The Leverage Podcast

Episode 1 of The Leverage Podcast is live now!Can I ask a favor? Would you mind subscribing on your favorite podcasting platform? It makes a world of difference for the long-term success of this publication. If you like the episode, please share it with a friend!Bryce Roberts had it all. He and his partners had helped create the category of seed investing and in so doing, got in early with some of the greatest companies of the 2000-2010s including Figma, Planet, CTRL Labs, and many others. Most people would ride off into the sunset, but instead, Bryce bet it all by launching a new VC firm called Indie. The fund was centered on his vision of the future where entrepreneurs would raise less capital and still have multi-billion-dollar outcomes.Then, it failed. Crashed and burned. Poof.In our conversation Bryce described it as “ego death,” where he felt like he had let everyone down. Then, slowly, painfully, the market shifted to be in favor of his vision. With AI, there has been a remarkable decrease in operational costs and founders are looking for something different than the Sand Hill playbook of spend big and raise bigger. Indie 2.0 was born and is actively deploying capital today.I found this conversation personally meaningful. His focus on ethos over ego has rattled around my brain ever since we recorded this session and changed how I look at my work. If you still aren’t convinced it's worth a listen, here are my four big takeaways:1. Success is found in your core motivationBryce frames his first attempt at Indie as an exercise in being “right” rather than being useful. Indie 2.0 is built to be lighter on ego, heavier on service—less about proving a contrarian thesis and more about giving ambitious founders a credible alternative path.“I would actually say it’s like ego over ethos is how I chose to do the first one. I wanted to be right. I was more interested in being right than being good… going through the ego death of winding down Indie the first time, like all of that’s gone. I’ve got nothing to prove.2. Seed then, AI nowHe draws a clean line between the 2005–2010 seed boom and today’s AI era. Back then, open source + commodity hardware + AWS + AdSense collapsed costs and unlocked distribution. Founders could ship with small checks and real optionality. Today, AI similarly compresses the “cost of code,” letting tiny, hand-picked teams build substantial, profitable products (he cites Gamma; also points to Linear and Vanta). The lesson is that when inputs get cheaper, new company shapes—lean, durable, founder-controlled—become inevitable.“I think it was both simultaneously… you had open source software—Ruby on Rails, Linux, MySQL—so you took millions and millions of dollars of infrastructure cost and shrunk it to effectively zero. And then you had online distribution—Google AdSense—so you could plug in a business model and start monetizing right out of the gate.”3. Cult dynamics as distribution (and why it helped Indie)I recently argued that when code gets cheap, belief becomes the scarce asset—and that “founding a cult” is an emerging distribution playbook. Indie’s origin story fits that frame: Bryce says the early community did feel cult-like because he “said the quiet part out loud” about the startup-industrial complex. Opening the doors, open-sourcing docs, and amplifying credible voices created a self-propelling missionary network. That affinity didn’t solve LP bucketing problems, but it did give Indie a top-of-funnel of aligned founders and allies—a real tailwind for deal flow and mindshare, exactly the kind of distribution-through-belief my essay described.“People wanted a different experience… there’s this new opportunity space here. We can define it in a way that’s more native to us. Come one, come all. Let’s get credible voices in here, amplify them… For the first few years, that was a huge tailwind for us.”4. “More shots on goal” for the future we wantThis is Bryce’s why. He’s not anti-VC; he’s anti-monoculture. If the only funded path is the venture treadmill, you compress the range of futures possible. His fund exists to widen it—to let serious founders pursue ambition without surrendering sovereignty. He ties this to a broader warning: in an era of AI-assisted cognition, outsourcing strategy is dangerous; the stakes are high, so we need many independent attempts at building the future.“I want more than Marc Andreessen or Sequoia or anybody else dictating what future we get to live in. One way to avoid this venture-backed future is to create alternatives to it…the stakes are incredibly high. I want as many shots on goal for possible futures as possible.”I keep coming back to that phrase: "I've got nothing to prove." There's something liberating about that—and terrifying. What would you build if proving yourself wasn't the point?Hit subscribe wherever you listen, and let me know if this conversation changes how you think about your own work. It certainly changed mine. Get full access to The Leverage at www.gettheleverage.com/subscribe

Peter Thiel is a complicated man, operating at the blurred edge of genius and provocation, contrarianism and influence—exactly the kind of figure whose gravitational pull bends the trajectory of entire industries. Mario Gabriele, in his magnum opus on Founders Fund, takes us deep into this enigmatic firm, unpacking their unique blend of strategic soft power, stubborn anti-mimeticism, and moral ambiguity. In this conversation, Mario shares his behind-the-scenes insights, exploring how Founders Fund carved out a competitive edge so sharp it practically draws blood, how their carefully cultivated narrative quietly shapes Silicon Valley, and why reckoning with Thiel requires embracing complexity rather than retreating into comfortable binaries.Below are my three big takeaways, but you should really watch the conversation. (This was also The Leverage’s first Substack Live, so let me know if you have any feedback!) 1. Competitive Edge: "Anti-Mimesis, Baby!"Mario captures Founders Fund’s core investment philosophy as something wonderfully and aggressively contrarian—or, to use the right literary flourish, anti-mimetic. Founders Fund doesn't merely zig while others zag, they zag so far off-course they're practically flying in opposite directions through parallel universes. Their explicit goal: find the niche of competitive differentiation and pummel it until it yields billion-dollar companies."It's a religion of anti-mimesis and applying that to the world of technology and innovation. It's a relatively neatly encapsulated religion—and Peter Thiel is its prophet.""Peter once or twice a year has some big macro call, like Moses coming down with a tablet—'Consumer is dead,' or 'AI is out.'""Their contrarianism is showing up most at the moment in what they're not doing—especially not flooding capital into AI like literally everyone else."2. Soft Power: "Subtlety Beats Noise"The second key takeaway is Founders Fund’s mastery of soft power—an almost Zen-like precision in controlling narratives indirectly. Instead of blaring horns through incessant tweeting (though they have their share of noisy figures), they cultivate influence with a philosophical heft that's just quirky enough to make Silicon Valley's intelligentsia cock their heads thoughtfully, stroke their metaphorical beards, and nod, yes, yes, very intriguing indeed."Soft power initiatives often work best when they're one or two degrees removed from the most direct version. Peter writing a philosophy book that's sort of a startup book is a slight orthogonal move extending power in slightly different places.""They don't just have noisy people; they have originality. They say unusual things. You don't attract attention just by trying—you have to be interesting.""Their super narrative—civilization is stagnating—guides everything. This framing alone creates magnetism."3. Moral Calculus: "Peter Thiel, Ethical Mobius Strip"And here, at last, we wander into the tricky and morally slippery terrain of venture capitalism à la Thiel, who emerges not so much as a clearly defined hero or villain, but rather a kind of intellectual and ethical Möbius strip. Mario navigates this terrain with commendable grace, making it clear that evaluating someone like Thiel requires contending with both visionary impact and troubling compromise."You can have long debates about Palantir, about Anduril, about Trump. But I believe Palantir and Anduril are net very good things for the world, particularly for liberal democracy—not unblemished, but virtuous.""If you're someone who thinks everything is stagnant and corrupted, then throwing a hand grenade into the public sector can feel worthwhile. I can appreciate how he came to that conclusion, even if I deeply disagree.""Ultimately, genius is not a Panglossian thing—it's usually got a lot of darkness to it. We must make peace studying people without demanding they're our best friends."Mario's insights clarify that Founders Fund’s competitive edge arises precisely from their willingness to stand apart from popular consensus; their influence lies not merely in bold proclamations but subtle and strategic soft-power cultivation; and that grappling honestly with their moral complexity might be the most interesting—and perhaps necessary—work of all.Thank you John Airaksinen, Alden Huschle, Parnian, Marijan Prša, valentina, and many others for tuning into my live video with Mario Gabriele! Make sure to subscribe so you can join the next conversation. Get full access to The Leverage at www.gettheleverage.com/subscribe