Scott Nolan - SpaceX, Founders Fund, and Rebuilding American Uranium Enrichment - [Invest Like the Best, EP.467]

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Colossus

Technology, Business, Investing

4.7 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Scott Nolan spent 12 years at Founders Fund looking for the most important problems that no one else was funding. Then he found a problem so critical, and so ignored, that he couldn't find a company to back. So he started one. General Matter is rebuilding US uranium enrichment. The United States was the world leader in enrichment through the 1980s and then stopped entirely. Today roughly a quarter of US enriched uranium comes from Russia, a ban on those imports takes full effect in 2028, and the advanced reactors everyone is counting on to power the next wave of data centers have no reliable domestic fuel source. Scott believes enrichment is the single bottleneck to a nuclear future, and that the window to solve it is narrow. The conversation covers how Peter Thiel influenced him, why being in love with an idea is dangerous for investors but required for founders, and what it actually takes to rebuild an industrial capability the country let atrophy for 40 years. Please enjoy my conversation with Scott Nolan. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Visit ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠. ----- ⁠WorkOS⁠ is a developer platform that enables SaaS companies to quickly add enterprise features to their applications. Visit⁠⁠ ⁠WorkOS.com⁠⁠⁠ to transform your application into an enterprise-ready solution in minutes, not months. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- ⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:45) Guest Intro: Scott Nolan (00:03:36) SpaceX, Founders Fund & General Matter (00:08:04) What Scott learned from Peter Thiel (00:10:05) The "Avoid Trends" Concept (00:10:55) Finding Important Problems No One Is Working On (00:17:32) Gut v. Intuition (00:18:49) Valuation, Competition & Capital Intensity (00:20:20) Founders Fund Strategy (00:21:06) The Steeper the Up Round, the Greater the Undervaluation (00:21:41) Being in Love with the Problem (00:26:07) Governments, Technology & History (00:28:54) Lessons from SpaceX and Elon (00:29:42) Vertical Integration (00:33:07) The Role of Energy in Civilization (00:37:36) State & Direction of US Energy (00:38:58) Why Nuclear? (00:42:20) Taxonomy of Advanced Reactors (00:45:33) The BYOE Concept (00:46:50) What Could Make Advanced Reactors Fail? (00:48:04) General Matter: Product, Business & Company (00:50:12) Enrichment & Weapons-Grade Uranium (00:56:45) North Star Metric (01:01:05) Building a Great Enduring Company (01:04:01) How Scott Runs the Company (01:06:11) Overcoming Irrational Fears About Nuclear (01:08:25) Why Aren't There More Founders Funds? (01:10:03) Operating vs. Investing (01:11:56) Kindest Thing

Transcript

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0:00.0	Most software companies try to maximize your time on their app to juice engagement.
0:03.8	Ramp does the exact opposite.
0:05.6	Ramp understands that no one wants to spend hours chasing receipts, reviewing expense reports,
0:10.0	and checking for policy violations.
0:12.0	So they built their tools to give that time back, using AI to automate 85% of expense
0:17.1	reviews with 99% accuracy.
0:19.3	And since Ramp saves companies 5%, it's no wonder that Shopify runs on Ramp,
0:23.8	Stripe runs on Ramp, and my business does too.
0:26.1	To see what happens when you eliminate the busy work, check out Ramp.com slash invest.
0:30.5	Opening eye, cursor, Anthropic, Perplexity, and Versel all have something in common.
0:34.6	They all use Work OS.
0:36.4	And here's why.
0:37.2	To achieve enterprise adoption at
0:38.7	scale, you have to deliver on core capabilities like SSO, Skim, Rback, and Audit Logs. That's where WorkOS
0:45.3	comes in. Instead of spending months building these mission critical capabilities yourself,
0:49.3	you can just use WorkOS APIs to gain all of them on day zero. That's why so many of the top AI teams you hear
0:55.4	about already run on WorkOS. WorkOS is the fastest way to become enterprise ready and stay focused
1:00.7	on what matters most, your product. Visit WorkOS.com to get started. Every investor should know about
1:06.2	Rogo because Rogo AI's platform is not just another generic chatbot. Instead, it was designed to support how Wall Street bankers and investors actually work,
1:14.3	from sourcing diligence and modeling to turning analysis into deliverables.
1:18.5	For me, three key things differentiate Rogo.
1:20.7	First, it connects directly to your systems so it can work with your actual data.
	...

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