Lethal injection. He voted in line with fellow republican appointees. The House Intelligence Committee is relaunching its probe into russias interference with last years u. S. Election. Five key witnesses have been asked to testify including f. B. I. Director james comey and National SecurityAgency Director mike rogers, who will testify on may 2. Former president barack obama will return to chicago on monday for his first public event since leaving office. He will hold a series of events over the next four weeks starting with a town hall style meeting with students at the university of chicago. Global news 24 hours a day powered by more than 2600 journalists. I am Alisa Parenti and this is bloomberg. Caroline i am caroline hyde. This is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up, the system Founders Fund partner. Brian singerman joins us for a crash course in identifying big winners in the next big wave in tech. Silicon valleys unicorn unveils a new ad campaign. Pinterest has the pipeline to recapture public attention. Apple sets its sights on deep space. We will analyze the thinking behind top executives. First to our lead. Founders fund is best known for investing in companies building revolutionary technology and for its somewhat controversial founder, peter thiel. The firm has an impressive portfolio filled with tech titans like facebook and spotify. It opened in 2005 with 50 million in funds. It is on track to generate 9. 5 billion. Joining us this Founders Fund partner brian singerman. Also with us, guest host and friend of the show, David Kirkpatrick in new york for us. David, i will get you asking questions. Brian, tell us about your Venture Capital focus. You have started to up the game getting deeper into certain investments. You are a bit of a gaming man yourself. Our strategy has been to invest in toptier founders, regardless of sector, and go allin on the best ones. Put a huge amount of money behind the best companies. That has been the secret to our success. Caroline you went in with oculus, not as big as you could have done. What an exit, oculus being sold to facebook for a 2 billion deal announced. F8 took over some of the news this week. Vr, ar, how do you see Virtual Reality and augmented reality with spectrum changes . Rackspace book is doing a fantastic job leading the charge for the next decade of communications. They are playing the long game buying oculus and developing new technologies. I think you will see exciting elements led by vr and ar over the next 10 years. David David Kirkpatrick here. I would be curious to hear you talk about the internet of things which sort of encompasses more these days. Is that something you think about in those terms . How important do you see it to be . We think about it in terms of how we think about everything. It is all about the microcompany. We are sector agnostic. We do not think we need to invest in this specific sector. We think this company is amazing. If we saw an Amazing Company in the internet of things sector, we would go for it. We think of it more generally. Caroline thinking about Amazing Companies or lack thereof, i am looking at my bloomberg u. S. Barometer, the means by which we measure how active startup system is in the united states. We are measuring how much money is going into startups, the exits. How do you see the health of ipos . Do you want these companies to be coming to the market as soon as possible . Honestly, this is not a macro question. This is a question independent for each company. At the board level, we discuss liquidity, financing, all aspects, whether to go public or stay private. It is a different decision for each company. I do not think it has to do with the macro environment, more to do with the individual company. Caroline spotify might feel it would be helping give money to investors, helping cash and for those who founded it. Why do that . Spotify has clearly an independent strategy. Maybe a lot of its investors were saying it did not need money for itself to run operations. This is a great example where there is not one right answer for every company. Spotify chose the path it thinks is best for the company itself. David given you call it Founders Fund and you are notoriously founder friendly, and another thing that has been a part of the industry for a long time is investing in the person, not the idea, is that another way of saying what you do . Absolutely. A huge part of our Investment Decision is based on the founding team, based on the management team. It is really important for us to have founders that are strategically, longterm visionaries as well as very execution oriented. It does not make sense to have one part without the other. When we find those elements in a team doing something important for the world, we tend to make the investment. Caroline what sort of funding rounds do you want to get in on . You are looking at earlier stages. We are seeing a plethora coming in. Honestly, we are totally stage agnostic in the same way we are sector agnostic. I have no fear of mimissing outs an investor. When we see a company has developed and is well on its way to be one of the most Important Companies on the planet, we go allin. We have the Fund Structure set up we can account for all of those. Caroline david, do you want to have a quick last question . David i do. I wonder how you identify those strategic moats. You have doubled down on the number of Companies Including the health company, the one you made a ton of money on. That is the kind of thing everybody could say. You seem to do it. Is there any secret sauce . I cannot give away all of our secrets. I would be out of a job. We really do try and answer the question, can this be cloned at this point . If the answer is no and it has a phenomenal management team, we are going to go allin. It is a really important question for us to figure out if it can be cloned at this point. Caroline the last question and my last question about the overall ecosystem. More and more bigticket money is coming in from later stage investors, from institutional money. How is this making your life more difficult . Is it putting off the companies from going public . Does it not matter . I dont think this is a company by company basis. Our job is to find the worlds most Important Companies and invest in them. We have to invest in them at some point. Regardless of what the Funding Landscape looks like, that is what we are looking to do. I dont think it changes our job much. Caroline fascinating stuff. We will be digging into the intricacies of health and tech. Brian singerman and David Kirkpatrick. Uber has extended its internal investigation into Sexual Harassment claims that the company. The investigation led by eric holder was sparked by charges of Sexual Harassment as well as a wider cultural problem. Holder has asked the board for an additional month to complete his inquiry and has yet to conduct interviews with key figures in the investigation, including top h. R. Execs. A reminder all episodes of Bloomberg Technology are Live Streaming on twitter. Check us out weekdays at 5 00 in new york, 2 00 in san francisco. This is bloomberg. Caroline we are back with brian singerman, partner at Founders Fund. Brian is heavily invested in the health care system. They are all new Founders Fund portfolio. Many are companies you have made a beeline for. A real case in point of why youre on the list of 10 billion. You went allin on the company. What do you think about m a at the moment and the Health Care Sector in general valuationwise . We are seeing less m a and far less etf trading. Are you still bullish on the Health Care Sector and biotech . Im bullish on individual companies. It is all about the specific company. Regardless of what is going on in the biotech sector, that was going to be a special company. We recognized that was a special company and went allin. When it comes to m a or going public, that was a strategic conversation we had at the board levels. We think we got a great outcome. It was a conversation of whether to go public or get acquired. Caroline does it seem to be you can see the synergies clearly . The drugs would get to market faster . There are always advantages and its advantages of each. It has a fantastic Distribution Platform to get the drugs into the hands of people that need them. Theres also the advantage of being independent. We determined at that time it was the right move to sell. Caroline looking at Oscar Health Care is fascinating. Not only because of what they are doing humanizing health care, but also because it was cofounded by josh kushner. How much are you looking at the health . We are extremely bullish on oscar. It is fundamentally fixing the Health Insurance industry and the state of health in america through transparency. You probably have little to no relationship with your Health Insurer now. Oscar is trying to change that and make use of Neural Networks to save costs. This is regardless of the political landscape. We are concerned about how we more effectively get health care for members. We have to adapt no matter what the politics look like. Caroline should the Regulatory Environment change your views of investment at any point . It may change the tactic but it does not change the strategy. The fortunate thing is we are building a company that has a fantastic relationship with members so we can provide the best health care possible. Obviously, the Regulatory Environment will change tactics of the company but it does not change the strategy. Caroline how do tactics change . If they made it impossible to sell insurance across state lines, we would adapt to that. It impacts whether we go into different states. Those things are all taken into account with policy but it does not change the longterm strategy of the company. Caroline what about the environment in which we live, not only political and regulatory, but the pace of change . Im fascinated by the talk of disruption and universal basic income, the need to help those about to lose their jobs to automation. Are you a technology optimist or pessimist . Im a world optimist. I dont to get pays to be a world pessimist. Im an optimist on the world and humans ability to adopt. When we go to a universal basic income or something else, we will adapt as a society and human beings. Im extremely bullish on one of our portfolio companies, airbnb. It has a nascent experience platform im extremely bullish on when it comes to economy 2. 0. The airbnb experienced platform can give people a way to monetize their skills in a way we have never seen before. Im very excited about that over the next decade. Caroline you say we will adapt as humans. Is it ever the responsibility of technology to help with that adaptation . Is it always a regulatory, political thing . I think we always try to help from a technology perspective. But you are not going to be able to artificially stop it. You have to work with it and adapt with it and have technology do things that are helpful for society. Humanity has to adapt along with it. That is what we are doing. Caroline you have got a lot of eyes on you because of your reputation and investments you have made, the exits you have delivered for Founders Fund. How do you feel startups are looking at you at the moment . There was some negative reaction to peter thiels controversial and sometimes unconventional viewpoints. Has that changed in any way how many startups are able to get in front of you and how attractive you are as a vc . We are a collection of individuals. We dont always agree with each other. Some of the most experience founders love that. A lot of experienced founders want to be challenged. We welcome entrepreneurs who want to experience all sorts of different viewpoints and be challenged while maintaining control. At the end of the day, it is the entrepreneurs decision. If they want to be challenged, they should talk with us. Caroline last question, geographical in nature. Who is knocking on your door . Is it Silicon Valley, u. S. Based startups . Where is the excitement coming from . What about the rest of them . To be honest, especially at the early stage, we are seeing them from all over the world which is very exciting. I think it makes a ton of sense to start a company elsewhere. People still may need to come to Silicon Valley to scale. We are fortunate to have a lot of the toptier talent in the world in Silicon Valley. But where you start the company is completely independent. We are seeing fascinating stuff coming out of europe, coming out of everywhere. Caroline hopefully, we see more geographical diversification. It has been fascinating having you here. Brian singerman, partner at Founders Fund. A major media deal is on hold. The u. K. Government delayed the decision on 21st century foxs plan to acquire the rest of sky until after elections. Coming up, pinterest is trying to set itself apart from the social network is often compared to. We will dig into what is next for this startup. A quick reminder of our interactive tv function at tv on the bloomberg. You will be able to watch us live and see previous interviews and dive into any of the bloomberg functions we feature on the program. This is for subscribers only. Check it out at tv. This is bloomberg. Caroline walmarts ecommerce chief reaped an astronomical payday to the tune of 224 million in compensation last year. It was fueled by shares of stock as part of the sale of jet. Com to the retail giant. It puts him well ahead of his new boss, mcmillen received a 22. 5 million pay package. The retailing giant acquired jet last year in an effort to bolster its online sales. Pinterest announced it is retiring the like button on its platform. The move is a step to differentiate itself from other social network platforms. It will launch its first major ad campaign. Pinterest is considering advertising on billboards and in magazines. Joining us in new york is David Kirkpatrick. And here with us in the studio, sarah frier, who just sat down with the cofounder in a rare interview this week on the decrypted podcast. You got to sit down with the executive team, the president and cofounders. Tell us what you have learned. This has been a silent unicorn for Silicon Valley. Contrasting with what we think of as a disruptive Silicon Valley founder, sometimes brash or even overbearing, these guys are nice. They are incredibly slow and steady and thoughtful. Not to say the business is moving slowly. Behindthescenes, theyve done a lot to update their products. Not a lot of it is stuff we see on the surface, the flashy product updates we get from social media companies. It is more with the algorithm. They want you to think of them as a Search Company to help you plan your life. Caroline more of a google and instagram. David, im sure youre interested in the subject. David i was listening to the podcast. There is a sort of modesty that almost comes across as a modesty of ambition. When you think about it, they are saying they want to be the google of imagery or whatever, do you think they will get there . Will they retain their multibilliondollar valuation may have been celebrated for . I think they have threats from all sides. Google Just Announced soon you will be able to see shoppable images in their image search. Instagram Just Announced you will be able to save posts that inspire you in collections. That sounds a lot like pinterest. You focus on social media, too. This is a rule of the network. The Larger Network sometimes wins. The biggest threat to pinterest now is they have 175 million users. That is a healthy amount but not the 600 million of instagram or the world using google. It is a threat. Caroline i listened to the podcast this morning in the gym. What stood out in particular from some of these executives and what they refused to tell you, it does not look like it has the stellar growth we are expecting from a unicorn startup. They did not want to say growth is as start as this time last year. They would not answer questions about that as much and they would not talk about their eventual ipo. They said we have no plans. Are you talking about it . They were like, we cannot say whether we are talking about it but we have no plans. If you look at the little pieces coming together, they are hiring a Senior Executive team. They are trying to clean up their vision. The advertising campaign, even opening up to a reporter like me, all of these things are things you need to do to prepare for the eventual public offering. Caroline certainly, they confirmed they want to remain independent. It is not like they were looking for a sale. I enjoyed the podcast. David, what is your view for whether we will be seeing a Pinterest Ipo anytime soon . David i think probably valuation would be the challenge with an ipo anytime soon. I will say among younger women i know, the brand loyalty to pinterest is very real, at least in the united states. I think they have a strong business. The