AM
Amin Mirzadegan
Partner
Founders Fund
Founders Fund partner backing companies across stages, including Ramp, Stripe, Ohalo, and Netic.
TS
Bio
Professional summary
Trae Stephens is a Partner at Founders Fund. The firm’s official profile says he is also Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril Industries, a defense technology company focused on autonomous systems, and Co-founder of Sol, a next-generation wearable e-reader. Before Founders Fund, Trae was an early employee at Palantir Technologies, where he led teams focused on growth in intelligence and defense, international expansion, and product strategy for new offerings. Prior to Palantir, he worked as a computational linguist building Arabic/Persian name matching and data-enrichment solutions for the U.S. intelligence community. He began his career in the office of Congressman Rob Portman and in the Political Affairs Office at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Investment focus
Stage, sector, and overall fit
Stage
seedSeries Agrowth
Sector
defense technologygovernment technologyautonomous systemsenterprise datahard tech
Thesis
Defense technology and autonomous systemsGovernment and intelligence-sector technologyHard technology companies with public-sector or national-security relevance
Notable companies
Selected portfolio companies the partner has backed
Anduril IndustriesSolPalantir Technologies
How to approach
Framing and angles for outreach
Pitch framing
Best fit for companies with serious defense, government, autonomy, intelligence, or mission-critical infrastructure relevance.
Personalization hooks
- 1Emphasize public-sector deployment, mission-critical reliability, and autonomy if applicable.
- 2Connect the company’s wedge to hard problems in defense, intelligence, or government workflows.
Recent signals
What the partner has said or done recently
Founders Fund official profile lists him as Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril and Co-founder of Sol.
Background
Career, education, and skills
Career history
- Founders FundPartnerPresent
- Anduril IndustriesCo-Founder & Chairman~2017 - Present
- SolCo-FounderPresent
- Pursuit PropertiesCo-FounderPresent
- Palantir TechnologiesInvestor/AnalystPrior
Education
- Georgetown University
Skills
Defense TechnologyVenture CapitalCompany BuildingGovernment Relations
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