Trae Stephens is a Partner at Founders Fund and co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril Industries, a defense technology company building autonomous systems for the U.S. military and its allies. As of May 2026, Anduril is valued at $61 billion. Prior to co-founding Anduril, Trae was an early employee at Palantir Technologies, where he led teams focused on the intelligence and defense space.

Delian Asparouhov is a Partner at Founders Fund and co-founder and President of Varda Space Industries, a company manufacturing pharmaceuticals and advanced materials in microgravity that can't be made as effectively on Earth. Delian was a Thiel Fellow in 2013 after dropping out of MIT computer science. Prior to Founders Fund, he was Chief of Staff and then Principal at Khosla Ventures under Keith Rabois, and before that founded Nightingale, a healthcare startup backed by Y Combinator.

We discussed what makes Founders Fund's culture uniquely truth-seeking, from its 1% personal co-invest requirement to a structure with no partner meetings and no residual economics. Trae shared why he believes Series A boards are largely a waste of time, while Delian reflected on working alongside Keith Rabois and eventually striking out on his own. We also explored their concerns about today's market, how Founders Fund navigated the 2021 bubble by concentrating on its two strongest companies, and why macro timing rarely works in venture. The conversation closed on America's semiconductor challenge and why a Taiwan conflict may be more likely than many assume.

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Timestamps:  

(0:00) Intro

(0:54) What makes FF unique

(8:01) Lacking EQ can be an asset 

(12:10) Delian on working with Keith

(18:30) Why Trae hates board meetings

(24:13) Benchmark vs. Founders Fund

(26:31) Investing as the exhaust of operating

(28:52) Venture as a micro asset class

(30:42) The infamous 2021 offsite

(34:21)  Current market sentiment

(39:18) Can you beat the S&P?

(48:53) America's semiconductor blind spot

(51:56) Taiwan and the 90% probability

(57:58) Robotics, humanoids, and the China question

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