety, Anduril, and American Dynamism.
Opinion
Trae Stephens claims Flock Safety is the next Axon in law enforcement
“I think this is like kind of a once in a generation opportunity to build you know kind of a BMF in the law enforcement space, a la axon which is the company formerly named taser.”
Trae StephensMar 15, 2025▶ 0:47Trae Stephens talks Flock Safety, Anduril, and American Dynamism.
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