Thinking Machines Co-Founder Joins Meta for $3.5BN, Industry Venture's $665M Acquisition

Jason Lemkin, Rory O’Driscoll, and Roger Ehrenberg debate founder loyalty after Andrew Ng’s co-founder left Thinking Machines for Meta’s $3.5B offer, Goldman’s $665M Industry Ventures acquisition, and optimal portfolio concentration strategy.

• Goldman Sachs acquired Industry Ventures for $665M base plus $300M earnout; deal priced at ~10% of AUM, in line with Stepstone and Hamilton Lane comps.
• Thinking Machines co-founder left a $10B post-money company—where his stake was ~$2B—to join Meta for a reported $3.5B in liquid stock over 5 years.
• Lemkin argues founder departure signals a broken norm; Rory counters that loyalty erodes fast when someone enters ‘the third comma’ of net worth.
• Investors should push for 6-year vesting, cliff provisions, and repurchase rights to structurally deter founder exits at AI-scale valuations.
• Roger Ehrenberg’s strategy: 20–25 seed positions, then concentrate 75% of capital into just 3–5 companies on conviction at follow-on.
• Rory O’Driscoll notes IPO ARR threshold has doubled to ~$400M, extending hold periods and pushing Scale to expand fund deal count from under 20 toward 25.
• Founders Fund is targeting 10 deals in Fund 3, down from 31 in Fund 1—Rory says the surprising part is they weren’t already that concentrated.
• Roger’s seed check of $750K into Wise at $5.5M post grew to 13% ownership at IPO; 17% of TTD at IPO came from a similar multi-check compounding strategy.

2025-10-16 · Watch on YouTube