Ryan Beiermeister has joined Founders Fund as a partner, it announced Monday. Beiermeister is well known in Silicon Valley for several reasons. First, prior to this role, he spent about two years as VP of Product Policy at OpenAI, as it became known, shortly after ChatGPT became the fastest growing app in history.
That career option ended abruptly in February, when she was reportedly fired after objecting to a planned ChatGPT feature called “adult mode,” which would have allowed adults to use the chatbot for sex. The Wall Street Journal reported that her firing included an accusation by a male colleague of sexual discrimination, though Beiermeister called any allegation that she discriminated against anyone “absolutely false.” In March, OpenAI reportedly scrapped plans for the adult mode.
More recently, Beiermeister has become known in Silicon Valley for its deft strategy in one Show YouTube Funders Fund called “Mafia”. The game involves finding out which players are secret Mafia assassins before those players can “kill” the rest of the players.
Beiermeister played the game with OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anduril’s Palmer Luckey, Figma’s Dylan Field, Flexport’s Ryan Petersen, Founders Fund’s Trae Stephens, and many others.
One of the more intense scenes in Episode One involved her and Altman saying that if they were found dead, it would mean the other was the killer. Those who knew the story laughed.
Some commented on Twitter that maybe the whole Mafia game was really a job interview for her. the game, according to The company’s head of marketing and the game’s MC, Mike Solana (who brought the game to the company), is often played at the Founders Fund retreats.
However, it wasn’t. “While she’s a great Mafia player, that wasn’t part of her interview process. She’s been close with Trae Stephens since they worked together at Palantir and has been friendly with our team for years,” a Founders Fund spokesperson told TechCrunch.
Although the way Beiermeister played the game – cool, making detailed observations and arguments about who the Mafia might be – couldn’t hurt her prospects.
However, Beiermeister has known Trae Stephens for at least a decade. Prior to her role at OpenAI, and Meta before that, she spent the development years at Palantir, the big data company founded by the VC firm’s founder, Peter Thiel. Stephens also worked at Palantir in its early days.
Beiermeister says she’s more interested in backing the kinds of startups the Founders Fund is known to gravitate toward.
“The companies that will define the next twenty years are being built in the categories where product engineering is hardest and the stakes are highest — AI infrastructure and agent systems, defense, energy, climate, biotech, the regulated frontier,” he wrote. in a LinkedIn post. “To founders in these fields, especially if you don’t fit the typical mold: I want to talk to you and my inbox is open.”
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