Founder-led companies may be better positioned to navigate economic uncertainty and the accelerating artificial-intelligence arms race, according to Michael Monaghan, founder and portfolio manager of the Founder 100 ETF. “The founders not only have the motivation, the vision, the execution, but … they have the authority, the moral authority to pivot and drive their company in a direction to move through those uncertainties,” Monaghan said in an interview with AInvest’s Capital & Power.
Monaghan’s comments come as investors weigh the long-term durability of artificial-intelligence spending, rising global tensions and ongoing tariff disputes that have pressured growth-oriented equities in 2026. The Founder 100 ETF, which trades under the ticker FFF, launched on Dec. 18, 2025, and is focused exclusively on founder-led companies. Yahoo Finance data show the ETF is down roughly 5% year to date, but up almost 10% in the last month.
“We own the 100 what we believe to be best founder led companies,” Monaghan said.
Monaghan said the idea for the fund emerged after a visit to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., where he reflected on the role entrepreneurs played in shaping the American economy. “The people that built America are iconoclasts,” Monaghan said. “What if we built a public market portfolio of only iconoclasts?”
According to Monaghan, research conducted on approximately 11,000 stocks over a 30-year period suggested founder-led businesses historically outperformed broader equity benchmarks over long periods. “Founder led companies should outperform the S&P by about three to 5% over very long periods of time,” he said.
Among the ETF’s largest holdings are Palantir Technologies, NVIDIA, Oracle and Meta Platforms. Monaghan argued that investors remain overly focused on near-term valuation concerns while underestimating the strategic flexibility of founder-led firms.
Speaking about Palantir, Monaghan highlighted the company’s financial performance and rapid commercial growth. “They showed a rule of 40 of 127,” he said, referring to a software-sector metric that combines revenue growth and operating margins. “Forty is considered to be spectacular and 100 is incredibly rare.”
Monaghan said Palantir’s software platform helps corporations integrate fragmented operational data spread across logistics, sales and enterprise-resource-planning systems. “Palantir comes in over the top and allows you to extract that data and turn it into something meaningful to grow your earnings and grow margins,” he said.
On Oracle, Monaghan defended founder Larry Ellison’s decision to use debt financing to expand AI infrastructure capacity. “We think using debt for the types of investment he’s making is very prudent,” Monaghan said, arguing that AI infrastructure assets are likely to retain long-term value.
He also said Wall Street may be underestimating Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s willingness to redirect spending after criticism surrounding the company’s metaverse investments. “He made a mistake with his capital investment in the past,” Monaghan said. “He learned and is now driving capital in an area of his business that we think is very high growth.”
Monaghan said the FFF ETF is designed to provide investors with concentrated exposure to entrepreneurial leadership that traditional indexes may lack. “If you look at the S&P 500, only 17% are founder led and the NASDAQ 100 are only 23% are founder led,” he said. “If an investor wants to take advantage of the execution, the vision of a founder, we think FFF is a great place to invest their money.”