The Most Controversial VC on Twitter: Delian Asparouhov (Founders Fund & Varda)

I just like find AI so boring and not interesting. I just like can't help to not critique it and like in some ways like wish that it would fail so that people just like stop talking about it. Because like I just find like I just like want to work in the world of atoms. And I was like reflecting recently where I was like, I haven't made an investment in the Bay Area, I think like 5 and a half years. The Library of Alexandria was an attempt to capture all human knowledge. Fire and war destroyed it. Today we try again. Welcome to the Library of Minds, where you'll learn the frameworks and mental models of the world's greatest thinkers. And when our conversation ends, yours begins. Each guest has created a digital mind on Delphi that you can talk to anytime, anywhere. I'm Dara Lajevardian.

Let's dive in. Brief intro is partner at Founders Fund, co-founder of Varda, immigrant.

You missed my other title at Founders Fund, village idiot.

Village idiot, right, okay.

Don't forget that one.

I noticed that hasn't changed either.

No.

It's been there for like 5, 6 years?

6 years now, yeah.

6 years. Where are we catching you right now? What are you trying to get done this year?

Mm, well, we're coming up on the end of the year, so let's see. You know, in all things, you know, sort of Varda, because we have like a significant, you know, government business, November, December tend to be the times that you're doing like, close out of contract, we kind of have to choose which customers we're serving 12 to 18 months out. It is not like your type of business where there's some amount of fast feedback and iteration cycle. Everything for us from when we decide to go fly to which customers on that flight, we have to decide 12 to 18 months in advance of an actual flight happening. And so you kind of have to look at the sets of cards you have at the end of each year and be like, OK, this is basically all the customers we're going to serve. And you may make the wrong call where it's like you may end up over-rotating too much on commercial and then there's not enough demand there. Or you don't do enough on commercial and then you have too much demand and customers are frustrated. Frustrated, so they go elsewhere. So a lot of the closeout of the end of the year is sitting on that. And then on the Founders Fund side of things, you know, bunch of portfolio companies that, you know, are in similar spheres of gov, defense, industrialization, and so a lot of them are going through big inflection points that typically also mean financings. And so it's mostly coming to conclusions on which of those we, you know, sort of participate, don't, lead, don't lead. So I admit that I'm not, you know, taking that many new pitches right now, given there's so much going on within the portfolio.

That leads super well into one of the things I wanted to ask about that I saw you talk about on the podcast with Molly is how really there's 2 to 4 things that matter per year, decisions you make of some kind. And I'm wondering, and you were just talking about the feedback loop for some of these things being tremendously long, how do you think about becoming a better decision maker?

One of the techniques that I use is just like force myself to focus on a very limited set of things. Early on in career, I felt like there was just like, not that many ways to have impact. And so it was just like add as many activities as possible, spend as much time as possible. And that was the way that you got things done. And then at some point, as like responsibilities grew, etc., it was very obvious that there were like a multitude of things that I could do throughout the day that in theory could have impact. And if I tried to do all of them, I would just run out of hours in the day. And each of those things you could argue like had some level of importance, right? Like even today, in theory, I could go be reaching out to like net new individual DoD customers that would have some impact. On the Varta business. But at some point you have to start thinking about like, where are the areas that just provide you true leverage, right? Where it's like, it is now unlikely that I am reaching out on like individual programs at this point. It's more managing team, thinking about like, are there gaps in the team where we want to like hire net new people into it because they have a particular area of like expertise within, you know, XYZ department, like the Navy or something like that. That is actually a much higher leverage way of actually accomplishing that goal versus like literally the individual activity of like, go reach out to like XYZ, you know, sort of Navy program manager.. And so I try to, and I can't claim that I have some super formal process on this, it's like sort of maybe once a month, once a quarter, I just have this intuition, I'm just like, okay, let me think about what is the most important thing for the next quarter. And so I'll give an example from Q1 this year. If you think about the January timeframe, Trump administration was transitioning in, there definitely weren't any net new DoD contracts being signed, there wasn't a whole lot for us to do on the Varda BD side of things. We were, you know, had only landed our first demonstration flight. The second and the third were about to land in like the next 3 or 4 months, but like I can't really impact that. That's mostly engineering. And so it wasn't obvious for me on like the client, investor relations, comms, et cetera. There wasn't a whole lot for me to do on the Varda side of things. Versus on the Founders Fund side of things, I was like, okay, this Trump administration is transitioning in. There are gonna be just like a set of like, you know, companies that just get, you know, sort of huge programs with this new administration because they're thinking about reindustrialization, neo-primes, they're leaning in on like, you know, R&D way more so than, you know, prior admins. What are the groups within the portfolio that have some chance of being, you know, sort of king made by the administration sometime over the next year? And not from a nepotistic way, but because they have like great tech and are contributing into, you know, critical national areas of security. And so in particular, I had this portfolio company, Hadrian, that like at the time felt like it was going through this like inflection point moment where they had reached a certain, you know, tens and tens of millions of, you know, sort of revenue scale. Unit economics were like just starting to turn. And so I sort of told myself in January, I was like, you know what, there's not that much I can do to impact Varda right now over the next quarter. I could go take a bunch of net new founders fund pitches, but like, you know, some net new seed thing or Series A thing, it's not gonna be as impactful relative to just like, I know that Hadrian is about to go out for its Series C sometime over the next quarter. Probably the only thing that matters for me over the next quarter is just like coming to a conclusion on that. Is that something we want to lean into? Do we want to like, you know, price and lead into ourselves? It was the first time where I felt like it was a true moment where, you know, I've been involved in the company since like the seed round, we had been supportive all throughout but hadn't necessarily led around since. And it was very important that I made that my only priority because initially, after I spent some time on it, I came away pretty high conviction that I thought it was something that we wanted to do. And as I sort of brought it to my handful of colleagues that work in this field, they're actually mostly pretty skeptical to start. And they were like, ah, Italian, limited TAM, these unit economics are really hard, cutting metal, what's the differentiation? There's like a bajillion critiques, right? And look, if I'd had like 15 other things on my plate, there are plenty of times where I bring something up with like a light amount of conviction or like work effort behind it, and I get the 15 critiques and I'm like, ah, fuck it, I've got like things going on at Varda, other investments, I like don't really have the time to really think through and like, you know, see if I'm at that level of conviction. Versus here, I was just like, look, I'm not gonna spend time on anything else this quarter, so I was like, great, okay, these are actually all valid critiques, I'm gonna go spend the next couple weeks like digging into each of these individual critiques, coming back with like real answers as to like why it's worth doing, and I came back to those same colleagues, and convince him to spend more time. And lo and behold, over the course of— and it wasn't a short period of time, it was like a month or two— but got effectively the entire team to conviction on it such that— I think we announced this in June or July— but in the May time frame, we ended up leading the Hadrian Series C, which now reflecting on it, basically at the end of the year, is probably the only important thing that I did at Founders Fund basically the entire year. There was one other investment that I made, but that was technically December of last year. And so effectively, Yeah, that was the one thing that I did this year that really mattered, and the reason that it ended up happening was because I forced myself to focus on it for all of Q1, and everything else that I did was kind of a rounding error in comparison to that.

That's an interesting—

I give Varda examples of this too, by the way, of like when I've given myself a quarter where I'm only allowed to focus on one thing at Varda.

I mean, I saw that in your 30 Lessons in 30 essay where you're talking about trying to find a specific hire. You locked yourself in a conference room to find them, and I think this—

That summer sucked. It was a shitty conference room.

I think it's an interesting thematic element that I've noticed in a lot of the things that I've listened to or even just knowing you as a person that even when you were asked about your investment portfolio, you were like, ramp and sword, everything else is a rounding error. And when you think about things through that lens, like through a whole quarter, one thing. And I think it is very clarifying just to focus on that. But how do you pick yourself up and know when you're doing things and stop yourself from getting into the rhythm of just activity and mistaking motion for forward progress? Because a lot of times you have to actually take a step back and think more clearly about it.

Good question. I think for me there have been a handful of times in life where I've just gotten so into motion, motion, motion, and then I just reflect on it after a month or two and I'm like, I got nothing done, basically, other than, yes, met lots of people, took lots of pictures, but if you look at the output, yeah, technically there was no output. And so I think I've just gotten into a much better muscle and routine, and it probably sounds a little silly, but I think I am now much more comfortable with just having like gaps on my calendar versus like an earlier career version of me was like, if there are gaps, I should find ways to go be productive, to go fill it. The later career version of me is like, I can fill up any gap in a moment's notice. And it's not necessarily going to be, again, the like most productive thing, but sometimes it's in those gaps where I just like have the time to like sit and reflect and actually think about like what is going to be that most impactful thing. Like the decision on like, you know, like prioritizing, you know, sort of Adrian for your Q1. It wasn't like I had some like meeting on my calendar where I was like, sit and like write out Q1 priorities. I'm sure if you like had me sit and write them out and like January 1st, I probably wouldn't have written like the like, you know, Hadrian thing. It was just like various gaps that I purposely left on the calendar where I think about like things that I was noticing in the market, what investors were investing in, whatever I felt like there was like true macro tailwinds, etc. And it was just like having some amount of that, like, you know, sort of free space to think about. And then once it clicked in my head, then it was like, okay, now I'm fine going like into activity mode where it's like activity, activity, activity. And so I guess getting a little more comfortable with just like recognizing that there's like these, you know, upflows and downflows in life where it's like, yeah, when you have this clarifying moment of like, here is the next quarter's like, you know, thing that matters the most, go do it. And then don't necessarily feel the obligation to like, oh, the moment that that thing is accomplished, it's not like the moment that I like signed the Hadrian like Series C term sheet with Chris that I immediately was like, oh, I need to go find another thing. I was fine with like, actually I kind of don't have anything on the calendar for a little bit right now. And like, again, I could go fill that up with a bunch of like seed stage pitches and like, yeah, I don't know, I think I went to like YC Demo Day in like June, that was like a total waste of time. It's like there's easy ways to like do stuff like that, but it's like, yeah, just don't do that, and instead like give yourself the free space to like, you know, sort of think, and it might take you some time to figure out like what is that next, you know, sort of super impactful thing. So yeah, I don't know that I have like a perfect like structured workflow. I mean, generally across my entire professional life, I'm much more of like an intuitive gut sort of person than I am like structured framework, et cetera. It's like, I don't have some Notion doc, I barely use like Notes. I definitely am very reliant on my calendar. If you iMessage me, I may or may not respond. It has nothing to do with like how important you are, it's just like, I'm just like so disorganized in that, but like, I generally have found that like, yeah, letting myself be a little messy and have some free space, you know, gives me the sometimes, you know, sort of, you know, room for the creativity for the things that end up like having real impact. The moment that I've tried to like overly structure and like written out Notion docs of like goals, this, that, so a bit of it is like, you kind of have to find, you know, what framework works best for you.

I mean, it's kind of like the bell curve where in the middle people are like, Q1 strategy document, this is what you're gonna do, and on the right it's like, I'm gonna think of the one important thing and just do that.

And to be clear, it like pisses off my co-founder to no end end, right? Like, he is the opposite. He's a systems engineer. He has to organize like the entire aerospace engineering. Like, each bolt on a Varda satellite has to have an exact amount of torque, like, you know, bolted onto it. Otherwise, like, satellite falls apart. And so it's like his level of like precision, detail, organization, project management, et cetera, like incredible. And for sure, there'll be like a quarter where he just gets frustrated at me where he's like, you've just been completely disorganized this quarter. I don't know what impact you've had at Varda, et cetera. And then also it's like 3 weeks ago I closed like, you know, single-handedly the biggest deal the company's ever had. And I just remember I had this moment like I looked him in the eyes at the end of the meeting and I could just tell he was He was so frustrated because he was just like, this is why you're my co-founder, is like, I hate you but I love you, you know what I mean? Where he's like, you know, I can just be mad at you for a full quarter and then it's like, yeah, well, but like, you know, his disorganized chaos created the biggest deal in the company's life and so, you know, who cares whether or not his project management skills are quite there.

I mean, and I think another thing that related to time management and if you need to fill your calendar with things all the time is that you are also public about doing things like playing video games. That's how you met Kareem. Yep. Picking up hobbies like flying. And it feels like there is this continuous pressure right now with 996 in Silicon Valley to be working all the time and to be continuously filling your calendar with things. And how do you personally think about the opportunity cost of, you know, I'm not doing these things, but other people are. Are they going to outwork me?

Look, I think there are times in life where that makes sense, right? Like in the early days of Varda, there wasn't like anybody else, there wasn't any other motion that happened other than individual effort, basically, right? And so it made no sense to be sitting there thinking about the direction of motion when, like, there's nobody to direct it other than, like, you need to just go do it, basically, right? And so, yeah, 996 makes a lot of sense, I think, when, like, you're seed, Series A, but at some point, it's like, I think your job just does become different where, you know, there is so much motion happening, and it is important to, like, still institute that culture of motion where it's like, you know, I do think, look, at the end of the day, you want the, like, individual IC engineer to believe in the, you know, sort of mission, what you're building, to want to work, you know, sort of 996, but like I just do think that there are different, you know, sort of, you know, sort of shapes to various roles. Um, and I think I'm just currently in a like stage of company, type of investing that I do, where it's not that shape. That could also shift if I were to go start another company in 3, 5, 7 years. Almost certainly I will start thinking about, okay, the only way to push this forward is via, you know, sort of 996. So, um, yeah, maybe the answer is nuance in that like, yeah, there are times where 996 makes sense, Do I feel like some, like, oh, somebody's outworking me? You know, no, because like they didn't do the Hadrian Series C, I did, and like that probably matters way more than like going to, you know, YC Demo Day and meeting like 120 YC startups. You know, I think like that one check will probably matter a lot more than spraying and praying into like 15 YC startups.

Well, I think another thematic thing that shows up in, you know, every conversation that I see on podcasts you've done or writing, is the power law. And it feels like you have this fundamental belief almost that the power law shows up everywhere. And so I'm wondering, what were some of the things that were the power law influences on getting you to the point that you are now?

Um, you know, I do think just like the willingness to drop out at 19 and start the first company. It didn't go particularly well. We went through YC. Got to like run on profitability, never like, you know, raised a small seed round, couldn't raise a Series A because we weren't growing fast enough. Even though there wasn't like a, you know, sort of phenomenal outcome, there was something about just like not being afraid of what it takes to like will something into existence from scratch. Because I'd seen even like the worst case outcome of it basically, and it's like, yeah, it sucked, but like in the grand scheme of things, it's like, yeah, my downside protection was always like, look, I could always go get a job at Facebook, Google, et cetera, like I was a good enough engineer. And so you just see that like the downside's not that bad, better to take a swing have it miss than sort of not. And I do think that just made it a fundamentally lower barrier than if I'd never done that. In particular, I just had such a strong déjà vu moment in the early days of Varda, where it's wildly different business, right? It's like, one was a kind of boring SaaS software for behavioral and speech therapists for autism therapy. Don't think that that was ever going to be a big mission, massive company, et cetera. It wasn't even something that I was particularly inspired by, versus Varda in some ways is life's work, et cetera. But when I look at like the first like 3 to 6 months of both companies, it was kind of the same where it's like you have to like think through what is the founding team, what is the equity split, you have to like file the incorporations papers, the 83B, you have to tour offices, you have to sign that first office space, you have to like interview the first handful of employees. And there was something when I was going through Varda where like, yeah, I just had like, it was just so obvious. Like I never, I was recently talking about this like with an investor friend where she has a founder friend that is always asking for advice about even like some of the most minute details about like operating, you know, sort of a company. And sometimes she'll be like, I don't understand how this person is going to like operate this company for the next 10 years if they're asking questions on every single step of the way. And I remember just reflecting on my own journey where I was like, I don't think I asked anybody a question. It was just like, I was like, I want to do this, I'm going to go do this, and then here's the sets of things that I need to go do. And then the only time I asked questions was like, would you like to invest in this? And it's fine if you don't because I will find other people that will. And that was the extent of my questions. So that was probably number one. And probably sort of number two in terms of true inflection point moment is obviously Keith and the time that I got to spend with him. That was the 2017 through roughly '19 era. He just has this chief of staff position that he hires for that is unique in that it is truly like you are with him 24/7. I remember the first day on the job, the onboarding was just, here's my calendar, I expect you there at every meeting, and then just figure out how to make yourself useful. And that was it, there was no instructions given beyond that. Which both was terrifying, 'cause it was like, how do you make somebody like him more productive or of use to him? It took me many months to figure that out. But then also it's like, you know, as a, you know, whatever I would have been, you know, a 24 or 25-year-old, I was getting to, you know, sort of go to like, you know, Max Levchin's like Affirm board meetings, to like the general partner pitches at, you know, Khosla Ventures and watching Vinod and Samir and David Weiden and Keith and Sven like debate these businesses back and forth, the pricing of it, the technical merits, the like, you know, founder psychology, to like, you know, pre-IPO rounds, to like, you know, in those 2 years I got to go from like literally the very first like, sort of seed stage, like board meeting that Fair had, to like, you know, got to be all the way at every single board meeting until the company was like a $1.5 billion company, and over the course of 2 years, like watch that entire journey. It's just like, you just got this like insane exposure across so many different elements of like startup building in like such a compressed period of time that, yeah, it's hard to even like enumerate how much I learned in those 2 years. I'm not sure that I've ever have or will learn that amount, you know, sort of in 2 years ever again.

I think another thing, so speaking about GPs and partners you've worked with at funds, obviously the most preeminent one at Founders Fund is Peter.

Yep.

And so I was talking with someone who you and I both know who knows Peter well, like a year or two ago, and he was saying that something that Peter will do is every now and then if he sees that there's consensus forming around something, he'll just look at the opposite opinion and try that on and see how it feels. And I'm wondering if there's— that stuck with me because now I start doing that. And I'm wondering if there's any opinions you're trying on right now.

For sake of trying on the opposite of everyone else? Well, I would say one that I have, but it's not necessarily trying on. I in some ways wish that I didn't feel this way. But it's related to the field of work that you guys all work in, which is I just find AI so boring and not interesting. And so I just can't help to not critique it and in some ways wish that it would fail so that people would just stop talking about it. 'cause I just want to work in the world of atoms. I now work out of the sort of Founders Fund Presidio office, and I was reflecting recently where I was like, I haven't made an investment in the Bay Area, I think, in like 5 and a half years. And so it's funny where I'm back here, people are like, oh, what's it like back being in the heyday of it, and this, that, and I'm like, I don't pay attention to it at all. I basically go to my board meetings that are largely in LA, New York, Europe, et cetera. I basically never enter the east side of the city. I just entirely stay between you know, west of the Panhandle, you know, basically. And if there's like an opinion that I have that like I wish I could change in ways like I wish I could be more excited about the world of like, you know, bits and, you know, the fact that we're like, you know, willing life out of, you know, sort of silicon. And for some reason I just can't bring myself to it. And it's one thing that I admire in like Peter. It's like I think he may have some predisposition or biases in certain areas, but he's very willing to like strip those opinions down and look at things in an ultra-capitalistic way and recognize like even if he doesn't like XYZ idea, if it is a trend and it's a place that has like a ton of tailwinds and like, you know, clear massive businesses that are going to be built out of it, he's willing to look at that in a sober way and like still invest into it. Versus like if you told me, Dalian, like you need to go invest into like a Series A, like AI application layer company, join the board, like tweet about it and be super enthused. I'd be like, I'd literally just fucking like go jump out that window instead. Like, I just like, don't, that's not a thing that I want to spend time on, even if I think it would make a lot of money and like, be huge for my career. I just like am incapable of doing that. So it's like, yeah, I'm like trying that opinion on, but like it's like I wish I could not try it.

I mean, that's something that I was— it's been interesting to watch the progression with Peter as well, because I feel like maybe 3 or 4 years he was almost like, I'm not convinced AI is a thing really. And now he is talking about in lectures how he's afraid that the Antichrist is someone stopping the progression of AI. It's like almost a complete flip and how we're not progressing fast enough. And so I agree with you. I think that it's the ability to do that can sometimes yield outsized returns.

He's willing to iterate on his life philosophies, obviously based off the macro environment and can change significantly over time. If you look at my talking points on not enjoying SaaS software in 2019 and then not enjoying AI today, it's basically the same sets of biases and predispositions where I just keep wanting to affect the real world, and even if in theory maybe AI actually becomes one of the major lever arms into affecting the real world, I still can't help but be blinded by my biases. And so, yeah, he's much better at, you know, being willing to strip those away and reanalyze them and edit his own internal philosophies.

One of the things that I'm trying on is that posting is a race to the bottom, and VCs and startups have become ultra-saturated, but I feel like you've managed to sort of become one of the VCs that people know about, and I think in large part because of your personal brand on Twitter. And for me, right now, it feels like everyone is trying to break through and get an audience by posting a ton.

Yep.

And it just feels like one of the most competitive things you could do. And I feel like if someone's trying to compete, it's usually a bad idea. And so how do you think about the importance of personal brand and whether trying to differentiate yourself on the basis of posting is a good one, especially if you don't already have an audience now?

Again, you know, As per what I said earlier in terms of like even like the, my organization of like work life on like the personal brand side of things, I don't think it's like a thing that like I prioritize or think about. It's just like a thing that, you know, sort of comes naturally to me.

You're just naturally good at shitposting.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's not like I like, I mean, way back in the day, maybe early on I had this, like, I gave myself like an OKR of like tweet once per day. And that was like back in like, I don't know, 2018, '19 where I was trying to think about how do I like, you know, break out, et cetera. Honestly, the big breakout moment for me way back in the day was actually just like posting these series of like essays on, you know, sort of Keith. So I do think there's something around like, long-form writing that can be a way that like is truly differentiated rather than just like the, you know, sort of short form. And then probably for a year I had this OKR. And then now it's actually mostly like the opposite where it's like, I mean, I sometimes just like delete the Twitter app and like try to tweet as little as possible 'cause I just kind of find the like ecosystem annoying, the like, you know, hyper-competition somewhat annoying. But then at the same time, I just like can't help when like, I don't know, you know, Benchmark pokes me and I'm like, oh my God, this is like the best moment in my entire life where it's like literally I like deleted Twitter. I told like, you know, I basically paid it, I put a bet on whether or not I could just stay off Twitter for the entire week, and then 4 people texted me like Chaitan's tweet, and I was just like, well, I'm clearly losing some money, and I'm obviously going to poke fun, you know, poke fun back at them.

What's up with people that haven't seen it, what happened?

So, you know, I have obviously started a company before becoming like a, you know, sort of VC, joined Founders Fund, obviously in the name of the fund, it's a fund for founders, we always vote on behalf of the founders, you know, on board resolutions, so even within a couple months of joining, I'd always been a huge Travis Kalanick fan, in like some interview way back in the day with like Business Insider, made some comment about how, you know, shitty I thought Benchmark was for firing them and like in the way that they did it where, you know, maybe some of you don't know, but it was basically like his, you know, mom and dad, mom died in a boating accident, dad got critically injured, and basically like 24 hours later, two Benchmark partners like cornered him in a hotel room in Chicago when he was like still processing and in his like depths of grief, and basically made him sign papers that gave over control of the company basically to Benchmark, and then they fired him like a week later. I just can't think of a more morally despicable sort of thing to do. And so I said that in an interview. I then got a call from one of the GPs at Founders Fund being like, look, just so you know, a bunch of the people at Benchmark don't like you anymore. I wouldn't critique you on this, but it is kind of the ethos of the fund. Just know that, yeah, you're making enemies. And so anyways, after that, I was like, oh, this is kind of fun. And so every 6 months or so, I just consistently sort of poke the bear., and could never get an official response. And I kind of expected that I never would, like, whatever, I'm a schmuck compared to, you know, sort of Bill Gurley in the grand scheme of like, you know, IRR and DPI. But I was like, I just enjoy poking the bear. And then finally, after like 7 years of poking the bear, Chetan, who's one of the general partners right now at Benchmark, decides to finally give the first ever official response to Delian. And it was incredible because it was a complete self-own, because he completely misunderstood the message of the entire thing that I've been critiquing. All I'd been critiquing about for the prior 7 years was like, At Benchmark, they tell founders how to run their companies and they fire them if they don't like how they run them. And at Founders Fund, we do not tell you how to run the company. That was it. It was a very simple message that I repeated for like 7 years straight because I enjoyed doing it. Chaitan decided to critique me because as a part of it, I'd also started to critique Bill Gurley for going to China on a regular basis and being basically like a fucking commie spy. And so, you know, I decided to, you know, add on an additional layer to that critique. He decided to, you know, sort of critique me by saying, "Hey, one of your portfolio companies has, you know, basically raised a round from what was previously known as Sequoia China, I forget the new name, but Neil Shen, and is joining the board. Like, isn't this very, you know, duplicitous of you? Like, you know, one of your portfolio— you critique us about China all the time, Bill Gurley going to China, et cetera. Like, you know, why is this any, you know, sort of different?" And I just read it and I was like, "Does this guy have like 5 brain cells and can't understand like the basics of like the logic behind this?" He served me the perfect layup where I basically got to quote tweet him. I was like, "Chaitan," You fundamentally misunderstood the message. At Founders Fund, I'm going to repeat it, we do not tell portfolio companies how to run their companies. So yes, this person decided to sign a term sheet with like a Chinese VC, but like it's his company, and unlike you, I'm not going to fire him for it because that's not what I do, and that's a very different thing than like a GP that goes on a China tour and espouses like the benefits of China.

Okay, so to hit a hard pivot, Peter, and being a Thiel Fellow is, since you became a Thiel Fellow and then an investor at Founders Fund, I'm going to assume that he's interviewed you.

Kind of, yeah.

And so we actually reuse sort of like a modification of one of the famous steel questions, which is for us, what is the one thing you care about that you think the fewest people care about? And I'm wondering what were the most memorable questions that he asked you and then what were your answers to those questions? Want to go deeper?

Talk to Delian's digital mind on delphi.ai, link in the description. So yeah, I'll answer the first part, which is The thing that I probably sort of obsess on that I think most people probably don't care that much about or don't think about is just how the invisible hand of the free market is going to be the thing that drives humanity to the stars much more so than anything else. And that you can have somewhat of an active hand of shaping that, but whoever sort of wins that race, whether China, US, or some third party, is going to dominate the solar system for the remaining length of human history. And so part of why I started Varda is like, yes, I like the, like, we build these products for these customers, I get to build these spacecraft, we make revenue, et cetera. Like there's some amount of the practical day-to-day, but the reason that I really focus on it is because if we manage to create this like economic flywheel where we're able to sort of take materials up to orbit, improve them, bring them back down, generate value down here on Earth, and it's us tapping into markets that are much larger than just like, space markets, but you're tapping into like drug manufacturing markets where like, you know, the R&D budget of like a Merck is larger than the entire NASA budget. And so, you know, that single company in some ways could have more impact on the entire, you know, sort of space economy than, you know, than NASA itself. If you can start to tap into those, that's what allows you to go from having like, you know, one-off installations like the ISS that are paid for via government budgets, you know, rather than— or go from, you know, having one-off installations like the ISS to having something that's like an industrial outpost that again is not being paid for by government budgets, but it is being paid for by that economic activity. And so even though we don't talk about it that much, one of the like, you know, markers for success that I have for Varda is like at some point right now we have no humans on board any of our manufacturing facilities. And that's because we want to keep it as low cost, high cadence, you know, the best value for our customers. But at some point, as those manufacturing facilities become larger, larger and more complex, at some point it will make sense and they will be economically justifiable for us to basically send a human up there that goes and, you know, does some amount of maintenance, operations, et cetera. But like the amount that it costs to send that person up there, you know, keep them alive while they're up there, the support systems, the hotel that they have to stay in basically in space, that costs less than the total value that they generate by like improving the like output basically of the factory. And then when you have one person like that, then you have 10, 100, 1,000. And that's how we make sure that like, you know, the first, you know, city in low Earth orbit is like, you know, a free democratic republic run by America. Not by like a Chinese, you know, communist, you know, genocidal dictatorship. So that's the thing that I think about, you know, basically a lot. And I'm always kind of monitoring like, what are China's like, you know, 'cause they obviously take a very state-driven approach, but they still have some economic value. They do some in-space manufacturing on their, you know, sort of Chinese space station. They're like bringing back, you know, sort of lunar, you know, samples from the far side of the moon. And they're looking at like, you know, ice and rare earth minerals and helium-3 and things like that. So they like, even in their state-driven approach, are trying to, you know, connect it to economic value. On the Peter question side of things, I never went through like a very obvious interview process. A part of it was because I came over from, you know, KV with Keith. And so it felt more confirmatory than interview, but the one thing that really stood out to me that night where, you know, it was right before I joined Founders Fund and Peter and I had dinner, like the strongest memory that I have was, articulating and him sort of pushing me on how much was I a founder versus investor, 'cause even then I was talking about, hey, like, I do want to probably sort of build something again. First company didn't go well. Yes, I've been in like this investment role, but I do want to have a very large impact on the world. Us discussing what are different measures of impact, and obviously one of those, let's say, being sort of net worth. And I remember us having this really long discussion about if you look at the Forbes 100 list, yes, the very tippy top, the like, you know, Elons, the Marks, the Gateses of the world are entrepreneurs, but the remaining 97 are actually largely capital allocators. And so talking a lot about basically how even if you do want to have great impact on the world, then in some ways, if you want to be in the top 0.1%, actually the default way is actually more capital allocation, you know, sort of than not. So it wasn't necessarily a question, but it was more him pushing me on my conviction to be a founder again sometime. And I think it kind of relates to Peter's philosophy on at least, you know, company building internally. Like I remember, you know, Ev, who's now a general partner at Benchmark, I remember in the depths of COVID when we were like reducing our deployment rate, he kind of queried the team of like, hey, given that we're not really investing that much, should we be like, you know, all thinking about incubating companies? And I remember just like, it was probably like the strongest pushback that I'd ever seen from Peter where he was like, no, like these things are like really hard to do. They only happen in these like special moments. I actually want to intentionally set like a very, very high bar on any internal company building, 'cause it's such huge opportunity cost relative to that person just continuing to do capital allocation, that it better be something that is really worth their while. And so in some ways, I feel like even that early interview question, or pushing on that conviction, was a preview of him eventually both obviously supporting Varda, but also pushing way, pushing back on Varda way more than an average investment that we would make, because he really wants to test your conviction, since you can be pretty damn valuable to the team as an investor.

On the note about Varda, obviously now it seems way more obvious to people because you guys have actually done it and brought the spacecraft up and down and synthesized things in space. But even now, I'm sure there's a ton of people who are skeptical. And so the people who are the smartest skeptics, who are maybe directionally correct, what are the things that you think are the most reasonable things that they're skeptical about but actually are wrong?

Hmm. I think that even the smartest people that were like skeptical of Varda, you know, sort of 5 years ago when we were first getting going, like almost all of them have like changed their opinion on it. And yeah, part of it is just like we've shown the economics of it, we've gone and produced it, customers are buying it. Like we found ways to monetize the business even beyond the in-space manufacturing around all of our DoD work. You know, as an example, like in the past quarter, we've closed both our largest commercial pharmaceutical deal our largest, you know, sort of DOD deal, and so in some ways, these objective proof points show that there was, you know, sort of correctness in the thesis. You know, probably the sort of critique that is still, you know, sort of most valid that, you know, I think about but have some pushback on is just like, this sort of like, why, you know, sort of us, you know, sort of thesis, or like, hey look, like SpaceX is obviously phenomenal at a variety of things, at some point if this sort of grows large enough, of, won't they start to do that? And they actually have like started to build vehicles that look a bit closer to the Varda vehicles relative to what they've built in the past. They have this program that got announced, or at least scooped or leaked by the Wall Street Journal, right? Called Starfall that is meant to do like, yeah, basically smaller, more reusable, fully autonomous, like reentry capsules that they're planning, I think, to fly the first one in like 2027 is what was leaked. So I think the critique is both, you know, sort of valid, something that we like think about. I also don't necessarily see it as like a true existential use of concern, in particular around like in-space pharmaceutical manufacturing. It's not as simple as just like build the capsule and then like, you know, sell that space to Merck. Like Merck does not buy space on capsules, right? The Mercks of the world like hand you drug product and they want to be handed back better drug product. And it turns out there's like 15 PhDs, you know, along that supply chain that are required to like basically make that happen from the upfront, like crystallization scientists, the process engineers to figure out what that process is, the people that make the bioreactors. You have to integrate those bioreactors in the capsule, et cetera. And by the way, a bunch of these steps all require FDA approval. It's just not a thing that I think any other company is gonna do for a very long time.

We were talking about personal brand building a bit a little while ago, and you were talking about the long-form essays. And one of the ones that I like that you wrote was the 30 Lessons at 30. And one of the things you put in there was, "Swallow your ego, it's good for you." And you were talking about how when you dropped out and became a Thiel Fellow, that sort of led to you feeling like you were on top of the world. Now that that's far behind you, what are you working on swallowing your ego towards?

Yeah, I think it's interesting having a sort of Twitter for such an extended period of time because you will put out these like, you know, sort of very strong opinions and theses about how the world is going to go, and I think there's some amount of swallowing of ego of recognizing, man, okay, there are times where like I do have these really first principle thought-through opinions like what the future of space looks like in these areas that I deeply care about and I'm somewhat maybe emotionless about, even though I am very positive towards them, but because I care so much about it, I spend a lot of time stripping all my biases so that I make sure that I'm really making the best decisions. One way that has played out even more recently, I guess, since the Thiel Fellowship days, but before the 30 essay, was when I was starting Varda, it was very clear to me that I was not going to be a great CEO of this type of any sort of company. Part of it was like from being CEO of like, you know, sort of first company and recognizing that I had certain behavioral traits that I'll articulate in a moment that I don't think are great for a CEO. But a part of it was like I just recognized that the CEO of this firm needed to be able to like pull together a bunch of really great aerospace engineers out of SpaceX. And like, I just didn't think that I had that, you know, sort of moral authority. But like the chairman, board member, investor type, like yeah, I can go into that sort of spiral, pick myself up out of it, but like, you know, nobody notices that I'm gone for a week. But like if the CEO disappears for a week, people definitely, you know, sort of notice. And so, I know my limitations and structure the roles and the ways that I interface in the world that allow me to lean into my strengths, but as much as possible mitigate the weaknesses that I have, rather than a probably earlier version of me would have been like, let me spend infinite effort on trying to fix these weaknesses. And it's like, look, man, everybody's got their weaknesses. You're not going to be able to fix them all and become some Ubermensch. Just instead focus on the things that you're great at.

Yeah. And I mean, and this might be the answer to the next question, because we're getting towards the end of my questions, so we open up to the team. But a question that we ask everyone that we have on the pod is, and maybe your answer will be this, and if not, then maybe you have another one, is the greatest hardship that you've ever faced and what did it teach you?

I do think I go back to this moment with the FAA where it was very difficult because it was like the most reputation I had on the line. We had raised whatever, $145 million, and so there was like investor capital that should have felt on the line. There were promises that we'd made. We were probably like a, I'd probably estimate like a 65, 70 person company, so all those people's livelihoods, like, you know, all of that sort of felt on the line, and again, there was like, not even a plan for a plan, right? You know, I wouldn't say it was like, the equivalent of like, I don't know, whatever, FDA investigating Theranos or something like that, where it's like, you know, that was like pure fraud, but it was like, approaching the level of like, there's just like, is not an obvious path within the regulatory framework that's given to us, right? Like, you know, in a way for us to, you know, sort of bring this back down. And the thing that I think I learned from that moment was, again, panicked for some period of time, and then probably like 4 or 5 days into it, I was like, in my first company when we had these existential crises, I would have those types of panics, and then I'd be like, well, screw this, I don't even like the idea that much, I don't even really wanna be working on this, why am I even bothering to pull myself out of this panic? I'm just gonna lean into the panic and then just like, yeah, screw it, just go be depressed, that's like kind of the fine outcome, easier to just do that rather than have to face this really difficult hardship. And I think I was kind of going that same thing, was like, ah, okay, like, I guess I remember this from last time. Like, I'm just gonna be depressed for a really long time. Like, that's gonna be my solution. This is not gonna solve the problem. And then like 4 days into it, I was like, what the hell am I doing? It's like my life's work. This is the thing that I care about. Like, I don't even know, like, you know, in theory, when the other thing failed, I like just went and found other things to work on. If this thing fails, I'm like, I don't know what else I'd work on. I've had one idea my entire life, and it's gonna be this. I just like go back and try this again. And so I'm like, well, if I'm gonna try it again, might as well just try it now. And so after 4 days, I was like Okay, well yeah, let's just get everybody fired that made this happen. And like, it took us a while, but like, yeah, eventually every single person that was involved in that decision to like ban Varda is now no longer working for the government. It took a while, but like, you know, that was, I think, that moment where it was like, it turns out it matters really caring about the thing that you work on, because in that existential crisis you'll pick yourself up and like do the radically, you know, sort of difficult thing, even if it takes, you know, it took us another 6 months after that to basically like get the capsule back, get those people all out of office, et cetera. But like, yeah, eventually, you know, sort of got there. Versus the first company, I just like wasn't willing to deal with the hardships. And so now it sets this filter on like anything else that you work on in the future, whether it's like personal, professional, etc. It's like, make sure that it's the thing that is like truly the life's work. Otherwise, in the hardships, you're not going to want to deal with the hardship, basically.

Last question I have, and then we'll open up to everyone, is if you're Delphi, could only pass one lesson on 100 years from now, what would you want it to be?

Treat the early parts of life as discovering, you know, sort of who you are and like what your your sort of best traits, habits, skill sets are, and unabashedly sort of lean into those rather than trying to follow a particular pattern or life path or I want to become, I always think about it, whether it's companies or people, when somebody says I want to build the Andrew of X, it's like you're immediately doomed, or it's like the moment you're like I want to become the, I don't know, the Elon of X, it's like you're also just immediately doomed. The only way you're gonna, you know, sort of become something is just to become yourself.

Rich, I love how on The Gift you play yourself as a waffle boy.

Oh yeah.

I start as a dishwasher in a mom restaurant and Rick here is serving it.

Like, you remember a moment as a waffle boy? Yeah, so, you know, the summer before I'd been like a professional programmer and like had like a great salary, etc., and I just like, I remember having this moment where I was like, I could clearly just do this for the rest of my life and it'd be very comfortable and like, you know, I would probably just have higher and higher salaries. And so I just like had this moment where I was like, but if I like never do just like a food service, like, you know, low income job, I'm just never gonna have like a deep empathy for like what I consider in some ways like actually sometimes the most difficult work where it's just like, doing that type of job is like not particularly, you know, sort of fun and it's actually in some ways I think a lot harder than the computer programming, you know, sort of job. And so, Yeah, I mean, plenty of, you know, sort of fun memories. You know, probably like the two or like one, the like owner of the shop would always critique me 'cause like, I just, I think I am a storyteller and a salesperson. And so I just loved when somebody would come in and I'd explain to them the whole history of like Belgium and the waffles and like how we make them, et cetera. And then he would sometimes have to come in and just be like, just sell the fucking waffle, man. Like you don't have to give them the whole spiel. Like there's a line behind them. Like we just need to like optimize like revenue throughput. And then the other time was like this like waffle shop was next to like this big park where we would do like farmer's market.. And like, I just like was not like, I, I'm skilled at a variety of things, but like when it's like you're just packed and nonstop with customers, et cetera. I just remember there was this moment where I was like trying to make as many waffles as fast as I could. And at some point the owner had to be like, just step away and go do the cash register thing. Cause like that's the easier job. And he was doing that, but he was like, you're clearly fucking up the waffles so badly that we're so far behind on this that like, I'm gonna go do the hard job and you're gonna do the easy job. And like a week later when I was like, hey, I think it's like, time for me to like just go back to school and just do that, et cetera. I was thinking about working on the side during the school year. He was like, you should just go back to school, like I think we're about to fire you anyway, so just go back. I was like, sounds great, sir, thanks for having me for the summer.

Alvin.

So as someone who likes to poke the bear, as you said, they typically advise people, you know, not burn bridges and in your early career try to like build as many relationships as you can. How would you advise whether that really matters at all in terms of where you are in your career and when you should be able to do that? I think the answer is somewhere in between where it's like, I also don't think you want to become somebody that is just purely a people pleaser and no matter who you're trying to connect with, interface with, work with, that they have a strictly positive opinion of you. It just means that at that point you don't have any core foundation or beliefs, etc., yourself. Like, if there is something that you strongly believe in the world, almost certainly you'll find somebody that hates that belief, right? And if you aren't willing to like, you know, sort of stand up for that in a personal, professional context, etc., it just means that you just like have no, you know, sort of spine by yourself. And so I don't think you want to be like, let's say, leaving a job without giving 2 weeks notice and burning that type of bridge per se. But I also don't think you need to think about your career as like, I should be able to network with everybody and everybody should like me. Like, if everybody likes you it probably means nobody actually likes you because there's nothing that you really stand for. And so, at least in my career, yeah, do I think that Benchmark is ever gonna hire me? No, I don't think they will, but I think there's a whole set of funds and LPs that really like me for the fact that I just consistently stand up for founders, even when they see me have to take these hits of, yes, it comes with these professional consequences. And so, yeah, at least I've taken the approach of just for the things I believe in, even if it comes with, yes, downsides, iterate those loudly. And I think it's important to actually have that, you know, sort of sets of beliefs and philosophies. And if you come up with your own belief system and then feel like, hey, this doesn't actually make anybody hate me, I think it's just like not an interesting enough belief system in some ways. Like, there should be people that hate you for your beliefs.

Sure. All right. Thank you, Dallian.

Cool, thanks for having me. Thanks for tuning in for personalized advice from Dallian Head to Delphi.ai and Ask His Digital Mind.