Letter #199: Trae Stephens (2024)
Cofounder of Anduril and Sol and Partner at Founders Fund | The Prologue and the Promise: God and Technology
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Today’s letter is the transcript of a speech and Q&A with Trae Stephens titled The Prologue and the Promise: God and Technology. In his speech, Trae speaks to Christianity in San Francisco before diving into a framework for why he thinks his faith and the theology that backs that up matters to the things people are doing in the tech community. He kicks off the conversation by sharing a passage from The Lord of the Rings, before jumping into a series of passages from the Bible, many of which he argues are misunderstood. He breaks down each of these passages, from their connections to other passages in the Bible, other religious texts, and even scientific luminaries, to the specific wording of phrases in their original languages to argue that God is the original innovator, and thus humans, who are made in God’s image, are meant to build things, and that it is excessive pride, not building, that God punishes. He then stresses the importance of “good quests,” emphasizing that what people choose to pursue matters. He closes out with a call for progress, arguing that it is not the past that determines he future, but that future that should determine the past.
In the Q&A, Trae further discusses “choosing good quests,” facing criticism, defense technology, lessons he’s learned, AI replacing human effort, whether innovation is good, what keeps him up at night, his time at Palantir, how he made each decision to leave “the best job in the world,” starting his career in the government, the path to self fulfillment, the excessive money that’s made in tech and venture, how to change a culture in a redemptive way when management doesn’t care about it, when to know it’s time to do something new, balancing ambition and pride, how to figure out your thing, the importance of family and setting boundaries, quests he is currently facing, his new company Sol, the dangers of social media, his conviction in defense tech and ethical questions he faces in the industry, who he looks to for advice, and lessons along with closing thoughts. The host then closes out the evening with a prayer.
Trae Stephens is a Partner at Founders Fund, the Cofounder and Executive Chairman of Anduril, and the Cofounder of Sol. Prior to joining Founders Fund and staring Anduril and Sol, Trae was an early employee at Palantir, where he led teams focused on growth in the intelligence/defense space as well as international expansion as well as the design and strategy for new product offerings. Before Palantir, Trae worked as a computational linguist building enterprise solutions to Arabic/Persian name matching and data enrichment within the US Intelligence community. He started his career in the office of then Congressman Rob Portman and in the Political Affairs Office at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington DC immediately following the installation of Hamid Karzai’s transitional government.
I hope you enjoy this talk and Q&A as much as I did!
[Transcript and any errors are mine.]
Related Resources:
Founders Fund
Cyan Banister Biography (Cyan: The enlightenment of an iconoclast)
Peter Thiel Compilation (536 pages)
Anduril
Palantir
Defense Tech
Compilations
Biographies
Arthur Rock Biography (Rock of Ages)
Steve Jurvetson Biography (The Final Frontier)
Letters
Transcript
Speech
What's up? It's amazing that you all came because the alternative was listening to two completely coherent intellectuals discuss the core problems that our nation is facing. But instead you're here. So I'm sorry you're gonna miss that. It's a real tragedy.
But seriously, to echo what Ben said, putting on a theology and technology event in San Francisco in the middle of summer on a random Thursday night--we were like, yeah, maybe 10 people will show up or whatever, it's fine. So I'm just kind of blown away. But I think it says something about our souls, like, what is it--why does this topic resonate at all?
I mean, the fact that Ben and Shawna and Lindsey came to San Francisco to start a church is kind of like, the Christian version of a tech startup. It's like in San Francisco, this a unicorn, like the church exists 10 years later. But I think part of that experience is kind of finding that people are hungry for meaning, like they want to understand why they're doing the things that they're doing.
And there's this popular narrative--I'm from rural Ohio. And whenever I go back home, people are like, Oh, San Francisco, that place is like super hostile to Christians, right? And I've been here 10.5 years, and honestly, no, I haven't found that to be the case at all. I think, generally speaking, people are curious how someone that they otherwise respect would believe something that they might perceive as being somewhat backwards. And so I found it to be this really receptive audience to engaging in conversations. And I think that's kind of what led me to suggesting to do this tonight. So I hope what I'm able to do is kind of give you a framework for why I think my faith and the theology that backs that up matters to the things that we're all doing in the tech community today. So with that background, I'll jump into this.
So let's open by reading a passage from one of my favorite uncanonized, admittedly, books of Scripture to start. It's a Book One, Chapter 16 of The Lord of the Rings.
The wealth of Moria was not in gold and jewels, the toys of the Dwarves; nor in iron, their servant--I think--is this actually on the screen? No, it's not. I was gonna say that would be crazy--such things they found here, it is true, especially iron, but they did not need to delve for them: all things that they desired could be obtained in traffic. For here alone in the world was found Moria-silver, or true-silver as some have called it: mithril is the Elvish name. The Dwarves have a name which they do not tell. It's worth was 10 times that of gold, and now it is beyond price; for little is left above ground and even the Orcs dare not delve for it. The lodes lead away north towards Caradhras, and down to darkness. The Dwarves tell no tale; but even as mithril was the foundation of their wealth, so also it was their destruction: they delve too greedily and too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled, Durin's Bane--which is another word for the... Balrog. Thank you. There's a couple of nerds in here, I guess--Of what they brought to light, the Orcs have gathered nearly all, and given it in tribute to Sauron, who covered covets it.
So I think that's kind of a kickoff question. Are our tech pursuits and ambitions awakening a Balrog? Or are they a call to participation in humanity's redemption?
So I think maybe the best place to start with this story is the beginning. Like the actual beginning. The beginning of the Bible addresses creation, as many of you know, Genesis 1:1, Genesis 1:2, it says,
In the beginning God created the heavens in the earth. Now the earth was formless, and empty.
And then the next two chapters go on to describe the Garden of Eden. And what it was comprised of, and the creation of light, the seas, plants, animals, and people. And God placed man and woman, Adam and Eve, in the garden, and said:
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man that he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
And then as many of you know, the story goes on, stuff happens, the curse begins when man rebels against God by consuming a fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
So this is a story that most people that have been raised in a kind of a Western Christian tradition are somewhat familiar with at least on a mythological level, if not a theological level. But the thing that we don't actually talk about is the end.
So if you go from Genesis 1:1 to the last book, the last chapter of Christian scripture, Revelations 22, you get a mirror image of the Garden of Eden story. Revelation 22 says:
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life--again, calling back to the Genesis narrative--bearing twelve crops of fruit yielding its fruit every month. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city.
This is kind of an interesting parallel because we started in the garden, but we ended in the city. And yet oftentimes, it seems like not only the modern church, but modern culture generally, just points back to the garden. We have this tendency to keep saying, Oh, the city is scary. Technology is scary. We need to retreat into our safe protected space in the garden.
But this isn't true or consistent with human longing. And I think we all kind of know and experience this. Our hearts yearn for progress. We ache for improving the human condition, and we have pined for the eternal. These characteristics are consistent with the character of God. And I don't think that's random chance. Genesis 1:27 says:
God created mankind in his own image.
The yearning of our hearts mirror the character of God. And before you say, Oh, that's a Christian belief, I want to walk you through some tie-ins to other religions and how I think this is mirrored in theology very consistently over the course of human history.
So Ecclesiastes 3:9-11. This is part of the Torah. It says:
What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity and the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
It's really interesting. The Hebrew word here for eternity is Ha-olam. And Ha-olam, when it's accompanied by a preposition or a noun, it simply means forever, or all time. It's the way that the Hebrew Bible talks about God's covenant with Abraham and his people. But here in Ecclesiastes, it actually doesn't appear with a preposition or a noun. It's by itself. And what that's saying is that he's implanted inside of us an aspiration towards the eternal. And this is a capacity to dream, on a divine scale. And we're the only part of creation that's like this. There aren't other animals that have this compulsion, almost, towards the eternal, towards creation.
And I think this, as one aspect of character, you see reflected in the way that we talk about the names of God. So in--many of you are probably familiar with--like the Alpha, the Omega, which means the beginning and the end. You have Abba, which means Father; this is a common term. Elohim, Adonai, Yahweh.
I also want to talk about in the Islamic tradition, they do a really interesting thing with names, where it's actually an act of worship to talk about the names of God. This is called the Asma ul Husna, which means the 99 names of God. And the first chapter of the Quran, it talks about the most common of these, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem; In the name of God, The Most Gracious, and The Most Merciful. And that's the really popular one. But if you flip to a little later in the Quran, in Surah Al-Hashr, which is the [5]9th, chapter, 24th verse, there are three examples that tie directly into the Genesis 1 narrative. The three names are al-Khaliq, which means The Creator, al-Bari, which means The Inventor, and al-Musawwir, which means The Shaper.
And I think the thing that gets born out of all of this is that this is there's a core characteristic of God, that is that he's a creator. He builds things, he makes things, he invents things, he shapes things. And God has uniquely positioned his people in his image to produce and to innovate. That's what we are.
As a creation, we are producers, we are innovators. And you might think that the biblical narrative around this production, around this innovation, is actually something that only his closest followers are kind of drawn into. And everyone else is kind of on this bad journey that results in bad things. But that's actually not true. Innovation in the Bible starts with the first murder in human history.
So as the story goes, the eldest children of Adam and Eve are Cain and Abel. Cain, in Hebrew, the root of that word is "to produce." Literally, Cain's name, is The Producer. And you fast forward, some stuff happened. Cain kills Abel. So, The Producer killed his brother. Awesome. Four people in the entire world and they're already killing each other. That's about right.
So it's the children of Cain, who were the first innovators. So I'm gonna read kind of a somewhat long passage from Genesis 4. Parts of this will be boring. I'm going to mess up the pronunciations, I'm sure, but we're gonna give it our best shot. So Genesis 4:17 says:
Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city--Cain was the one that built the first city--and he named it after his son Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.
Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all who played stringed instruments and pipes. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron.
So God used a flawed, fallen man to birth the first human city, and set down the path for music and agriculture, and the building of tools.
Pastor--the late Pastor Tim Keller, who many of you might be familiar with, he passed away--last year, he summarized this concept that is traditionally called common grace, which is a term from John Calvin, better than anyone else. He said:
God gives good gifts of wisdom, talent, beauty and skill graciously, that is, in completely unmerited ways. He casts them across the human race like seed, in order to enrich, brighten, and preserve the world.
You don't have to--I don't think you have to look very hard in Silicon Valley to find examples of fallen, broken people that are delivering and building capabilities that have changed the world.
Moreover, God has given us the natural resources that we need to build the things that we build, and the mental faculties to innovate. In fact, all of the building blocks that we use, and everything that we do today, whether it's the natural resources that are silicon that become the chips and the computers that you're writing software on. All of those were created by Him.
In Genesis 2:2, it says that God completed creation. He is the only one who can create something from nothing. Everything that we're doing is creating something from something. But God created something from nothing. And this is reflected in Natural Law.
Albert Einstein once said:
The scientist's religious feeling takes the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is utterly insignificant reflection.
Similarly, Stephen Hawking once said:
Knowing the mind of God is knowing the laws of nature.
We have this incredible God of abundance, not scarcity, who uses people like us to build technology as a powerful level to unlock a more abundant existence. I've struggled with this, to be honest, in my time in the tech community.
It's comparatively much easier for people in helper professions to talk about their mission and what they're doing for the world, whether it's people in healthcare, social workers, people in the ministry, teachers, people working in nonprofits. I experienced some shame around this. And if the massive foundations that tech billionaires have built to pay penance for their own shame are any indication, I don't think I'm alone in this. I think other people feel this way as well.
But the greatest contributions many of us can offer to the world are directly related to what we're doing professionally, not what we're doing with our volunteering time, or with philanthropic dollars that we give at the end of the year--although those things might be important.
Tech development is at the core of preventing disease, improving access to education, improving connectivity, globally, and even, I would argue, deterring war, which we can talk about in the Q&A If you guys want.
So next time you think of throwing tomatoes at the Google bus as it passes by you on the way to Mountain View, I want you to take a deep breath and remember this: There are people that are commuting to TikTok. You should throw tomatoes at them instead.
But it's not always upside, obviously. Humanity has a mean streak of self destruction. And in the biblical narrative, this brings us to the great flood.
The entire earth covered in water, humanity is all but destroyed. God shows up, Noah and his family survive the deluge and run aground after 40 days and 40 nights of rain at Mount Ararat in modern day Turkey. So after a period of repopulation--many experts believe that this was somewhere around 350 years--we were back at it with city building.
And this brings us to the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. So I'll read another passage from here. Genesis 11 says:
Now the whole world had one language and one common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used bricks instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people were building. The Lord said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.
So the Lord scattered them from there all over the earth, and they stopped building the city.
That is why it's called Babel--because the Lord confuse the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the earth.
Alright, so there's a lot to break down here. The first question I have is, Why does this nine verse account bother mentioning building materials? One explanation could be that it was an innovation that allowed them to build taller than they had previously been able to build it. Sure, yeah, that's believable. But let's check out another possible interpretation. The Bible doesn't say anything specifically about the height of the tower, but the apocryphal Jewish texts, the Book of Jubilees, does. So let's read what the Book of Jubilees says. It says:
And they began to build, and in the fourth week they made brick with fire, and the bricks served them for stone, and the clay with which they cemented them together was asphalt which comes out of the sea, and out of the fountains of water in the land of Shinar.
And they built it: forty and three years were they building it; its breadth was 203 bricks, and the height (of a brick) was the third of one; its height amounted to 5433 cubits and 2 palms.
So, 5433 cubits and 2 palms is roughly 2500 meters. This is three times taller than the Burj Khalifa. And Mount Arafat--well, we don't know exactly where Mount Ararat is, but the commonly believed location, in modern day Turkey, is in Durupinar, Turkey. And the site sits at just over 2200 meters.
So what was happening is that the tower was just tall enough to outreach the flood. And the building materials, brick and tar mortar--watertight. Humanity--the story is that humanity was shaking their fist at God and saying, You killed us before, and you will not kill us again. Their sin was actually their pride, not the fact that they were building the thing that they were building. And this, I believe, is a common narrative in the development of all tech.
We see a parallel story in the Second Chronicles, about the story of King Uzziah. So, I'll read this. This is a slightly long passage as well:
And all the people of Judah took Uzziah, who was sixteen years old, and made him king instead of his father Amaziah... And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord according to all that his father Amaziah had done. He set himself to seek God in the face of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of God, and as long as he sought the Lord, God made him prosper...
he built cities in the territory of Ashdod and elsewhere among the Philistines... Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem at the Corner Gate and at the Valley Gate and at the Angle, and fortified them. And he built towers in the wilderness and cut out many cisterns, for he had large herds, both in the Shephelah and in the plain, and he had farmers and vinedressers in the hills and in the fertile lands, for the loved the soil... And Uzziah prepared for all the army shields, spheres, helmets, coats of mail, bows, and stones for slinging. In Jerusalem he made machines, invented by skillful men, to be on the towers in the corners, to shoot arrows and great stones. And his fame spread far, for he was marvelously helped, till he was strong.
So this is a beautiful story about a man of God who used his resources to build more abundance for his people.
But there's a warning in the next verse. It says:
But when he was strong, he grew proud, to his destruction.
So again, we're back to this theme that it's actually the pride that did the thing, not the actual building of the tech.
Tony Reinke, who is the author of a brilliant book that I would recommend called God, Technology, and the Christian life, he--I think he said it best. He said:
Humans are makers and worshipers, and too often what we craft with our hands becomes what we worship with our hearts.
So on that note, the primary ethical concern that I have with tech is not that we're going to unlock the Balrog. It's not that we're going to out-discover what God wants us to discover. The real question that I have about the impulses of people in tech is that they might be just pursuing bad quests.
Bad quests--there are a lot of them. Are we actually making the world a better place? Or are we just pursuing selfish ambition? Are we pursuing relentless competition? Or worse?
When celebrities slap their personal brands on makeup companies, or alcohol bottle, or fashion companies, are they making the world a better place? Or are they exploiting their own brand value to sell commodities.
Technology is not any different. Technology is--I would define as--doing new things. That seems like a fairly reasonable definition. Globalization of commodities are copying things that already work that you already know are going to work.
So I think the question that I'm always pushing people to ask is, How is what you're doing a good quest?
But, I found after--I wrote a blog post about this a couple of years ago. And my expectation was that people would would read it, and then they would go back and be reflective, and they would say, Oh, man, the thing that I'm doing is not a good quest. I should quest in some other way.
But actually, what happened is that human psychology took over, and people could convince themselves that anything was a quest. My wife and I were at a dinner and somebody walked up to me and was like, Trae, I read your blog post. It was brilliant. I am on a very good quest. Let me tell you about my NFT company.
And I realized at that moment, that actually the question should be flipped. The question is not How is what I'm doing a good quest? The question is, How is what I'm doing a bad quest? Because that's where you're going to get the most insight, and pushing yourself the most on an ethical level, to come up with good answers for why what it is that you're doing is contributing positively to humanity.
For instance, the exploitation of nuclear energy has the potential to be one of the greatest technological breakthroughs breakthroughs in the history of mankind. But it's also the most disruptive force ever leveraged and makes it possible for us to deliver destruction on an apocalyptic scale beyond that which we've ever been able to imagine before.
The internet is another great example. Connects people all over the world. Church communities were able to gather together and worship on Sundays during the whole global pandemic. Grandparents can FaceTime their grandkids from across the country. Global supply chains are much more efficient. We can click a button and get basically anything we want in two days. There's all sorts of really cool stuff that comes out of the internet.
But it's also led to teenagers being wrecked by depression. It's led to families being destroyed by addictions to pornography. It's led to financial scams that have been carried out on a global scale.
The founding editor of Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly, pointed out that one day not too long ago, we decided that we could not live another day unless we had a smartphone. A dozen years earlier, this need would have dumbfounded us. Now we get angry if the network is slow. But before, when we were innocent, we had no thoughts of the network at all. We keep inventing new things and making new longings and new holes that must be filled.
So while we're unlocking the future, we're also unlocking emptiness and longing in every new technology that gets built. And whether you're a person of faith or not--and I know that there's a lot of different people here in the room with different backgrounds--the common grace point that I kind of started this out with says that God's going to use you whether or not you're participating.
Whatever it is that you're building, it's going to be part of this progressive plan for mankind. But that's not even the right question. The question is, You may or may not be participating, willingly or unwillingly, but how are you going to respond to God's plan for you, not God's plan for humanity?
Every one of us is going to fill this emptiness and longing that we're building for ourselves with something. No one just sits around and says, I'm not worried about--so many people are gonna fill it with money. Some people will fill it with greed. Some people will fill it with pride. Some people will fill it with addiction. Some people will fill it with new age spiritualism. SoulCycle. Whatever your jam is. Some people will fill it with vanity and hedonism. There's a lot of different ways that people try to shove things into these holes. And this is why you get Jack Dorsey standing over a fire doing a primal shaman yell or whatever. Jack Dorsey is trying to fill a hole that he created. He's just doing it in a really unproductive way.
And I know that many of you have probably experienced some trauma with religious people. I get it. Jesus was arrested, ran through a kangaroo court, and literally crucified by religious people. We get it. There's a lot of trauma there.
But all of those other things that I just talked about are pretty poor substitute for religion. And that's what I would ask you to think about, is, what is it that you're jamming in this hole? And why do you think it's better than alternatives?
There's a story in John 4 about Jesus' encounter with a Samaritan woman at the well. For those of you that don't know the story, there's--Jesus and his disciples are walking for a long time, they get to a town. Outside of the town is the well. Jesus is super tired. He collapses, sits down at the well. His disciples go into town to get some food, because they've been walking for a long time. So Jesus is just chillin. And the Samaritan woman walks up, and they have this incredible engagement where Jesus tells her all the things that she's ever done and basically convinces her that she's not--that it's possible to get forgiveness for all the things that she had done in her life.
That's not actually why I'm telling you this story, so... we can just skip right past that. The disciples come back after all of this happens, and they have food, and so they're like, Yo, Jesus, you should eat some food. And Jesus is like, No, I'm good. I don't need any food, because my food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish his work.
And so this is like the kind of core point that I've arrived at after, really, 17 years in the tech community, is that we're all putting meaning on our work. We're all going in, we're trying to do what they were doing in the TechCrunch Demo Day, applying random making the world a better place narratives to companies that very clearly have nothing to do with making the world a better place. We're all doing this.
The question is, How does the work--how does it matter? And how does it matter to the mission around building a better world?
So let's throw the painting up on here.
Cool. So I know it's kind of hard to see. You guys probably saw it on the invite when I sent it out, but this is one of my favorite paintings. It's from 1983. This artist named Robert McCall painted--this is a giant mural, I mean like a 50 foot long mural, at Epcot. And it has this crazy story where like it literally disappeared. Like they moved it, put it in a semi truck, and then the semi truck never showed up at Disney. So I've talked to some of the Disney leadership, and they're like, Yeah, we don't know where it is. It's like our really famous painting, but it's just mysteriously gone. Anyway, cool painting.
The point of this is that it's starkly at odds with everything we've been told in modern dystopian science fiction, right? Like, every story you find is like, Oh, we build tech, and then there's like massive wealth inequality, and there's a nuclear war, and everybody dies, or everybody's miserable.
But that doesn't have to be like that, right? Like, there's a promise of all these people standing together, working towards this vision for a world that's better than the world it is today.
And I think there's something really unique about Christianity that we don't really talk about that much, because most of us kind of came up within this western tradition where it just seemed like kind of the norm.
But if you go back and you look at--I'll use two examples.
If you go back and look at pagan--like old, old, old pagan religions, they're--everything is cyclical. And so there's this kind of tension in the story that's always around everything being timeless and eternal. Like, it doesn't matter what you do, it's just a cycle. Like, if you're stuck in a caste, you're just going to always be stuck in that caste. If you're not part of the in group, you're never going to be part of the group. If you're being persecuted, you're always going to be persecuted. Everything is just this cycle. And people talk about everything as cycles.
Christianity is progressive. The whole idea from the very beginning is that it's not timeless and eternal. Everything is one time historical. There aren't recurring things that happen in cycles, through Scripture. It's all one time historical events, pointing constantly further towards the city that we talked about in Revelations 22.
And I think that--the kind of framing on this that is really powerful for technologists, and this is something that I have--this has become very personal to me--is something that my friend Jeff here in the front row said better than I'll ever say, which is that there's a lot of bad theology that says that your past is going to determine your future. This is what this timeless and eternal never ending cycle is. Your past is just perfectly representative of what your future is going to be. It's hopeless.
But actually, our future is what determines our past. We're pointing at the city. That's the future, That should determine our actions. That should determine our past. And we have a God that cares about us, that cares about our work, that matters to them. And we are marching forward with this plan for creation that we should care about too, as a result.
So happy to open this to questions from there. But that's kind of the basic framing.
Q&A
Host: Great job. Now comes the fun part. I mean, there are a number of things that have already come in question wise, and perhaps not all that surprising, really around the good quests, bad quests scenarios. And we'll probably get around to is it possible for me as a pastor to be on a bad quest? And for you to do what you do and be on a good quest? We'll probably get to that one. Are there limits to what can be a good quest--by that I mean, like, is it possible no matter who I work for, what industry I'm in, what kind of work I'm doing, what my team looks like--is it possible that there are some things, no matter how I slice it, no matter how I convince myself, no matter how I try to convince everyone else, like, Man, you know what, this actually can't be a good quest. And I probably need to actually pick a different thing, even if there are lots of things [inaudible]. Is it possible?
Trae Stephens: Yeah, there's actually a lot of really compelling historical theology that talks about this issue of is all vocations sacred, not just the ministry, but also the people that are working in lay community in the non religious communities? And I think the answer is that it's significantly more broad than we used to think in like the 5th century to the 15th century, where it was kind of like kind of a monastic thing where the best way that you can please God is to hideaway in a monastery and just pray all the time. And that ended up being super destructive, because you needed these creative people in non-ministry positions that were contributing to the world. And I think there's definitely like exploitative types of things that I'm not sure how you could justify as being a good quest. One way to think about this is on a quad chart. If you think about a quad chart where the axes are, Are Good, Are Bad. And then on the other axis, it's Feels Good, Feels Bad. This seems kind of trivial, but I think in Silicon Valley, it's like really important to talk to people about this. We love the Feels Good, Is Good category. Like everybody--it's pure validation. Everyone tells you how great you are. Oh, you're working on like literally making the world a better place. You're like facilitating donations to nonprofits, or whatever it is. Everyone agrees with that category, that's obvious. There's the opposite quadrant, the Feels Bad, Is Bad category. We all agree with that, too. If one of us built a technology that was like, click a button, kill your neighbor, everyone would be like, Yeah, that's bad. I don't--we shouldn't build that. All of the interesting questions are in the other diagonal. It's in the it Feels Good, Is Bad category. I think you can have a lot of really interesting debates with people about whether or not Juul was a good company. I think Juul would say, We're helping people quit smoking. It was also hooking a bunch of kids on a certain addiction to nicotine. I don't know. Like, there's a good question to be asked there. And then the other quadrant of Feels Bad, Is Good. This is like the least popular quadrant in Silicon Valley. Because it's like, you can't get peer validation. And this is where I would put things like law and order. Like maybe crime is bad. Maybe drugs are bad. Maybe we should actually like help people with conservatorship, if they have mental illnesses. I think like that category is very difficult to litigate, but we should spend more time in that diagonal.
Host: Yeah, and as people even hear those categories, obviously, what one person might think is good, the person sitting beside them might think is not good. And I don't know if you've ever had any bad press. But what about--
Trae Stephens: [Trae coughs and audience laughs]. I legitimately choked, but, well timed.
Host: I don't know what's more challenging--doing what you do or what I do in this place. But what--talk to us about defense technology. I mean, obviously, a number of people who don't know you personally perhaps know you because of this. And I would love to hear your thoughts how you think about this, doing what you do, what you're part of, talk to us about defense technology and the ways in which it is a good quest, if, assuming it is in your mind, and what are the concerns you have there?
Trae Stephens: Yeah, I think--throughout even the Bible, they talk constantly about like, the profession of being a soldier. And I think that the challenge with this conversation is that it fits very squarely in the Feels Bad, Is Good--I would argue is in the Feels Bad, Is Good category. And so it's always like, you have to kind of start at this point of acknowledging that military activity has done a lot of bad stuff in the history of the world. A lot of innocent people have died. That doesn't feel like a natural good. But then the question is around what St. Augustine called Just War Theory, which is this idea that like, Would the world be better if we didn't do it? And I think the answer is very unequivocally No. It would not work. Pacifist communities exist inside of hegemonies. Like the only reason the Quakers can be the Quakers is because the United States allows them to be Quakers. But the moment that you get into these situations where no one is actually willing to say no to tyrants, it doesn't really work. And so I think there's all these ways that we can prosecute violence in a way that is just, and that protects the innocent, protects the oppressed, allows people to live in relative freedom, the ability to practice their faith. And I definitely don't think the United States is beyond reproach. We've made a lot of bad decisions in the past, we will make bad decisions in the future. There's probably bad decisions being talked about right now on a debate. But I think that the institution of democracy is our opportunity to contribute to this debate in a way that authoritarian governments have never allowed. And I believe if we don't do something, that someone else is going to do something, and we will be far less happy with the outcome.
Host: And what about the person in the audience tonight who feels like Man, I feel called to do something that is also in that category, even if it's not this? I mean, what are some things you just learned along the way, in terms of whether--everything from pitching and raising funds to how to deal with criticism, those kinds of things. I can imagine there are other types of ideas that would fit in that category.
Trae Stephens: Yeah, I mean, environments change. When we started Anduril in 2017, there was a lot of bad press. It was not popular. There was a lot of being dragged through the mud on things that either weren't true or were a misunderstanding of what it is that we were trying to do. But in 2024, I mean, it's a meme category. Like everybody wants to work in defense tech, which is amazing. I never expected that to happen. And so I think the the important thing is to be principled, to have conviction, moral conviction, around the thing that it is you're doing. And get smart on why you have that moral conviction. And as long as you have that conviction, and you're not on an island, like you have people around you that are willing to dive into this exploration with you, stay firm. I think it's much harder to have moral fiber in this day and age if we're just following the trend, if we're just blowing around like the wind, where it's like, yesterday it was FinTech that was popular, and then it's crypto that's popular, and then it's AI that's popular, and I'm just gonna let the wind blow me wherever it goes. That's not actually any grounding. You don't have any conviction. And so I think, be firm, do your work, to figure out whether or not you actually believe that these things are true, and surround yourself with wise counselors that will keep you honest.
Host: That's good. And speaking of AI, the next question is, Is using tech to replace human effort a good quest?... There's a nuanced answer coming.
Trae Stephens: Yeah, yeah, I mean, there are so many hyper cliched answers to these deep philosophical questions. And I think they're super cliche because it's actually the right answer. It's like, when people push on Does technology hurt people or do people hurt people? And it's like, Well, tech can be used for both good and bad. It's like, yeah, that--it's cliche because it's true. That is actually true. I think in this case, the cliche answer is: in every labor paradigm shift, we have figured out new labor to make our societies more productive. And I think there are a bunch of jobs that are going to be a lot less relevant in a world in which AI works in the way that it's supposed to work. But there will be other new jobs that will open up that will make our society even more productive. And so there are probably bad versions of that, there are probably places where that fits in it the Is Good, Feels Bad, or Is Bad, Feels Bad quadrants. But I think by and large, there's nothing inherently problematic about the development of artificial intelligence. At the end of the day, it's a tool for people to become more productive. It's not a person. Large language models are just weighted averages of the next word that should appear in a sentence. It's not a person. It's just a tool.
Host: Historically, innovation was often seen by the church as dangerous behavior associated with heresy or blasphemy. What is it that makes you confident as a Christian that innovation is actually good?
Trae Stephens: Well, I think because of kind of how I framed up the talk, which is that we are creators. That's what our soul deeply longs for. Is progress. And building a better future. It's why we're all looking for meaning in what it is that we're doing. And I think that that's consistent with the nature of our Creator. Again, there are obviously ways in which this isn't--like it can be bad as well. But, taking the nuclear example as like probably the hardest one to adjudicate, the people who built the atom bomb in the Manhattan Project were tormented by what they were doing. Tormented by what they were doing. And you could make a really rational argument in either direction. Was it a good thing to do, was it a bad thing to do? Was more life going to be lost if we didn't drop the bomb because we would have had to do a land invasion of mainland Japan? You can make an argument for or against that. Would the Japanese or the Germans have figured out how to build an atom bomb first, and would they have used it against mainland US? There was tons of evidence that showed they were both working on the program as well. That would have potentially been really bad. These are really complicated issues. And so I think that the key is that we're actually talking about them, and developing conviction about what we think is better for humanity.
Host: Speaking of complicated issues, what are the things that tend to keep you up at night?
Trae Stephens: Caffeine. That's a good question.
Host: Besides giving this talk?
Trae Stephens: Yeah, besides this, my kids, who are here in the front row, they make a lot of noise in the evenings. No, they're actually really good. Thanks, boys. I think that my biggest concerns are probably--if we're just talking about the quadrants as a framework, it's the Feels Good, Is Bad category. These are the places where, at Founders Fund, people will come in, and it will seem very obvious that we should do this thing, because it's just two thumbs up all around. And then it's just not. Like, there's some underlying philosophy behind the thing is actually deeply troubling. I won't comment on whether or not this is something that like Founders Fund has evaluated, but like, OnlyFans is another great example. Like, there are a lot of people that make the argument that this is really good, and you can make rational arguments for why OnlyFans is really good. It's putting the creator in charge of the content, avoiding systems of exploitation and oppression that have existed in this industry for a long time. It's increasing the freedom of the person who's participating. You could make all of these arguments, and they might even be compelling. And they might be persuasive when you go out and raise capital. But I don't think it's good. And I think that this is a challenge that we tend to have in Silicon Valley is we tend to believe that things that feel good are good. And you need some sort of foundational theology, or something in your life that gives you the ability to draw a line, and say, There is truth, and there is fiction, and I'm going to choose truth. Otherwise, you're just flying on emotion. And I think we have the potential to do really, really bad things when we're not rooted.
Host: I think it's--just knowing you personally for all these years now, I think it's incredible that you've had these convictions and you've held on to them. I can imagine that there are people--one of things you said in your talk is like, Hey, this isn't just for a few of God's sort of prized followers. But it's easy for us--I joke with you about this all the time--it's easy for us to look at your life and go Wow, you kind of have it all at this point. You've been able to do some incredible things. And you can imagine the temptation that we might feel in this room, like, Hey, we don't have--people that are younger than you, people that have less experience than you, people that have less influence than you--what would you say about how they can navigate the temptation to give in to the kinds of pressures that you certainly--felt more strongly, still feel today, we've all felt at different times? How do they stay true to that if they're just like, Hey, I'm just 24? Or I'm--a lot of times, I think if we're not careful, a lot of us use this sort of apologizing language about ourself: I'm just fill in the blank. But I think it's important for them to hear you talk about, Hey, let's not hear from 40 year old Trae, how did you navigate this at 25? How did you do it at 28? How did you do it as an entry level employee?
Trae Stephens: Yeah, I mean, I was one of the first employees at Palantir.
Host: Before it was Palantir.
Trae Stephens: Before it was Pa--before there was revenue. In the very early days. And I think like, there was always this strain in my mind that was like--it was just gratitude, at the core. Like, I felt like it was the best job I was ever gonna have. I felt like I was learning more than I was ever going to learn. I felt like I was surrounded by people that were smarter than people that I'd ever met before in my life. And I didn't leave for Founders Fund because I was like, You know what, it's time I have graduated from Palantir. I'm gonna go and make my life in the big city at a venture capital firm. It was just being opportunistic. Like, it became an option, because I think I was going about my day just with the experience of gratitude for what it was that I was doing. When I was at Palantir, I remember saying to Michelle over and over again, This is the best job I'll ever have. It's amazing. I couldn't be luckier. And then I ended up at Founders Fund. And it took a little while for people to start talking to me. But eventually, it became the best job that I thought I was ever going to have. And then I started Anduril. And every time I'm at headquarters, I think this is the best job I'm ever gonna have. And I think oftentimes what happens--
Host: I bet if you came to work at Epic Church, you would feel the same--
Trae Stephens: I would also feel that way.
Host: Yeah, it's like a pattern.
Trae Stephens: To be clear, I did start my career in working for the government, and I did not feel like it was the best job I was ever going to have. That was very bad. But I think in the tech community, oftentimes we get sucked into this narrative of entitlement, where we're like, I'm underpaid. I don't get to do the job that I want. I want to work in venture. I want--it's like this constant--you're just unhappy with what it is you're doing. And there's an argument that you're unhappy because you're building relational databases with asset transactions to make the world a better place, and you're just kind of miserable. That is a possibility. But it could also be a possibility that you're miserable because you haven't aligned yourself with I am contributing. And I'm in a place that I never thought I was going to have access to. I mean, we're like--literally, like how many of the world's 10 biggest companies are are headquartered within 30 miles of here? It's crazy, where we live. I think just that experience of gratitude and feeling that there's opportunities that will come your way if you're just patient.
Host: And I think another temptation that we all feel is like, on our quest, and we're all looking for meaning, purpose, all that, is--the temptation for me, and I think all of us, is to put myself as the kind of pinnacle of that quest, like, self fulfillment. That seems to have not worked. By seems, I mean it's been a disaster.
Trae Stephens: Correct.
Host: What--so--is it right to seek fulfillment? Is there a different pattern or path to think about how we might pursue fulfillment that every person in this room's after?
Trae Stephens: That is a big question. The path to self fulfillment. I think that oftentimes the path to self fulfillment ends in self acceptance, which is actually like, maybe it's somewhat helpful on the margins, because you can't not like yourself and still achieve fulfillment. But at the same time, the acceptance of progress is really important. This idea that like I'm a work in progress. And I'm always going to be a work in progress. And aligning that with how God, your Creator, sees you, rather than how you see you, or how your colleagues see you. It's incredibly freeing to just say, like, This isn't all on me. Like, I don't have to do all the things. I can just be where I am and know that I'm contributing in the way that my unique skill set allows me to contribute.
Host: Yeah. Someone writes in: I agree with you that tech can be good and in the name of God, but what about the excessive money that's made in tech and venture?
Trae Stephens: Yeah, no, that's a great question. I've only been in venture for 10 years. So, there's no money. It takes way longer than 10 years, so far as I can tell. Maybe it just doesn't happen at all. But it definitely takes longer than 10 years. Yeah, I think money is a great resource to do incredible things, and it's also a great temptation that can be highly destructive. As I said before, I think what thethe tech luminary billionaires have done is they're like, I'm just going to totally YOLO my career, and then I'm just gonna give away as much as I can in philanthropic endeavors at the end. And there's probably a lot of good things that are gonna come from that, without it out. But I think it's kind of not very mission motivated, because you're basically saying that there's this massive separation between how I'm contributing to the world and the good that I can do in the world. I actually think these things should be the same. Like you should be working in a thing where you don't feel like, Well, as long as I can give away everything at the end, that will absolve me of all of the sin that I've accumulated in my time in my profession. And so I think there's all sorts of questions around how you can be the best patron of the resources back to the community, how you can use those resources not for selfish gain or ambition, but to contribute to things that you care about deeply, personally, that are for the good of humanity. But it's a tough question. I think--the most commonly referenced story in the Bible about this that is my personal favorite story, I think, in the Bible, is the rich young ruler. And it's--I think it's the only parable, or it's the only day in the life story of Jesus that's in all of the Gospels. I think that's right. Is that right?
Host: Really? You're going to do this in front of this--
Trae Stephens: Haha. Yeah, well, whatever Ben says.
Host: Sounds right.
Trae Stephens: So it's basically the story where it says this--like a young leader walks up to Jesus and the disciples, and he says, like, Jesus, I've done all the good things. What do I need to do to go to heaven? And Jesus says, Give away everything that you have, and then follow me. And it says that the rich young ruler, he walked away, he was sad. And then--but I think the takeaway that most people have for this, that I think is really interesting, is that they're like, Jesus said--Oh, and then Jesus says, It is harder for a rich person to enter heaven than for a man to pass through the eye of a needle. And I think that the narrative that people take away from that is to say, Jesus thinks that rich people are bad. And you could read that and come away with that takeaway. But actually, if you follow it through the text, that's not exactly what he was saying. Jesus had this same question asked to him by multiple people, and he gave all of them different answers. He told some of them Give away a third of your wealth, give away half of your wealth. But he told the rich young ruler to give away all of his wealth. So the question is, why did he do that? That's the first question. And the second question is, Why were the disciples so surprised when Jesus said this? And what happened is, Jesus said that he saw--he said, It's true. You have followed the commandments. He actually said, It's true. You have done all the things that you said. And he was sad. He felt compassion for the man. Because in their society, he was the best man. He was the guy that everyone looked at, and they're like, this dude is the best we have to offer. He's a leader, he has high integrity, he's made his wealth with honor. And Jesus is basically telling to buzz off and give all of his money away. And they're like, How can this be true? You just told the best guy to go away. And what Jesus was saying, in saying give away all your wealth, was his idol is not God. His idol is money. And for other people that he said, Give away 50% of wealth, it's like, Oh, maybe they have other idols, maybe they have other things drawing them. But his idol was his wealth. And so I think that the sin that is wrapped up in greed is about where you're placing your identity. And I think it is possible to have resources, and not have your identity wrapped up in those resources. And I think too often we get so wrapped up in our resources that that becomes everything. And that's where you get these really unhealthy externalities.
Host: That's good. How do you change a culture in a redemptive way at a firm or a company where leadership isn't really focused on doing things in a redemptive way?
Trae Stephens: Yeah, I mean, I honestly--I feel very lucky that I work at a really aspirational, incredible place with really brilliant people who also happen to be Christians. It just makes my life a lot easier in that way. Like when Peter is pushing on something, I can have a straightforward conversation with him about like, Do you actually think this is good? Let's talk about this. And he's receptive to that. I know that not everyone has that. And I'm sympathetic to not everyone having that. To the point that I made at the very beginning of the talk, I have not found the tech community to be hostile towards these ideas of theology, ethics, morality. And I think it's because there are a lot of really smart people, that they're curious, they want to understand how you reach the conclusion that you reach. And so I think the key thing that I would do is, I would just be open to engaging on it. Like if you think that something is wrong, develop conviction, and go have a conversation about it. And maybe it won't go your way, and maybe that means you need to go find something else to do, but I think rolling over and assuming that the response will be hostile is also not particularly helpful.
Host: You talked earlier about your journey a little bit, but you can imagine lots of people in here are trying to decide, Do I stick with the thing that I'm doing right now, whether it's their own thing or a different company--as you think about discerning when it's time to leave one thing and step into something else, any general practical tips for that tonight.
Trae Stephens: Yeah, I think that--basically, every good thing that's happened to me in my career was an opportunity becoming obvious, me not thinking I wanted to do it because I'm risk averse, and my wife telling me that I'm stupid. I think that's literally the cycle over and over and over. And so I think that like that--we have this kind of joke at Founders Fund where we talked about white board founders. They're like people that their identity is not the thing that they're doing, it's just being a founder. They're like, All I want is to be a founder. And so I'm going to stand in front of a whiteboard, and I'm going to write down 200 ideas, and I'm going to get my MBA friends around, and we're going to go and eliminate each of them one by one. And then the least bad idea, that's the one. That's the company we're gonna found. And I think that's what happens oftentimes in these transitions, is that people just write random ideas on a whiteboard, and then they're upset when it doesn't go their way. I think that like, there's obviously moments of abundance and opportunity, there are obviously troughs and valleys as well, that we have to kind of work through, but I think being opportunistic, and being open to allowing the idea to emerge first as the nuclear element, rather than forcing something--certainly leads to better alignment with your passion and a sense of mission. It's much harder to develop a sense of mission for what you're doing after the fact. You have to like kind of start with that seed.
Host: Yeah. Pride came up a couple of times in your talk, and I think it's something, just by looking at the questions, things that we need to talk about. And I think if we're going to talk about pride, we've got to talk about ambition. And every one of us in this room know that without ambition, we're not gonna really do anything. Without drive, we're not going to get anything done. And sometimes it's like, where's that line between I'm driven for the right things--like the story you read said he was helped greatly and then he became prideful, which led to his downfall. How do we navigate that? I need drive, I need ambition. Maybe it's the aim of that ambition, the motive behind the ambition. But, obviously, a lot of ambitious people here. Aren't we? Ambitious in this room?
Trae Stephens: I can imagine a lot of ambitious people are here.
Host: I would hope so. Yes. So what do we do with that? How do you have enough ambition for the good things, but stop short of becoming full of pride?
Trae Stephens: Well the Uzziah story that you're referencing, I think is a really interesting one as kind of a an answer to this question. So the part of the scripture that I didn't read is that it said that Uzziah did all of these things, and then he went into the temple to burn incense. So that's like, Well, why is that bad? So he was not a priest. And he basically put himself in the shoes of someone that he was not, to do something that he, maybe externally at least, was trying to say--as an act of worship. But actually, it was the exact opposite of that. It was saying, I am the king, I am great enough that I can do whatever I want. And I think there's going to be king Uzziah's stories for every single one of us. Like, are you doing the thing that you are called to do? Or are you doing all of the things because you believe that you're entitled to that? And I don't feel like this at all. And I think that this is like--it's not something like a superpower that I've been given necessarily, I think it's just that I'm super pessimistic, and so generally speaking, I think very poorly of myself. But I think turning over and saying, I don't have to be Superman. I don't have to have laser beam eyes, super strength, the ability to fly. It's like, just be content with being Wolverine. Like maybe some of you have adamantium claws, maybe some of you can shoot laser beam eyes, maybe some of you can conjure the weather like Storm. And the only way that we get anything done is by being the X-Men. Like every story of the X-Men ends with Wolverine doing his part, and Cyclops doing his part, and Storm doing her part, and Rogue during doing her part. And that's the way humanity is supposed to work. We're all supposed to be doing this in community, with each other, with different people, with different superpowers. And I think oftentimes that pride comes from a place of putting yourself in someone else's place. And trying to do their thing instead of just doing yours.
Host: That's a terrific answer. And then the question, of course, is like, how do you figure out your thing?
Trae Stephens: It's a hard one to answer. Yeah. This is--I think--some of you may have heard, I had this crazy story with college. Where I didn't get into college. That's the crazy story. I didn't get into college. And I really wanted to go to Georgetown. And so being a naive, rural public school kid from Ohio, I did what you would do, right? You fly to college, and tell them I'm not leaving until you let me in. And it turns out, that's not something that people do.
Host: But that is ambition.
Trae Stephens: But it totally worked. And I got into college. And the more I thought about this--it took a while for me to like fully process what had happened, but the more I thought about this, the more I realized that in our culture, in American culture, we expect 18 year old kids to make one of the most important decisions in their entire lives before they have any experience of the real world. Because I could have just said, You know what, I'm gonna go to Ohio State. I'm gonna do the Townie thing. Maybe I'll even commute to save money. But the path that I needed to be on was not that. It was going to Georgetown. And oftentimes, I think we we ask people to have these well-formed opinions about like, I know what's best for me, I know where I need to go to college, I need to know what my passion is, where I'm most aligned. And the reality is, some of you are just not going to know, for a long time. Like you're gonna have to kind of stumble into these passions and realizations of where your energy is best served. And I think we just put so much pressure on ourselves to do that. And I think this is where you get the whiteboard founder thing is, it's like when you don't have an idea, the natural thing to do is make your passion about the job being a founder, rather than about the mission, which is the thing that you do. And so if you don't--if you haven't yet arrived at that passion, don't misappropriate the title before you have the passion. You need the passion, but it might take you a while to get there.
Host: That's really, really strong. How're you feeling?
Trae Stephens: Good.
Host: Keep going?
Trae Stephens: Yeah, sure.
Host: You guys wanna keep going? All right. Well let's keep going. How often do you have a company in the Feels Bad, Is Good category but you can't invest in it because it won't make venture sized returns?
Trae Stephens: Ooh. I would actually--I will push back on that a little bit. The Feels Bad Is Good category is probably the best venture category. That's where like most awesome companies are built, because there's a moat. The moat is that other people don't want to do it because it feels bad. And so it ends up being far less competitive. The kind of slightly disturbing answer to the question is that most of the ones that don't have venture returns are the Feels Good, Is Good category, because those are the ones that everyone's gonna do. They're all going to compete with each other. There's 20 companies doing the exact same thing. And you're like, Man, I really like this idea. It's like, yeah, you weren't the first one to come up with it. There's 10,000 other people that agree, and all the capital is going to flood into those things. All the founders are gonna flood into those things. And everyone is going to pat themselves on the back about how great it is. And no one's gonna have an exit--that matters.
Host: There it is. I think I know the answer to this question, but are there any quests from your own life that you now regret?
Trae Stephens: Ooh. Did you ask that or did--
Host: I did not ask that. I did not ask that.
Trae Stephens: Out yourself! [Trae's kid's name], did you do that? Like, tell me about your mess ups, daddy.
Host: Well, let's let's go to the dad question. I think this is a fun one--
Trae Stephens: I can answer the question.
Host: I don't know--I was trying to help you out.
Trae Stephens: Haha. Oh, man. There's so many things. I think...
Audience Member (probably Trae’s wife): Ex girlfriends.
Trae Stephens: Yeah, let's go on to the next question.
Host: Yeah, I was trying to move us on.
Trae Stephens: On second thought...
Host: How that got through the secure gate over there, I don't know. But with the family piece, I think this is really important. And maybe I'll say something that I've observed by having an up close seat to your life that might surprise people, and then I'm gonna ask you a question about it. When I think about the multiple jobs that you have, when I think about all the demand, the travel, the media requests, all the things, like, I've told you this to your face, I'll say it here in front of this crowd. I'm amazed at how committed Trae is as a husband and a father. It's a little bit mind blowing. And I think it removes a lot of my own excuses, and excuses of other people in the community that I get to serve and be part of. So with all of that demand, and none of us do it perfect, so I'm not giving you that--how have you maintained that? I have witnessed that. And then what would you share that would be not just sort of this ideal version of how everyone else can do it, but what are some of those things no matter who we are, what's our situation, that we could lean into a little bit?
Trae Stephens: Well, I think for starters, like I actually don't think that I'm awesome at these.
Host: That's because you're a pessimist.
Trae Stephens: I think that like most of it is actually working through things with Michelle, around boundaries. It's like the most important kind of framework. So, when I'm in town, I'm not traveling--I want to get the kids ready every day for school, or camp in the case of the summer. So like, Is that right, guys? Like you can basically bank on it. Like I'm gonna be with you, we're gonna have breakfast together, I'm gonna yell at you when you don't put your shoes on and brush your teeth. But we're gonna do it every morning. Right guys? Yeah.
Host: I think they said most mornings, yes.
Trae Stephens: Yeah, most mornings. Sometimes he sleeps. No, I'm with them. But it's a constant learning process, too. Because probably about two or three months ago, Michelle and I would be like spending time together catching up on the day, and my phone is like buzzing, like sitting on the arm of the couch or in my pocket or whatever. And I'm not necessarily like even looking at it, it's just buzzing and being annoying. And so we had to establish a new boundary. And we said, When we come home at six o'clock, or whenever we get home, we're going to put our phones on Do Not Disturb, and we're going to leave them next to the door. And I think these are just like additional steps that you just kind of have to take. And it doesn't mean that you can't do things. It just means now we have an open conversation about it. So it's like, Hey, I've got to take a call at seven o'clock. I'm letting you know--we're in agreement that I'm going to do this thing at seven o'clock. But it's a boundary that allows you to be more present. And I think the worst version of this is like the best intentions, but no boundaries.
Host: Yes. Yeah, I think everyone in this room knows the kind of things that they're pursuing means they're going to have to give up other things. And they're not wrong. But I think the tragic story that you and I've seen so many times is people who chose to give up the wrong things. So I would love, just maybe on that same topic, talk to us about what are the things that you need to be prepared to sacrifice and the things that you should never sacrifice? What are those non negotiables? Regardless of how much money, who's involved, who's on the team? Anything.
Trae Stephens: Yeah. Well, I think there's a practical day to day answer to that, and there's a more philosophical answer. So I'll start with the harder one. On the philosophical side, I think it is usually tied up in identity. Like, I am not willing to sacrifice my identity as a Christian, as a husband, as a father, as a son to my mother. And I'm going to wrap my identity as much as possible up in those things, in those non-negotiables. Now, is my identity wrapped up in being a GP at Founders Fund or being a co founder of Anduril? Not really. I could kind of like not do those things, and it would suck because I like doing those things, but like, they're not things that I feel like I could never walk away from.
Host: Either of those could put a price on those roles, that would not be worth it if you had to give up.
Trae Stephens: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. On the practical side of things, I actually feel like I'm like, reasonably bad at this. And it's just like saying No, basically. So I'll get to the story that happened today, which I think is really, uniquely hilarious. But I am really bad at this. After we're done here in a few minutes or whatever, and you guys come up to me, you're all gonna be like, Hey, Trae, I have this company that I'm working on. Can I send you an email with the deck? And I'm gonna say yes.
Host: That's why we have a car waiting. Right behind the stage.
Trae Stephens: I am just not good at this. I want to be available, I want to help people, I want to absolve myself of the guilt of being in the position that I'm in, whatever it is. There's some narrative there. And I'm not good at that. And I need to learn how to say no to more things. The funny thing about this--it's the story from today is that my Chief of Staff Ellie, who's here as well, we did her mid-year review today. She's great. Everything went well. But the one piece of feedback she got from from the big boss was Trae's really bad at saying no, and you're really bad at making him say no. And so this trickles down. The ball roll--it's bad saying no all the way down.
Host: That's good. Any quests that you are currently trying to wrestle through and figure out? Especially the things that are not as realized yet that are coming? Anything particular? Certainly macro level, but--
Trae Stephens: Yeah, I think--look. We are subordinate to God and His creation. We are not going to out-create his plan. It's just not going to happen. And whether we build some crazy utopian city, and that's the basis for the return and the New Jerusalem, to use church words--I'll try not to do that--but whether that's the case, or it's like everything is just going to be completely annihilated and we're going to start from scratch, we're still working in the direction. I think it's important to commit to working in the right direction. So I think the quests that I'm constantly working through are like How can I continue to be opportunistic? One kind of version of this story is that I've developed this deep anxiety around social media that really started during COVID, where I realized that I just felt bad every time I went on social media. I'm like, Man, I just don't know that I want to feel bad anymore. And so I deleted the apps from my phone, and then I started feeling better. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. That's seems directly correlated. Maybe more people should do that. But it led me down the path of having this idea that Man, it would be great if we had more long form reading, like if we actually were like more dialed in on good content, rather than getting sucked into doomscrolling of bad content. And partnered up with a good friend, a mutual friend of ours, Ben Chelf, and we started a company called Sol Reader, which is a consumer electronics company that's basically like the world's simplest VR headset. And it's just for reading. And the mission behind--it wasn't like, Hey, I really want to start a consumer hardware company, because by the way, don't start a consumer hardware company. Holy moly, that's hard. But it was because Ben and I agreed, I actually think this is important for humanity. Maybe we're not going to be the ones that pull it off, but this is worth working on. Because I'm afraid of my kids having smartphones. As the story goes, Steve Jobs called the computer the bicycle for the mind, and then he didn't allow his kids to use them. And it was like, Well, this didn't go the way that Steve Jobs thought it was gonna go. And so I think just being kind of aware and opportunistic of where your heart is pulling you, and then leaning in on those things when they happen. The other kind of edge that I'll add to this very quickly, is that, I think a lot of times, especially when I'm in these sorts of environments, people assume Trae's like completely worked out conviction around defense tech. And I honestly haven't. It's like a case by case thing. And this is a conversation that we have internally, constantly. I mean, we had it like three times last week. We were like, Would we, if asked, do this set of things? And we had to think through each of those in great detail. Because the answer can't be yes to everything. There are limits. There are things like dumb cluster munitions. It's like you just drop a bunch of stuff, it blazes out, there's no precision, it's gonna take out a bunch of civilians. That's a good. I don't think we should be building cluster munitions. I happen to think that there's better ways to do it that are a lot more discriminatory. And I would do those things. But I wouldn't just do it in the dumbest possible way. And so we do have to constantly be challenging ourselves, I think, on even the areas where we believe that we have high conviction.
Host: Yeah, I think it's great at your level, obviously, everyone in this room knows that you are constantly giving wisdom and advice to other people, so I think it's--I hope it's refreshing for all of us to hear Trae say, Hey, I've got people that I talk to. I know that that's really, really important to you. Do you think most people have sort of this group of advisers? And if not, where would you begin to look for that if I don't have the relational network that you have, or the position that you have?
Trae Stephens: There are patterns in nature. And one of the patterns that has emerged in nature that gets talked about a lot in sociology but isn't immediately obvious is community. And so if you look at the way that Jesus lived his life, he had the 12 disciples, he had 100 people in his close network, and then he had the masses. If you look in sociology, it basically says the same thing. Like, you can have a close group of around 10 people, you can have a network of--I think the Dunbar's number 150, something like that--and then there's the masses beyond that. The military is also organized in the same way. Platoon is nine people... these things are mirrored as patterns in the world. And I think that the smartest thing I ever learned, in this regard, was actually from you, which you talk about in your book, which comes out two months from today, Ben's book, Bring It Out--I encourage all of you to go and preorder right now on Amazon; I'll wait. There's a chapter of his book about wisdom tables. And a wisdom table is your platoon. And I think I have spent a lot of time in my life thinking about my platoon. And there are some people in the room right now who are in my platoon, and I'm grateful to each of you that are here. And I think we get--I think, especially in big communities, we have the tendency to like blow it out to Dunbar's, where it's just like, I have 150 friends. But you can't really have 150 friends.
Host: Yeah, I mean, it seems like--I see people on the two extremes: too many voices or no voices at all.
Trae Stephens: Totally. Find your platoon. Find your wisdom table. I think it's really important.
Host: That's really good. But we're about to wrap up. Let me give you guys a number you can text if you want to be part of future events and conversations that we're going to do like this around the topics of faith and work. Again, that's just all we would use that for, is to let you know anything that kind of fits the category. So feel free to text just your name, it's fine: 628-466-0555. And as you guys are doing that, the last couple of minutes, leave us with whatever else is on your mind that we have not discussed this evening. And then I would love to just offer a prayer, and we will be done.
Trae Stephens: Great. Yeah, I think--I kind of opened this conversation by saying that there's all these lessons that each of us can learn. Like, I've learned a bunch in the 17 years that I've been in tech. And I think we could all come at it from our own perspectives. I grew up in rural Ohio, you all grew up in different places. That's great. But the question that I have struggled with throughout my entire adult life is how do I make theology--how do I make faith my own? It's not about where I came from, it's not about where I am now, it's not going to be like that for any of you guys, either. The question is like, What is it to you? And how you own that. And I think--we could--I'd be happy to, by the way, because I can't say no--I would be happy to sit down and go through a--as intellectual as you'd like--debate about why you believe the things that you believe. And we don't have this conversation enough, but I think all of you would find out that you're all people of faith. You all believe things that are unprovable. And you might have convinced yourself that your gap is smaller than mine, for whatever reason, like, science--you've figured it out, and your gap is a tiny step and you believe that mine is like a gap a mile wide. But I actually don't think that's true. I think we all are people of faith, we all have faith in things that are kind of ridiculous. Just think about like how your faith has impacted your decisions, your moral fiber, the truth that you believe in, or the lack of truth that you believe in, what that means for humanity, what it means for your life, what it means for your goals, your aspirations. And challenge that. Because it might actually not end in the place that you think it would end if you did that. And I think that there's a lot of things that are wrong with organized religion--there's a lot of things that are wrong with organized religion--but there's a lot of things that I would not trade for anything in the world. The community, the structure, the foundations that allow me to have a starting point when I go into thinking through complex issues. And I would just encourage you, each of you, to ask yourself those questions. Because I think they, as it turns out, are the most important questions.
Host: Well, can we give Trae a hand for sharing with us tonight? Such a great night. And I know that you guys giving up a Thursday night, I mean, I just want you to know, from my heart to you, like we care so much about the work that you do Monday through Friday, we baked it into one of our church's nine values. We just say that vocation is sacred. And kind of my life verse is Ephesians 2:10, which says, We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus. And here's the part for you: to do good works, which God prepared in advance for you to do. And even if you're not on that faith spectrum tonight, I just want you to know, I believe that God has you here for a reason, that he has you doing good work for a reason. And if there's any way, along with Trae--I say no a couple of times--but if there's any way, along with Trae, we would love to help shape that. We have tons of resources, any of the sacred vocation stuff. What we've done tonight, Michelle has done it, other leaders in our community--Trae's--there's videos, talks, all the things out there. And we do small groups around this. And if there's any way that we could be helpful, but what I'd love to do tonight, even if you're not a praying person, I would love to pray for you if that's cool. And then we'll go. I'm just gonna stand and pray. And pray for you, your families, your relationships, your current assignment, and whatever's ahead.
God, thank you for tonight. Thank you for Trae's life. Thank you for the words that he shared with us. I pray that we would receive the wisdom that is available by being present this evening. And God, I pray for every man and woman in this room. I believe that you have made them in your image, as we've heard. I believe that you have things you want them to do while they're here on this earth. Things that would bring really a lot of good to the world, so God, would you shift us into good quests? And I believe that as we bring good to the world, that we will find those things to be deeply fulfilling, because this is the kind of work that you've made us for. God, for everyone trying to gain clarity and discernment, I pray that you would light their path. For those that are in hard places but need to continue to persevere, I pray that you give them strength for that. And I pray that there would be a lot of joy that comes from this season, God, not just in San Francisco, but from wherever these guys live and do their work. And we're grateful to have been here tonight. In Jesus' name, Amen.
You're dismissed, but feel free to hang out. Thanks for coming tonight.
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Wrap-up
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Bookshelves — Your favorite investors’/operators’ favorite books.
I was bummed this wasn’t recorded so thanks for sharing it! Enjoyed reading a post on Peter as well recently