Brian Singerman

Picking the right company and figuring out how to get capital in it at almost any price is not as crazy as it seems.

I'll quote my former colleague at Founders Fund, Brian Singerman.

He did a podcast recently with Jack Altman at Benchmark, and what Brian said is like, "Look, at Founders Fund, we were the thirtieth investor in Airbnb, but we made the second most money, three billion dollars of returns.

Does it matter really that we spent a hundred and fifty million dollars to generate the three billion dollars of returns, and some people could have done it for fifty or fifteen? Not really.

When you think about, I guess, covering the current AI boom, what similarities and differences do you see to the booms you've covered in the past, whether it was the SaaS boom or some other trend?

Yeah, so when I started my career, mobile was, like, the big thing, and I remember getting pitches like, Justin Bieber invested in this mobile app, you know? Maze Runner or whatever is the exciting new game that everybody's playing.

And I definitely, like, bought into that hype a bit, but I also saw how these mobile games... could kind of come and go.

And you were trying to catch a moment and maybe sell or profit and then get out before you lost popularity.

Do you remember there was like that, flighty bird or something.

Not angry birds.

There was a, there was like a flying one that like one guy created, I think he was in Asia and it made millions of dollars and it was like a phenomenon.

I guess, what are some of the non-obvious signals for people who want to be reporters on when to lean in?

Welcome to this episode of Uncapped.

Today, we're diving into a fascinating conversation Jack Altman had with Brian Singerman about venture capital at its highest level.

And here's the thing.

Singerman argues it's less about formulas and more about judgment.