E3: Christian Garrett: Investing at 137 Ventures (founded by former Thiel Associates) and Connecting Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley

Shoutout to my friends at Reindustrialize who put together an incredible event in Detroit mid-July. On the sides of the conference, I interviewed Christian Garrett, Partner at 137 Ventures, a $6B+ AUM growth-stage venture fund known for backing generational cateogory defining technology companies, investments include SpaceX, Anduril, Palantir, Spotify, Airbnb, Turo, and Uber.

Last month, Mario at The Generalist released an incredible four part series covering Founders Fund, their exceptional returns and what makes the firm so special. Part 2 of the series covers all associates of Thiel who have gone on to start incredibly successful VC firms, linking it below as it is worth the read and even worth paying just for the series.

There is an image in there mapping out all the Thiel and his associate founded venture firms. They left out 137 Ventures (I am sure this was an accident) which was cofounded by Justin Fishner-Wolfson (Former Principal at Founders Fund) and Alexander Jacobson (Former EIR at Founders Fund). Christian brought up in the pod that he would need to have a word with Mario about it, no need - we have issued an update along with the pod!

Christian also cofounded The Hill & Valley Forum with Delian Asparahouv (Founders Fund) and Jacob Helberg (Under Secretary of State Designate for Economic Security) to connect Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley, the event started as a small dinner gathering over 3 years ago and has quickly become the premier place to bring together decision makers from venture capital, Silicon Valley’s top startups and tech companies and decision makers in D.C.

I was at the “Winning The AI Race” Summit hosted by All-In Podcast and Hill & Valley Forum last week where President Trump, JD Vance and four cabinet secretaries gave talks which is a testament to the influence and role of the forum in bridging D.C and the Valley.

In this podcast we go through a range of topics. Christian talks about his journey building his first computer as a kid to play Runescape and how that developed his love for sci-fi. He talks about playing college basketball at the University of Kansas and his learnings from being a “benchwarmer for some NBA all stars” and going deep into philosophy and theology before venturing into tech investing.

At 137 Ventures, Christian went from joining as an analyst to becoming partner in a very short period of time without taking the traditional business school detour to get into venture capital, he talks about what that taught him about finding and nurturing talent having been on the receiving end of the apprenticeship.

Timestamps and Highlights

(00:00) - Introduction 

(00:39) - Reindustrialize and Detroit 

(02:40) - Investing and growing at 137 Ventures

(10:16) - Early life and influences

(18:21) - Wanting to be an investor

(28:25) - Forging and maintaining relationships 

(37:48) - Hill & Valley Forum and rallying people 

(42:57) - Obsessions, self reflections and weaknesses

(40:37) - Capital allocation in venture 

(53:02) - Compounding in personal life

(57:43) - Portfolio Construction Debates

(1:05:36) - Remote work, city concentration and next wave of innovation

(1:10:12) - Accelerated innovation due to growing private markets

(1:15:05) - Rapid fire and closing thoughts

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Until next Tuesday, Suffiyan Malik

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