Founders Fund hires former OpenAI exec Ryan Beiermeister (and not because of her Mafia skills)

Ryan Beiermeister has joined Founders Fund as a partner, she announced on Monday. Beiermeister is well-known in Silicon Valley for a number of reasons. For one, prior to this role, she spent about two years as VP of Product Policy at OpenAI as it became a household name, shortly after ChatGPT became the fastest-growing app in history.

That career choice ended abruptly in February when she was reportedly fired after objecting to a planned ChatGPT feature called “adult mode,” which was going to allow adults to use the chatbot for erotica. The Wall Street Journal reported that her firing involved an accusation by a male colleague of sexual discrimination, although Beiermeister called any allegation that she discriminated against anyone “absolutely false.” In March, OpenAI reportedly scrapped plans for adult mode.

More recently Beiermeister has become well-known in Silicon Valley for her skillful strategy in a Founders Fund YouTube show called “Mafia.” The game involves discovering which players are secret Mafia killers before those players can “kill” the rest of the players.

Beiermeister played the game against OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anduril’s Palmer Luckey, Figma’s Dylan Field, Flexport’s Ryan Petersen, Founders Fund’s Trae Stephens, and several others.

One of the most intense scenes in Episode One involved her and Altman each saying that if they were found dead, it would mean the other was the killer. Those who knew the history laughed.

Some commented on Twitter that maybe the whole Mafia game was really a job interview for her. The game, according to the firm’s chief marketing officer and the game’s MC, Mike Solana (who brought the game to the firm), is often played at Founders Fund retreats.

However, it wasn’t. “Though she is an excellent Mafia player, that wasn’t part of her interview process. She has been close with Trae Stephens since they worked together at Palantir and has been friendly with our team for years,” a Founders Fund spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Though the way Beiermeister played the game — coolly, making analytical observations and arguments about who might be Mafia — couldn’t have hurt her prospects.

Still, Beiermeister has known Trae Stephens for at least a decade. Prior to her role at OpenAI, and at Meta before that, she spent her formative years at Palantir, the big data company founded by the VC firm’s founder, Peter Thiel. Stephens also worked at Palantir in its early days.

Beiermeister says she’s most interested in backing the kinds of startups that Founders Fund is known to gravitate toward.

“The companies that will define the next twenty years are being built in the categories where product engineering is hardest and the stakes are highest — AI infrastructure and agentic systems, defense, energy, climate, biotech, the regulated frontier,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post. “To the founders in these domains, especially if you don’t fit the standard mold: I want to talk to you and my inbox is open.”