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Chances are that<\/span> however busy you are, Keith Rabois is busier. He\u2019s an active investor as a general partner at Founders Fund<\/a>, the early-stage outfit co-founded 18 years ago by Peter Thiel. He\u2019s also the CEO of OpenStore<\/a>, the company that he co-founded in 202 to acquire and scale commerce brands on Shopify\u2019s platform. And he has two young children to chase around.<\/p>\n He\u2019s doing it all of it mostly from Miami, to which he moved roughly three years ago and from where Rabois talked with us recently about a lot of things. Among them was politics (he likes U.S. presidential candidates Nikki Haley and Governor Ron DeSantis, but compared Vivek Ramaswamy\u2019s \u201cforeign policy knowledge\u201d to that of his two-year-old). We also talked about why his venture firm cut its newest fund in half, the deal in the Founders Fund portfolio that seems to have him most excited right now, and what he thinks of Marc Andreessen\u2019s latest manifesto. Excerpts from our chat follow, edited for length and clarity. You can hear our longer conversation here<\/a>.<\/p>\n How big a fund are you currently investing?<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s a good question because we had announced a large amount that we wound up cutting in half<\/a>. I don\u2019t remember the official number.<\/p>\n I was wondering when we might see this kind of thing happen. A million years ago, of course, Accel and some other venture firms reduced the size of their venture fund<\/a> when the market turned.<\/strong><\/p>\n After we had the commitments, and we were proceeding, we realized that there wasn\u2019t a great way to generate venture returns with that size fund in the world we live in.<\/p>\n How much time are you actually spending at Founders Fund right now, given that you\u2019re not just the co-founder but also the CEO of OpenStore?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m a general partner at Founders Fund. That\u2019s my primary activity in life, finding extraordinary entrepreneurs and giving them the advice, counsel and money so they can achieve their ambitions or increase the probabilities of success. Secondarily, I co-founded a company in Miami has roughly about 130 employees where I serve as CEO. Most of the people at Founders Fund have founded companies successfully. . . Obviously, it helps you generate returns because you have\u00a0 proprietary deal flow [but also] your advice and counsel is probably more astute and more insightful. The process of actually running a company or building a company allows you to both commiserate with founders but hopefully also be insightful because you\u2019re suffering through the same challenges.<\/p>\n VCs co-found companies and sometimes run them as CEOs but not forever, typically. Is this a permanent state or will you hand this off to someone in six months?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are key milestones or key inflection moments, and when we achieve those goals and it becomes more [about] operational excellence and [less about] innovation and problem solving, maybe we consider a different model. But problem solving and confronting challenges with innovative solutions is something I can do really well.<\/p>\n Marketplaces have long been interesting to you, of course. You also co-founded OpenDoor. The first check from your newest fund went to Traba, which is a jobs marketplace that connects hourly workers with fulfillment centers. Is that right? Why is that interesting?<\/strong><\/p>\n Traba<\/a> connects hourly workers to mostly \u201clight industrial\u201d is the official vertical, which is typically a warehouse and there are ad hoc events \u2014 like a major concert, where you need a lot of workers. Light industrials have massive markets \u2014 about $50 billion a year \u2014 and very few people have built products to serve that industry. Light industrial depends on variable staffing, meaning during peak season. Forty percent of all e-commerce occurs during the holiday season, so it doesn\u2019t make sense if you\u2019re running a warehouse to have full-time employees for the entire year, so they need variable labor. And there are other unique features and value propositions that business customers require in this vertical, and Traba is doing very well at defining it. Then you expand from there.<\/p>\n You just led Traba\u2019s Series B round<\/a>, but it also raised a Series A last year led by your former employer, Khosla Ventures, and Founders Fund joined that round.<\/strong><\/p>\n Our history with Traba goes back to approximately June of 2021, when we led the seed financing . . .this is the third time\u00a0 Founders Fund will be investing [and at a] significant increase in valuation, which is pretty rare these days.<\/p>\n What\u2019s its post-money valuation?<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if we\u2019ve disclosed that or not. I would say it\u2019s increased meaningfully \u2014\u00a0 call it like 40% or more from the prior financing.<\/p>\n Whoa. So did you have a preexisting relationship with the founder, Mike Shebat?<\/strong><\/p>\n When I moved to Miami, he reached out to me on LinkedIn. At the time, he was still working as a product manager at Uber, but I kind of knew in the back of my brain that he wanted to found a company, so when he did start Traba, we were excited to lead that financing.<\/p>\n Faire is another marketplace in which you\u2019re involved. It connects indie brands and retailers. You\u2019re on the board. Its valuation soared, too. It was assigned a $7 billion valuation in June of 2021, then suddenly a $12.4 billion valuation later that same year. I saw it raised a $416 million extension round last year, so what happens now?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n It will be worth tens of billions of dollars. Literally, at YC Demo Day, when they presented, as they finished the presentation, I said, \u2018That\u2019s a $100 billion company right there.\u2019 The founders are fantastic, the metrics are great, the market opportunities wonderful, even though most people missed it.<\/p>\n But is there a down round before it goes public? It\u2019s a tough market right now.<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t think the company will need more capital.<\/p>\n You probably noticed we did not lead either of those two financings. So other people may have been spending years paying prices that may or may not have made sense, right? But I think at Founders Fund. We were pretty disciplined at [Khosla Ventures] back in my day. My six years there were extremely disciplined. So if the rest of the world wants to lose money as venture capitalists, sometimes it\u2019s in a founder\u2019s interest to take that money, especially if they can parlay that into real traction. But fortunately a company like Faire has really good financials and is performing really well. I doubt we would do another private financing<\/p>\n Are you doing a lot on the secondary market?<\/strong><\/p>\n We do occasionally buy secondary shares, we\u2019re open to it. I wouldn\u2019t say never, but very rarely will we buy secondaries without a massive substantial primary position [first], but we don\u2019t have any aversion to buying a secondary.<\/p>\n Are you an investor in OpenAI?<\/strong><\/p>\n We are. Founders Fund invested in the more recent financing.<\/p>\n Of secondary shares \u2014 employee shares.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, they are. It\u2019s an extremely complicated transaction, but yes.<\/p>\n