Faith Collides

Trae Stephens is a partner at Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm with a portfolio that includes Airbnb, SpaceX, and Palantir. Trae is also a co-founder of Anduril Industries, a rapidly growing US defense technology company with over 350 employees, and a valuation of $1.9 billion. Trae opens up on growing up in rural Ohio with a grandfather who was the pastor of his church. He shares how he had the opportunity to travel to the Middle East on an overseas mission trip, what it was like to be the editor-in-chief of his high school newspaper, and how the events of 9/11 prompted him to pursue a different career path— one that may not have panned out without bold steps and prayerful intervention of getting on the waitlist at Georgetown University. Upon graduating in 2005, Trae secured a data analytics role in the US Intelligence community, working on identifying and tracing intelligence to terrorists’ activities. But despite getting into what he wanted to do after high school, Trae could not b