(Bloomberg) -- Geoff Lewis, a partner at Founders Fund, is leaving to start his own fund, according to two people who have been briefed on the situation.
Lewis is the second partner to depart in recent months from the fund, launched 12 years ago by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Luke Nosek left to start an investment fund called Gigafund that will help Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, raise money.
Lewis intends to raise more than $100 million for the new fund, a person familiar with the matter said. Founders, a venture capital fund based in San Francisco, will be an anchor investor, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the move hasn't been announced.
Politically, Lewis has been at odds with Thiel, who has taken a high-profile role advising President Donald Trump on technology matters. Shortly after the U.S. presidential election last November, Lewis penned a blog post, declaring “a world in which President Trump makes any sense at all is not the world I want my grandchildren to inherit.”
Lewis didn't respond to requests for comment on his departure or his new fund.
Last year, Founders added two new partners with strong records in the early stage funding known as “angel” investing: Zivity founder Cyan Banister and Eventbrite founder Kevin Hartz.
Lewis led Founders Fund's investment in ride-sharing company Lyft Inc. in 2013. In the first example of institutional money going into a cannabis investment, he also led its investment in Privateer in 2015. Lewis joined Founders in 2012, after selling his loyalty program startup, TopGuest, to ezRez Software for what he said was an eight-figure sum.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Pollack at apollack1@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz
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