Name: Sandy Kory: The Founder Obsessed Investor Behind BillionToOne, BaseTen & Palantir
Uploaded: 2026-06-22T13:54:36+00:00
Duration: 5705 s

Speakers

Sandy Kory — Founder, Horizon

Summary

Sandy Kory, founder of Horizon, discusses his founder-focused venture investing approach and early investments in Palantir, BillionToOne, and SendCutSend. He explains why he prioritizes talent density, intellectual honesty, obsession, missionary founders, and execution over pitch decks or near-term business models. The conversation also covers hiring, talent magnetism, AI's impact on venture capital, and the re-industrialization tailwind behind SendCutSend.

Host introduces Sandy Kory as founder of Horizon, a pre-seed and seed venture fund.
Sandy describes backing Palantir in 2009 based on talent density, mission, and contrarian first-principles culture.
He explains finding BillionToOne through YC Fellowship and making it his largest angel investment.
Sandy details his founder evaluation framework: obsession, intellectual honesty, talent magnetism, and execution.
The SendCutSend story illustrates backing an overlooked manufacturing company with inbound demand and vertical integration.
He discusses missionary versus mercenary founders, hiring quality, and red flags.
He says AI may change venture capital tools but exceptional founder traits should persist.
He reflects on early-stage venture inefficiency, fundraising, and staying founder-focused.

Ideas

Sandy Kory Founder, Horizon 3:49

Talent-dense, mission-driven, contrarian culture wins.

Sandy invested in Palantir's 2009 bridge round after his friend and Palantir CTO Sham Sankaran raved about the talent density and mission. He valued the team's extreme first-principles thinking, ambition, dedication, and radically contrarian culture even though the company could not clearly explain its business model or GAAP revenue at the time. He put a large portion of his net worth in because he believed this could be the smartest, most ambitious group in Silicon Valley.

Sandy Kory Founder, Horizon 20:37

Founders explain hard science, overachieve.

Sandy found BillionToOne through the short-lived YC Fellowship and backed it pre-seed, then doubled down and made it his largest angel investment, including at a $4 million valuation. He was impressed by three brilliant PhD founders who were raw, honest, not bullshitters, and able to explain highly technical biology to a non-expert. They were intellectually honest about risks, overachieved repeatedly, and built a profitable diagnostics business with NIPT and liquid biopsy, reaching roughly a $400 million revenue run rate with 100% growth.

Sandy Kory Founder, Horizon 79:43

Democratizes custom manufacturing with inbound demand.

Sandy first invested in SendCutSend in its 2021 seed round and later doubled down through an SPV. He knew founder Jim through M&A and trusted him. SendCutSend democratizes custom manufacturing by letting anyone order one part online, using top-tier machines rather than trying to sell machines, which contrasts with failed 3D-printing startups that lacked demand. It has strong inbound demand from tinkerers and industrial customers tied to re-industrialization, defense tech, and robotics, is like AWS for hardware startups, and benefits from China's slower or less compliant competition for fast or restricted parts.

Sandy Kory: The Founder Obsessed Investor Behind BillionToOne, BaseTen & Palantir

Summary

Ideas

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