Why Us?
Our founders and our limited partners trust us with their companies and their capital because we offer a singular advantage over other investors: like you, we've all founded our own companies, launched our own products, and worked hard to make them a success. Over the past ten years, the members of our investment team have launched some incredible companies and products: PayPal, Napster, Plaxo, Facebook, iGoogle, Palantir Technologies, and Causes. We not only know what it takes to build a great company, we've done it over and over again. We want to take that experience and help you do the same.
Why You?
We're interested in people who have the commitment, discipline, and creativity to turn big ideas into thriving companies. Our funds emphasize companies that have the chance to help found new a industry (e.g., PayPal; SpaceX) or achieve a dominant position in an existing industry (e.g., Facebook; Slide). Small groups creating an online payment system to rival Visa and MasterCard or beating entire countries at putting payloads into orbit sounded like a stretch to most people, but we backed the companies that did just that. So, the greater your ambition, the better.
As for sector emphasis and investment sizing restrictions, we don't have any iron-clad guidelines, but we do prefer fast-growing companies with relatively low starting costs and significant comparative advantage.
How will Founders Fund help?
Experience
Like other VC firms, we have extensive experience with investing in early-stage companies. Everyone on the team is expert at the meat and potatoes of venture capital: financings, IP, corporate governance, other legal matters, and so on.
But, as you've seen, we offer something even more important. We've been on your side of the venture capital divide: we've started and grown companies and we know first-hand what challenges and opportunities face young companies. We can advise you in ways that more traditional firms can't, because we've lived through and solved many of the problems that will confront you as you build your firm.
Founder Friendliness
The best way to create value for our companies and limited partners is to make sure that our founders are able to concentrate on the thing they do best: building great companies. Based on our experience in your position, we've come up with a few ways to do that, which are unique in the industry.
For one, we are mentors, not minders: we'll invest in your company because we believe in it, not because we think we would be better at your job than you are. Our approach is generally more advisory and less executive than most funds. We've also pioneered some founder-friendly initiatives that help you focus on your job, like FF Preferred Stock, which gives founders modest early liquidity so they can worry about growing their business instead of a premature IPO. Other ideas that promote these goals are in the works. We want you to create a successful company, sell it only when it's ready, and then bring us your next idea. Some of our founders have already done that; we hope that says something about us and we hope that you'll do the same one day.
Let's do it.
If all this sounds good to you, send us a 10 - 20 page PowerPoint presentation containing an overview of your business, including your company idea, your team, the market, the competition, and your distribution model.
Although Founders Fund is open to receiving information about new companies, we ask entrepreneurs not to submit any information or materials considered proprietary or confidential. Due to the large number of business plans and related materials that we review, and the similarities in such plans and materials, we cannot accept responsibility for protecting against disclosure of confidential or proprietary information.
