Sam Blond is leaving Founders Fund, in addition to the career of enterprise capitalist, simply 18 months after he joined the storied Silicon Valley agency.
In a tweet on Monday, Blond expressed his gratitude on the probability to work at Peter Thiel’s VC agency and defined, “Full time investing / being a VC isn’t the right fit for me and I’ve decided to go back to operating.” That doubtless means he’s both accepted/about to simply accept a place at a startup or one other tech firm, or is within the means of founding one. Reached earlier right now, Blond advised TechCrunch he had “no comment outside of the post for now.”
Earlier than becoming a member of the VC agency, Blond was greatest often known as the previous Chief Income Officer at Brex. Brex just isn’t a Founders Fund portfolio firm, though Founders Fund is an investor in one in all Brex’s largest rivals: Ramp. So Blond’s jump to the VC firm raised a few curious eyebrows, particularly as a result of on the time — September, 2022 — Brex had reached decacorn standing with a $300 million elevate. That’s an odd time for a prime salesperson to bow out. Usually, startup workers are salivating on the riches to come back by way of an IPO or one other exit when their firm is experiencing such success. Previous to that he was VP of gross sales at Zenefits, the as soon as high-flying-then-troubled HR tech startup that was backed by Founders Fund. Trinet purchased Zenefits in 2022.
The departure is a publicly pleasant one. “Sam is a fantastic operator and he’s been a great resource for our founders. We hope to have the opportunity to work with him again,” Founders Fund spokesperson Erin Gleason tells TechCrunch. And perhaps there’s a clue in there that the VC agency could at some point again no matter new factor Blond is doing – or a minimum of hearken to the pitch.
However that is the second splashy departure of a Founders Fund associate over the previous couple of months. Keith Rabois shocked the startup world when he left in January to return to his former agency Khosla Ventures.
It’s pretty uncommon for senior companions to go away their funds for different funds – particularly prolific dealmakers like Rabois – as a result of their earnings are tied to the outcomes of their investments, and such investments can take years to mature. The scenario creates some strong golden handcuffs. It’s extra frequent for individuals who come from a startup operations world, like Blond, and who’ve invested with their very own cash, to go away a VC position after a short while. Investing different folks’s cash is a really completely different talent.
And Founders Fund is a bit uncommon in the way it operates, too. Whereas all Silicon Valley companies give lip service to being pro-founder and founder pleasant (in any other case, no founder would promote them a piece of their firm), Founders Fund has some extra stringent guidelines about that.
As Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens told TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos on the Strictly VC LA occasion final week, “We are founder absolutists,” he mentioned. The agency’s companions not often take board seats, “we always vote with founders. And at the point that a company no longer has a founder as CEO, we are out. We don’t invest in non-founder led businesses.”
Nonetheless, the agency doesn’t disqualify its companions from concurrently being founders of their very own startups, too. Thiel famously based Palantir, as an illustration. Rabois based OpenStore and Stephens co-founded Anduril. Many different VC companies even have companions who concurrently run startups. If being a founder and a VC isn’t robotically mutually unique, which means a need to be “an operator” could not absolutely clarify why Blond took his depart.
Aside from what he’s mentioned publicly, we don’t know the opposite causes. Nevertheless, many VCs want to think about themselves as a “value-add” associate, which means they need to be concerned in serving to the enterprise they again, and at Founders Fund such involvement is frowned upon.
“The more that a VC says, ‘I’m going to add value,’ the more you should hear them say, ‘I’m going to annoy the ever living crap out of you for the rest of the time that I’m on the cap table,” Stephens advised the Strictly VC viewers. “So I think our approach is more, you know, we’re going to invest in the company because we believe that that founder or that group of founders are the people that are going to grow this business.”
And that signifies that a VC’s profession there relies on selecting winners whereas having little or no say in how these decisions function.
