Defying Gravity: Manufacturing in Space | Delian Asparouhov #59

Welcome back to the present Fathers podcast. Our guest in this episode is Delian Esparahov. Delian has just recently become a father to his son, nicknamed Bronco. Love the nickname. But in this episode with Delian, we are going to dive into a little bit of his background, what he's done, founding companies, really on the cutting edge of space exploration. And we'll get into that in a second. But on top of that, his views as a newfound father and kind of the principles that he has in his life as well, that he learned from his family, he is the son of an immigrant family to America, and so he has a very unique perspective on what we enjoy here in the United States. And we cover a wide range of topics in this episode that I think you're going to find very interesting. So when we recorded this, I want to just give a little shout out to Delian's company, Varda. They had just made the first successful proof of concept, launching a pod into space to develop pharmaceuticals in zero gravity conditions and successfully landing it back here on planet Earth. So pretty incredible things that they are doing over there. Delian is vastly more intelligent than I am. In all seriousness, we really appreciated Delian's time, his outlook, and just vigor for being a new father. And his passion for life, I think, just seeps through this episode and it hopefully will make you feel very inspired and wherever you are in your life, the principles that he brings to the table are not based off of how smart he is or what he's done in business, but rather this drive to be the best that he can be with his gifts and what really drives him. And I think that's something that we all need to find for ourselves. And so I think that this episode is going to really motivate you to step into your roles in your life and really captivate what makes you you and drive forward. So in this episode, we're going to go into his background, being a father, starting his companies, exploring space and kind of that cutting edge there. And a little bit of debate about this movement called the anti natalist movement. But on top of that, Delian is just an outstanding guy, really exciting to listen to and to learn from. And we hope that you enjoy this episode. So without further ado, into the episode and please welcome to the present Fathers Podcast, Delian Asparahov. Delian Asparahov, welcome to the present Fathers podcast. Man, we are so pumped to have you here today and just to learn from your experience and all the things you have going on. So why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, your family, and all the things you're doing today in the world with some pretty exciting announcements as of last week.

Yeah, sure. So, yeah, brief life history. Was born in South Viet Bulgaria to two Eastern European immigrants. We moved out to the United States. My parents became grad students at Caltech. Ended up growing up middle school and high school, ultimately in Utah, where my mom became a professor and then went off to college at mit. Took like a hard left turn from academia. My parents are both PhD professors, so I thought that's where I was going to head. And then turns out I was just much more fascinated by the world of entrepreneurship. Silicon Valley just felt sort of much faster paced. Felt like you could have a lot more impact. And in particular in the world of sort of aerospace, which was my true lifelong passion is it felt like rather than going to MIT for undergrad, Caltech for grad school, then off to jpl, it felt like in some ways Silicon Valley was going to be taking over the aerospace industry. And so I needed to head out there instead. And so, yeah, dropped out of school after my sophomore year for the Thiel Fellowship for my first company. Nightingale is in the enterprise healthcare sort of autism space. And then ended up that company went okay, not great. We went through Y Combinator, got to ROM and profitability, but then ultimately ended up not sort of reaching true breakout success. And so ended up selling the company for a small amount to one of our clients. Then it was briefly the VP of growth at this company, sort of teespring in San Francisco for about a year or so and then sort of made a hard pivot and then ended up actually going into world of venture capital, originally working with Keith Ratboy very closely over at Coastal Ventures for about two years before shifting over to my current role over here at Founders Fund. And you know, part of that shift was ultimately, in some ways, you know, sort of through my first company realizing that I just really was more of a sort of investor ADD loved sort of bouncing all over the place than I was a sort of monomaniacal sort of founder. And so I realized I should lean into sort of my natural strengths. And that's how I was more likely to become top 1%, more so than I think being sort of a CEO founder, which I think is a very sort of different personality set. And so, yeah, I ended up joining Founders Fund about, gosh, I think it's been basically like, you know, five. Yeah, five years roughly now. And you know, throughout that time, you know, pretty Focused on sort of early stage investing sort of seed series. At both of my time in Coastal Ventures and Founders Fund. Some of my, let's say, like, you know, sort of breakout investments, call it top three are Ramp, where I did the seed round, Sword Health where I did effectively like the, you know, sort of large seed or small A. And then Hadrian also, you know, basically did the seed round. And throughout all that, you know, time was continuing to spend a lot of my, let's say, investing time in basically aerospace and defense because that had been such a lifelong passion. In particular, I had this one thesis in aerospace defense around basically the, in space manufacturing of high value goods and the return down to earth. And you can expand as to why it's been a particular passion. But I explored this sort of idea really seriously as an investment thesis in Q4 2019 when a Falcon 9 rocket basically launched and landed for the first time five times in a row. And, and so it felt like this type of business model finally made sense. Ultimately, after surveying the landscape for almost six months of like everybody basically working on this problem, came to the conclusion that they just all were not approaching it the right way. And so my only shot at seeing this vision become a reality was I just had to build it myself. And so thankfully at Founders Fund, you know, we are open to, you know, incubations and building companies, you know, internally. It's something that we've had a decent amount of success with with, you know, Palantir and Anduril being, you know, probably the two, two biggest examples. And so, you know, ultimately, you know, ended up realizing this was something that, you know, was well suited for me to incubate basically internally within, within the firm. So yeah, I started the company Varda Space Industries now about, you know, sort of three, three and a half years ago. And as you alluded to last week, after three and a half years, it was 1128 days from opening our office doors, we were able to successfully land our first ever, you know, sort of small scale commercial space factories. So, you know, pharmaceutical manufacturing and a variety of other types of products has been demonstrated on the International Space Station. But ultimately these are sort of government run human raid space stations where there's no, you know, viability for scale and the economics are totally out of whack given that you have humans on board. But we were able to show a sort of small scale autonomous satellite that could launch on a sort of Falcon 9 rideshare for a relatively cheap amount and could choose to reenter entirely on its own with was Possible to be done. We successfully re entered our first capsule last week and landed it in the Utah desert. And then I guess on family, I've been dating my now wife for actually basically exactly five years as well. I basically dated. We started dating right around when I joined Founders Fund. And then our first son, baby Brownie Sloth, call him Bronco for short, was born just late last year. And this is him.

So awesome, man. So just a whole lot to cover right there. A lot of things going on. So in addition to conquering space, you're also a brand new father. Just living the high life right now with those emotions rushing over you of having that. And it's just so awesome to see and we're going to get to that. I don't want to skip over everything, but I'm going to kick it over to Dustin to kind of dive in a little bit more to your background and we'll get to the fatherhood stuff here pretty quickly.

Yeah.

So Delian, how did you get in contact with Peter Thiel and how did the whole Thiel Fellowship come about? You were a sophomore, correct, when you decided to drop out of school and take the fellowship?

Yeah. So basically my freshman year summer, I ended up being a Android engineering intern at Square, which at the time was about, you know, maybe, you know, 120 people or so when I interviewed, you know, 200 by the time I joined and almost like 350 by the time I left. So it was just like undergoing this like crazy rocket ship growth period. And so that was in some ways what got me, you know, really hooked on the world of Silicon Valley. And then during that summer I ended up basically being roommates with a guy that was friends with the Thiel Fellow. And so they brought me to a couple of the like Teal Fellow sort of like marketing summer events. That was the first time that I learned about the program. The program effectively has an open application. And so that basically winter of my sophomore year, I ended up applying, applying for the program and ultimately got accepted. And I don't think even during that entire application process or anything, I never met Peter. I actually only met Peter after being awarded the sort of fellowship. So yeah, I was actually, I guess get in touch with Peter. I just happened to be roommates with a guy who was friends with the Teal Fellow. And that was one of the very early classes of Teal Fellows, because that was like the third class of Teal Fellows. So this person was obviously in the sort of first or second class of Teal Fellows. But yeah, that was in some ways what gave me the resources. Because coming from a relatively middle class family, it's not like there was sort of infinite trust fund or anything like that that would allow me to afford the dropout life in San Francisco to work on the company. And I hadn't really raised any capital yet. And so in some ways the Thiel Fellowship was the only thing that really allowed me that opportunity.

Yeah. Serendipity question, Delian. So you mentioned earlier that you kind of realized about yourself, your personality, that you weren't necessarily the. The CEO founder type and wanted to kind of jump around. What lessons did you learn through all this? You know, kind of playing your hand at a lot of different things that you think other men maybe struggle to realize. Because I think a lot of guys are looking for their purpose or their calling. Right. And so.

Yeah, hand them off, I think.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Wouldn't be a. Wouldn't be a father's podcast without the baby.

I'm glad we got to meet Bronco. That's so cool.

Yeah, exactly.

Best nickname ever.

Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, I think if there's a sort of lesson to be learned, I think it's just early on in life, I really believe in this book. It's called, I think Breadth is it called. And I'm forgetting the author, but he sort of talks about how that you typically will tend to see two different types of careers in the hyper, hyper successful. You'll see that Tiger woods is of the world that just like he knew he was going to be a golfer from age five. Right. He was golfing at a phenomenal level from like a very early age. And yes, there are some of those, but there's typically actually do tend to be in these like narrow physical disciplines or narrow artistic disciplines. Right. You know, piano, et cetera. But then a significant and much larger percentage of the most successful people in the world tend to follow this archetype that is more of like extreme breadth, basically early on in their career where, you know, they try, you know, 5, 10, 15 different sort of types of activities, et cetera, and they use that time to effectively explore what comes most naturally to them and then end up doubling down on the activity that they just felt came most naturally. Because that's the thing that by default is going to feel the least like work and by default the thing that you're really sort of going to be best at. And so I think my lesson learned over the course of my first year, sort of five or six years in Silicon Valley was I clearly just Gravitated towards investing in a variety of different ways. Even from very earliest days when I was at sophomore at MIT before dropping out, I actually was in the like founding partnership classes at this thing called Rough Draft Ventures, which is basically this like student run venture capital firm. We would take pitches from other students, we would actually fund them with, you know, very small checks, like five, $10,000. And I just enjoy, I really, you know, love that process. Then after building my first company or even during it, I spent a lot of time during every single, basically we had been a part of y combinator summer 14 class. I would spend a lot of time in every future Y Combinator class, basically helping prep the future applicants with mock interviews. And I love going through that and having people, you know, basically, you know, coaching other founders and basically like how to pitch their business. And so in some ways, you know, if there was a lesson learned, it's you know, see, you know, find that, you know, spark or the thing that basically feels like isn't work, but obviously is a professional thing or doesn't necessarily even have to be professional. Anything that really just, you know, sort of comes to you most naturally and really lean into that because you know, ultimately that thing that comes naturally to you is the thing you're going to be able to most likely be top 1% at. And it's much more important to be top 1% in your field, more so than what particular field you're working on. And so yeah, I think I did a decent job on picking up on those signals and then leaning into it and having that realization that hey, I'd had this life path where I was like, I want to be founder, CEO, I want to be founder, CEO. And it sort of turns out that's not what I'm best suited for. And so I'm glad that I leaned into the thing that I'm currently doing, which is the sort of like founder, CEO, confidant, mentor, therapist, whatever you want to call the job of sort of vc. And in some ways that's my chairman job at Unit Varda. I have one direct report. I'm not the person that's responsible for managing the company or the morale or anything like that. Day to day. I do the investor job just really, really in depth. And then obviously the rest of my founders fund role is just more traditional venture capital investor role.

Yeah. Last quick question. Did you have any significant pushback from your parents when you decided, hey, no, I don't want to go the PhD route? And I think that's also something a Lot of younger men experience is. Right. A lot of these familial pressures or societal pressures. And like, in the same vein of trying to find what your passion is and where you have, you know, natural talent towards, you know, what would your advice be to people maybe dealing with that, to kind of push forward and get through that?

Yeah, you know, my parents are definitely, you know, quite unhappy with the path that I was choosing to take. Right. They'd taken a lot of risk in their life to basically escape from the, you know, collapse of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, make it out to California, study there. You sort of build up a like, you know, sort of, you know, middle class, you know, sort of American dream. And, you know, to them, it almost certainly felt like I was basically throwing away all that promise. I'd gotten into one of the most, you know, sort of, you know, prestigious institutions in the world and ultimately was obviously deciding to proactively, you know, leave that. They found it to be sort of quite ludicrous. And so, you know, they tried to convince me, you know, by, you know, calling me and talking to me about it. They, you know, my mom even ultimately convinced me. My sister at the time, who was probably 4 or 5 years old at the time, had her pen, a handwritten letter basically about how if mom and dad passed away, how she would be left to the streets because I wouldn't have a degree and I wouldn't be able to basically take care of my siblings in that outcome. And so, yeah, they basically pulled on every single possible emotional heartstring. But I think ultimately in some ways, I think I just at that point was not somebody. I was not somebody that I think looked to my parents for approval even very early on in life, like even, you know, call from age 14 onwards. So, you know, I'm not sure there was really anything that they could have, you know, done at age 19 that would have convinced me to change my life path according to their feedback. So. But I do empathize with people that maybe have a different relationship with their parents. I've definitely, you know, had like interns at IFF or people that I've worked with that like, even at age 20, 21, 22, still seem to seek their sort of parents guidance versus we think, you know, maybe too personal. But in some ways, my parents getting divorced at 16 and seeing that all blow up probably made me think like, maybe these guys don't quite have the whole world, you know, fully figured out. And so I kind of got to figure this out myself.

So Delian, as an immigrant what do you see differently about America? That we were all born in this country. We kind of have this idea of what America is. And I see so many of my friends and colleagues who have this entitlement of, oh, America is a certain way. How do you see America differently than some people do who might have a negative view of it? Because we were born here and we just expect things to be the way they are.

Yeah, I mean, look, I was born in a country that was sort of truly in free fall, collapse. Right after the Soviet Union fell, all the Eastern bloc countries just had a huge come to Jesus moment where it was a question of what was the political system of the future, what was the economic outlook of the future for these types of countries. It was truly undefined and mostly largely fell into chaos for many years before the establishment of, let's say, a lot of these countries running the European Union and really, you know, sort of westernized and capitalistic. And so my parents, you know, really fought and clawed their way, you know, into the United States effectively through academia and through, you know, extremely hard work. And even as a, you know, sort of kid, I would, you know, be sent back to, you know, Bulgaria basically every single summer to my, you know, grandparents farm, which is truly, you know, in the middle of nowhere. I mean, this is, you know, a farm that is, you know, 20 minutes outside of a tier three city in a, like, second world or maybe even, you know, in theory, you know, when I was born, but it was like third world world country, right? There were, you know, when I was, you know, sort of five, six, seven years old going back there, the, like, primary mode of transport for a significant portion of the village was still at donkeys. Right? And so you go from like, you know, that during the summer where it's true, like, you know, farmland and, you know, sort of very small town. I think the city that we were nearby was maybe like, you know, sort of 50,000, you know, sort of people and was entirely filled with these, like, you know, Soviet style, you know, apartment blocks, huge cement, nothing beautiful, you know, basically about it. And then you'd go to, like, downtown Los Angeles, you know, and, you know, for the rest of the year, which obviously had a very different quality of life, infrastructure, technology, et cetera. And so I think in some ways, the thing that I always keep in mind is just how special of a place America is and how the rest of the world is very much so not like America. And if anything is constantly doing its best to try to be like America, but fails to do so Right. You know, in some ways I would argue, you know, the flip that's happened since my childhood is at least Western Europe when I was a child was viewed as being like a near peer to America and was potentially like an alternative. Over the course of the last 20 years, you know, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, etc. Have effectively slipped backwards towards, you know, being, you know, sort of completely sort of plateaued countries. And effectively, you know, I'd argue at this point, you know, second world, these people don't have consistent access to, you know, air conditioning or nearly the level of wealth that we do in the United States. And you know, you can see them regulating themselves to death while Eastern Europe at least, you know, is feeling like a little bit more capitalistic, less regulated and a little bit, you know, you know, still, you know, sort of more hungry and you know, engineering and tech focused. But anyways, point being, I think the thing that I see about America is like the, the, you know, the life that we experience, the you know, just continuous growth of wealth and prosperity and technology is just not a given. And I think in the United States it's very easy when we've had effectively Since World War II, a just like never ending bull run of prosperity, wealth and technology. And I think people just assume that this is like the default state of the world. And as somebody who's experienced very different default states of worlds, that is not the case. And so I always get very sort of frustrated when people in America, for some reason it's like, it's always sort of paradoxical to me and it's explainable of course, but it's so paradoxical to me that in Bulgaria, where we've been ravaged by socialism, we are so desperate to be as capitalistic and as American and tech focused as possible. And yet if you look at the capital of in America, that is the most supposedly tech forward, capitalistic, et cetera, San Francisco. It's where they're embracing the most backwards socialistic sort of type policies. And it's because in some ways they're so well off and they have so much sort of going for them, they can even afford to be this type of socialistic. And so I think, yeah, it's like these like luxury ideas that you know, you, you, we can, you know, embrace 10% of socialism only because we're doing so well. But if you ever get to the point where you actually, you know, allow yourself to embrace, you know, socialism to the extent that it becomes 90% of your ideals, then you go the way of Argentina, where It's, you know, in the 1920s, it was a, you know, sort of global superpower and now is effectively a rounding error geopolitically. And so, yeah, I think I just. I have this, you know, sort of love of the, like, diamond that is America that, you know, feels like, you know, it just requires constant polishing. And I think Americans just believe that diamond is just, you know, there indefinitely.

So contrast Miami to San Francisco for me. What made you move to Miami? What made you decide, okay, Florida's the way to go? I can't take. I know your viral tweet where you have that interaction with Mayor Suarez where you said, hey, guys, let's move Silicon Valley to Miami. And he immediately responded, how can I help? And people lost their minds.

Right.

It was crazy. So was it that or was there another moment where you decided, I can't take California anymore?

Yeah, look, I always want to sort of caveat this comparison, especially in the year 2024 where we've seen this play out. Where to be clear, San Francisco is still clearly the center of technology in the world. All of AI is sort of burgeoning. There's. I just don't think it's necessarily the model city of the future. And I do think that Miami and other ecosystems have the real potential to unseat San Francisco over the course of the next decade, much more so than the prior two decades. I think if you look at the size of the LA New York ecosystems, those paled in comparison to the size of San Francisco called pre2018 versus now, they are starting to become closer and closer to, you know, sort of potential peers. I think for me, there's a couple different moments that, you know, sort of really broke. The first was, you know, effectively, you know, the day of that tweet where I had been either really heads down and grinding on Varda, and I can't claim that I'm somebody that is hyper social, but also, you know, the level of isolation that one felt during, you know, Covid in San Francisco is, you know, pretty extreme. And thankfully, in San Francisco, in the, like, you know, I think like, maybe September, October timeframe, 2020, the city ultimately decided to open up outdoor dining. A lot of the local restaurants near my house invested a ton into the infrastructure around outdoor seating, lighting, heating, et cetera. And so it was finally, at least this, like, somewhat relief of, okay, I, like, am grinding all day and I go into the office, because I was somebody who went into the office starting May 1, 2020, because I just can't work from Home. And at least now, finally I have some relief where rather than just going home and sitting in my apartment, I at least now can go out to dinner with my then girlfriend, now wife, and at least have some level of like, you know, you know, sort of break from, you know, work. And it was roughly, you know, whatever that date of the tweet is. December 10th, 11th year 2020. San Francisco decides to shut down outdoor dining because they wanted to limit the spread of COVID And to me, it was just like this just completely insane maneuver where at this point there was so much abundant and clear scientific evidence that this was not a virus that spread in the outdoors. San Francisco's case count was still extremely low, and I thought it was a huge overreaction. And, and it was just demolishing these local businesses that had invested tens of thousands of dollars into this type of outdoor seating. It was completely unnecessary. You're basically shutting these people's revenue stream off overnight and removing the income of their entire employee base. And so I just had this moment where literally the day that I basically saw that announcement, I was just sitting there and my sort of former partner and mentor, Keith Rabboy had moved to Miami about a month and a half, two months prior to. And I had this moment where I was like, you know what? I disagreed with him a lot over the prior two months because I thought what he was doing was crazy. But at this point I was like, you know what? Fuck it. Maybe he's right. These people are just so crazy in the local government here. Maybe we really do need to move Silicon Valley to Miami. And so it was sort of this pithy sarcastic tweet in some ways, where like the prior two months I've been critiquing Miami. And then obviously someone on a dime sort of flipped on it and said, hey, maybe we should move the whole ecosystem there. At the time, I still wasn't actually able to go visit Miami and really see it from this professional lens, because up until then, I'd only visited for bachelor parties, like weekend trips type thing. But after our first board meeting at varda, after our Q1, I basically decided, hey, now's the time where I can afford to go check out the ecosystem, go work from the Founders Fund office out there. And I remember I arrived on a Sunday evening to Miami. Monday morning I have this Cafecito, basically interview with the mayor of Miami, variant Suarez. And the first question he asked me in the cafecito is like, hey, when are you moving here? You can go look up the interview at the time you can say, hey, look, I have my office in San Francisco. I've got this company that I just started in la. It'd be really hard for me to drag myself off of the West Coast. And then literally over the course of the week, basically flipped my entire mind on it, where I just found that I was so much happier, I was so much more productive. There was sunlight, the food was more Mediterranean, which felt better fit for me. And so by the end of the week, I was like, what the hell am I doing? I felt like I'd basically unlocked myself from the Stockholm syndrome, where I was just like, I don't actually need to be in San Francisco. None of my investments are in San Francisco. Founders Fund has an office out here. I'm happier, I'm more productive here. I work harder. I'm going to be fitter here because I'm going to spend more time outdoors doing activities. It's just like, I can find no justification for why I actually need to be in San Francisco. And the Varda thing, I can manage by just right. Rather than doing a day, a week from San Francisco flying down, I can just do a week, a month, and it actually ends up being more time than what I was spending before. And so it's totally viable to do everything now. I hadn't yet discussed it with my girlfriend at the time. She'd actually taken a somewhat parallel trip that week, where on Wednesday she actually went off to Disney World with a bunch of her friends that had moved from San Francisco to Miami. And so Friday night, we meet up for dinner. We basically haven't spoken to each other for the past three or four days. And one of our mutual friends basically turns to us and is like, so you guys had such a great time. When are you guys moving here? And my girlfriend and I, without discussing it, no type of agreeing upon anything before, literally just look at each other and then within two seconds of making eye contact, we just nod and we're like, we're going to move here this weekend. And like, that was it. That was the extent of the discussion in the family. And then basically by Sunday, you know, that was like, Friday night, by Sunday morning, we had an offer on a house. And by, you know, Monday morning, we had closed on the house and, you know, basically flew back to San Francisco. And all my friends in San Francisco were like, what just happened? Like, you told me before you left, there's no chance that you moved. You have come back and you've bought a house already. But, you know, I think I'm somebody that just, like, you know, when I. When I come to a conclusion, I have high conviction in that conclusion. I think you can, like, debate these things indefinitely, but then you just live less of life. Right. Like, I think, you know, I have friends that sometimes will go out, you know, on the market to look for a house for four months, six months, eight months, and at some point, like, you're stuck in this intermediate zone where you're not actually living that future version of your life. And so you're actually just, like, losing, you know, very valuable time versus, you know, my, you know, sort of general belief is, like, most decisions that you make are. There's very rarely irreversible decisions you actually sort of make. And so this is one where it's like, look, if I really hate this and I regret the decision in six months, I can always choose to, you know, go back, but I would prefer to at least give this the real shot and try it. And that way I start to get to enjoy this today rather than six months of, oh, maybe I'm debating it from San Francisco, or I'm spending part time in Miami or things like that. Let's do that. Just go in with high conviction, and now, three years later, feel quite confident with that bet. Both financially exiting public tech stocks and buying into Miami real estate at the time was very strong. And then on a personal level, I've never been happier, more productive. I spent way more hours in the office and working in Miami than I ever did. Texas gap.

That's great. Yeah. I just want to really hone in on what you said there. Having a high conviction about making a decision, you know, that. I think that's where a lot of men get stuck today, especially when we talk about being a father, head of your household. Right. You just need to make a decision and go with it. Right. And you're going to make mistakes. But it's almost always the better answer to just make a choice and commit to it and give it 100% effort than it is to sit there and weigh all your options for weeks and weeks and weeks, and then nothing's happening. And now stress is building, and I think we back ourselves into a corner often because of that exact kind of phenomenon. And oftentimes just having some conviction and making a call and going with it is going to turn out pretty well for you, at least in my own experience, too. That's what I've experienced. But I know Justin had a comment, too. I want to let him jump in here.

Oh, yeah. It was just kind of Offhanded, he.

Was talking about moving to Florida and the Gulf coast in general. Anywhere in the south is just so great because the lifestyle is so much slower. And I say that as like a family atmosphere. You were talking about how different cities are and you know, cities are hard to get around in and you takes an hour to get from Miami to Miami, you know, as a joke. But that being said, it's.

Would you say that that is more.

Conducive down here than the lifestyle you.

Had over in California? Yeah. I mean, for it's worth, I think I'm somebody that likes to sort of talk fast, work fast, do business, user fast. I wouldn't say that. Like, I feel like my life in Miami is any slower per se, but I do think there is just like more sort of safety and more acceptance of families here. When I walk around, I think there was this run that I went on maybe like two weeks ago. It was like this sort of five mile route. And I just realized that for the first block or two, I was like, whoa. I encountered four babies in the first block just in my neighborhood. I was like, I'm just going to start counting. What else are we going to do in this run? Literally over the course of a five mile run from here basically down to the Venetian Islands and back, I basically end up counting 46 babies. And when I consider babies, this is like, you know, something like, you know, a baby that's in a stroller, it's got to be like under a year old. So there's a lot of other kids, but just specifically babies, they were, you know, 46. And that's just like not something that I think you see in most cities. Like, sure. You know, people point out to me, okay, there might be like Noe Valley in San Francisco or like, you know, particular neighborhoods in Brooklyn, but like, I'm not like cherry picking neighborhoods in Miami. Like, I ran five miles. This was through like, you know, residential areas, urban areas, office areas. Like, this was not like some cherry picking of like, this is only where families are. It's actually just that like families are all over sort of the city. And then there's just like, there's no need for like thinking about safety. Like, I was reminded of this recently. So, you know, one of my wife's close friends ended up deciding to go visit San Francisco for a couple of weeks. And she was staring in this Airbnb and I think like a week or so in, she ended up like, you know, getting footage from like the nest cam, basically like this guy coming up and like trying to light like the like, you know, bush that they had in front of the house on fire and then trying to light the house on fire. And the Airbnb like host response was like, oh, that's just like the neighborhood arsonist, you know, call the cops that they know that he like, you know, try to do this again. And to me, the idea that like the phrase neighborhood arsonist is even like a thing that like, is in somebody's vocabulary.

Like, how is there a tolerate him? You know, no big deal.

He's just in the neighborhood and he likes to light things on fire. I guess that's just like not something that I think about here. You know, in my last year in San Francisco, I think it was my house got broken into the prior, call it like two, two and a half years. My house got broken into twice. My car got broken into something like seven times. At some point, it's just like you're accepting that this is just a part of your sort of day to day life. And it's something that I just like, I don't have to think about here. Like, there are nonstop police that have their presence all over the city, no matter where I am, anytime that like, you know, I've never even had to call 911. But I just know that if I would have to, I just know that there would be immediate, like, police presence, it would be taken very seriously, the person would be put into custody. And it's just like, it's crazy to me that we like, you know, provide this compassion to the criminals. And it turns out what that actually turns into is cruelty for the innocent. And it's just like, you know, crazy that it just like just continues to be the case. And it's not like it's like changing either. It's like San Francisco has been like this now for like a decade. And at some point, it's like you have at some point accepted like, oh, there's people that talk about we're going to change this. There's going to be like, transport this. We're starting these political parties at some point, like a desperate decade in. I think you just have to accept this is ultimately like what our values are. This is the like, city that we're trying to ultimately build. And that's just like not something that I want to like, raise a child within. That is not something that I think is like, appropriate, you know, values. It's not something that we would tolerate in Bulgaria. And so it's crazy to me that we would tolerate it in what's supposed to be, like, the techno utopian capital of the world. So, you know, I think it's partially why I do see sort of Miami as this alternative vision where it's like, look, yes, OpenAI and a lot of these AI companies are, like, starting in San Francisco. But when I think about, like, where it has the potential over the next decade, Miami has safety, it has rule of law. It has a willingness to actually, like, you know, build housing. It has a vast influx of VC founders and companies that are growing from this ecosystem and rapidly scaling up. I see those as, like, the much more critical ingredients, more so than, like, where is some of the incumbent technology, you know, you know, today? And so while they have a sort of beat for the next couple years, I'm not sure that they'll necessarily have a speed for the next decade.

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Well, speaking about the cities, especially Miami, and seeing a bunch of babies around, and I think you becoming a father recently, I think it's really awakened something in you, most specifically about, you know, like, your strong stance of having more babies. Can we. Can we jump into that for a second?

Yeah.

You know, it's crazy to me. There is this sort of, like, you know, moral perversion in, you know, San Francisco and sort of broader the United States that, like, you know, believes in anything other than, you know, children being the most important thing on the planet. Like, ultimately, you know, your fundamental job as DNA is to replicate yourself. And as humans, we basically only have one way of doing that. And so, yeah, it's funny, this particular tweet that you're, you know, pulling up, I had probably drafted that tweet in my head, like, five years earlier. You Know what I mean? Where it's like I knew exactly the poem that I needed to use and I knew exactly what I wanted to say, you know, sort of the day that my first child was born. Yeah, it's so funny seeing how small his feet are, you know, look at that photo.

I'm going to read it real quick just for those listening.

Go for it.

Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Welcome to planet Earth, my son. I have much to tell you. And it's a picture of Delian holding his brand new baby son's foot. That's also Dylan Thomas, who is an incredible author who died around 40. Very, very good writer.

He's a phenomenal. Yeah, phenomenal writer. Yeah. I mean, in some ways it's just like, you know, that is like so many people obviously talk about this, you know, Elon on down, but just like consciousness is such a sort of rare spark to have in the universe, right? Where the first time that the universe is able to turn its eye back on itself and you sort of say hello. And our only duty, it feels like in some ways is to spread that rare, rare spark in a very, very dark universe as widely as possible. And ultimately children are really the only way sort of doing that. And, you know, in some ways I also, you know, you're pulling up a couple tweets that, you know, are in reference to, like, your sort of American patriotic duty. I just, you know, America is the greatest country on the planet. I love my heritage in Bulgaria. It's similar that I always have a connection to. But America fundamentally is the greatest country on the planet. And it feels like one of my most patriotic duties as an American is to make more Americans. Like, I always talk about, like, I want there to be, you know, sort of a billion, a trillion Americans one day spread out through all the universe. And it's in some ways, again, what is amazing about America is it's one of the only, you know, basically is the only country that is predicated not out of your, like, ethnicity, genetic background or anything like that, is predicated out of a set of ideals that to me are universal sort of human truths and human ideals that are the best ideal to be spread throughout the entire, you know, sort of universe. I sometimes, you know, I've tweeted this a handful of times where, you know, part of why I wake up every single day motivated to work on what I work on is I want the primary language spoken on the Moon to be English, not Mandarin. And it has nothing to do with those cultures or those languages. It ultimately has to do with the values of the systems that they represent. And it is, we are in a world right now where, you know, sort of the, the percentage of people living under democracy has only declined over the past decade. We had like a, you know, sort of 30, 40 year run where it was increasing, and now for the past decade, it has only been decreasing. And it feels like in some ways creating more Americans is the best way to ensure that the language that's spoken on the moon is English. What better way of beating China as their population is declining right now for the first time in 15 years than to have our population continue to increase? And yet, if you look at all these trends really about them up, how frequently people are getting married, how frequently they're having children, it's all headed in the wrong direction. And so look, on a personal level, always really wanted to have children because Bulgarian culture is very pro family. I grew up with a family where I was one of three, but also all of, of my sort of uncles and aunts all had lots of kids. And so ultimately felt like I wanted to do that on a very personal familial level, but also felt like in some ways it was the sort of citizen of the universe and citizen of the United States duty for me to do so. It's obviously really excited. We have our first son. Very much so look forward to hopefully having many healthy and beautiful children in the future.

Yeah, I just want to kind of walk through this graph real quick too, because this ties in directly to what you were just speaking there. It's a graph of US fertility rates since 1957. It's number of births per 1000 women ages 15 to 44. And there was a huge dip prior to 1940. It went way back up, kind of the baby boomer generation right up to 1957. And since that point, I mean, it has completely come down. It is drastically lower, like half as much now than it used to be. So you're not being hyperbolic when you say that it's an alarming trend. What, what do you think is really contributing to that? Is it these luxury ideas? Is it other pressures? You know, and then I guess what do we do about it other than just having more babies? But like, how do we influence our, our communities and spheres of influence to kind of adopt, you know, what you're calling a patriotic duty to, to make more Americans?

Yeah, you know, I think my, like the rough thesis on this as to why you're seeing this graph is I think below a certain level of wealth, really the only way to have a meaningful life is to have children. And in some ways you can see this in the United States, right? If you look at actually like the sort of TFR curve in the United States, it's basically a U shape, right? Very low income households have tons of kids, Very high income households have tons of kids. And I think that's sort of the story if you apply it across all society, where basically in some ways the issue over the past like 40 years, since 1957, is that Americans have gotten richer. And they've gotten richer such that they can actually now have a pretty meaningful life without children, where you can go travel world, you can live in New York and get drunk and do cocaine every night if you want to. Those were not luxuries that were available to the Average American in 1955 versus the average American in 1995 is able to do so. But at some level there's these very short term hedonistic and not truly meaningful beliefs. And obviously in some ways that's exemplified by that U shaped fertility curve where some level of wealth, when you have access to that anytime you want, however you want, people clearly revert back to the lower sort of income belief of actually the only meaningful life that one can have is one filled with children. And so in some ways I think the answer to this problem is actually just Americans becoming wealthier and wealthier so that more and more people live on the highest upper end of that U curve. And I think that ultimately is actually probably the fastest way of sort of fixing tfr. And I feel this very practically, I feel very grateful and fortunate. A part of it is honestly living in Miami just cost of a lot. Living here is cheaper, there's no income tax. You know, my house I actually own and I pay a very low sort of mortgage. But because of all these things and my professional success, I am able to afford some level of professional help. And I do think it's something that now that I've had it, I feel so fortunate to have had it. And I just so desperately want there to be a way where more Americans can ultimately access that sort of type of, type of help. I think there's just a huge benefit to, you know, for people that don't necessarily sort of have family around children, in my opinion, were not meant to be raised by mom plus dad inside of a, you know, sort of glass cubicle inside of a skyscraper. That is a, honestly, a pretty difficult Life. There's a reason why, you know, it is called, you know, it Takes a Village to raise a Kid. It's because people really had the full sort of village of family around them in today's modern American lifestyle. Okay, I bet people move away and they might not be, you know, sort of close to family, but can you find sort of proxy sort of alternatives for that? That is, you know, sort of these, you know, professional baby nurses, nannies, you know, et cetera. It just, you know, having somebody around, it has just, like, you know, dealt with babies is so nice because it just teaches you how to be a better parent more quickly. Like, I just feel like because I've learned so much from her, I'm able to so much more intuitively pick up on my baby signals. Much more so than without her. Because in the first, you know, month, few months of his life, I would just ask, hey, I can't quite figure out why he's crying. Why does he feel this way? It should be able to immediately really read it. And when you have that type of professional, it makes you, I think, a much sort of better parent. And so, yeah, yeah. I mean, in some ways, I think my answer to solving the TFR issue is like, I'm not sure that it's going to come across, you know, maybe like, you know, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce having a kid, you know, help some of them. But I'm not sure that it, like, gets solved via culture. It feels like something that is, like, truly fundamental, where, again, it's like, when you're poor, you have lots of kids because that's your only, you know, way of having a meaningful life because you can't afford to go to, you know, Disney World or, you know, go to New York and do drugs. When you're medium rich, you can go do the crazy millennial sort of lifestyle and not having children, but when you become super rich, people again revert back. And so what better way of making Americans have lots of kids than just making it so that there's more and more super rich Americans? And ideally, every American is super rich because we all have Tesla Optimus Primes wandering around our house doing all our laundry and all our chores for us. I love it.

I wanted to just echo real quick before Dustin's got a question teed up for you. But, you know, you were speaking there around having the help, right? And what that also takes is humility. And I think oftentimes when we become new dads there, there's. I don't even know if it's pride. It's almost like we have this false sense of like we have to have it all figured out and it's just not true. You don't nothing in life you're just naturally good at, right? Like Michael Jordan was good at basketball. Like, okay, top 0.01% of people for US average people, right? You have to just work and work and work and get better at something. But having coaches and trainers and mentors is. You do it everywhere. So why not with fatherhood? And that's such a great example. Like even me, I was still active duty at the time when our daughter was born. I wish someone would have beat me over the head and say, like, hey man, like hire a nanny or something. Just whatever you got to cut from your budget to make that a possibility, find a way to do it. Because I'm certain we would have done way better. I would have learned a lot more. I would have learned a lot of these things like empathy and how to care for the baby better. So I just really want to drive that point home because you're obviously with a guy with a lot of means and a lot of ideas and everything. I think a lot of people may miss that point that you just said there that you had the humility to, despite all the things you have to say, no, I need help. And I think that that's huge, especially for newer dads.

And I can just be so much more present with him, right. If I'm not totally panicking and not understanding his signals when he is happy. I don't have all that latent sort of prior sort of stress on me so that I can be so much more present during our tummy time and smiling and reading books to him, et cetera. And so in some ways it both mitigates the downsides, but then also I think massively increases the upside of the way that you interact with your kid. The other way that I sometimes describe it is the difference between having a third person around and taking care of the kid 33% of the time relative to 50% of the time is not like a small increase in work. It's actually like a 10x basically difference in work. And you know, I encourage more parents to think about how do you make it so that you're there 33% of the time responsible for 33% of the care.

Yeah, it takes a village. It really does. And for people most of us can't afford, you know, full time live in help. But we have grandparents, we have uncles, we have other people. And for Me, I took a slightly lower paying job in Florida because my family was here. And so I have my mom, I have my in laws and all that. And so I was able to harness my network to get a similar experience that you had. And it made all the difference. I had no clue. I was an only child, didn't know anything about kids and my mom taught me a lot, my in laws, all of that. So I was able to use their knowledge to become a better father. So you're absolutely right about that. So as a Bulgarian, are there any special customs or interesting aspects around family and fatherhood that you uniquely have? Is there anything that you're excited to teach your son? Like, hey, this is our customs and our culture. Here's how we're going to do a special celebration or anything interesting like that that we can learn from you?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I, I love our traditions basically around, you know, sort of Christmas and New Year's, which mostly you sort of come down to like, you know, the food that we make is just a very traditional sort of Bulgarian food. The, the funny thing in some ways about Bulgarian food is there is no high end Bulgarian food. Bulgarians are peasants. And so the only food is basically peasant food. But we were peasants, let's say for a thousand years. But I still, I still really enjoy it because it's just like, yeah, it just carries, you know, a lot of, you know, sort of history and tradition for me and my family. And yeah, you know, there's holidays like Easter where we have our own, you know, sort of Bulgarian Easter and traditions. We do that. It also typically lands on a different date than the other. Those are maybe like the superficial things that we'll do while we're here. And then I think the more sort of very practical thing is similar to how my parents afforded me the benefit of spending most of my summers in Bulgaria, not at fancy summer camps or anything like that, but just on my grandparents farm. I hope to be able to offer my child that equivalent where I want them to experience the amazing culture of America and of Miami for their schooling in the vast majority of the year. But I also think it's really important to offer them alternative view of the world of, you know, here's how the other half basically like lives and you should get accustomed to that and actually like spend a significant amount of time there, not just like a week or two, but like months on end to see like, you know, truly becomes, you know, where your home is. And so I feel like that's like probably the thing that I think about the most is just like the language and, you know, sort of spending a lot of time there, you know, with him. And so, yeah, look forward to this summer taking him there for the first time and I don't know, we'll see hopefully for at least a full month. Maybe I can even convince the grandparents to, you know, take him for a little bit longer while I head back to the States. I love that. Nice.

Justin, you had a question for Delian?

Yeah. So I'm curious what your genuine thoughts are about anti nihilists and do you think that the wealthy lifestyles are causing them to live selfishly and not actually.

Have a meaningful life, you mean? Yeah, yeah, I think you meant antinatalist, not anti nihilists. But yeah, I think ultimately does come down to what, you know, in some ways, like, you know, what, you know, life paths are, you know, available to them. Right. And I think for, yeah, much, you know, larger proportion of, you know, American households, there is this, you know, as they call it, the dink, you know, dual income, no kids, you know, sort of household alternative that again, you know, is this very hedonistic, short term, you know, sort of treadmill. I don't think that those households are going to be particularly happy when they're on their deathbed or, you know, when they're in their 70s. But because they are wealthier today rather than just sitting in an empty home in the 1960s and probably not having that much to do, they can travel, they can be on TikTok all day, they can go to their fancy little oyster bars and it can provide for short term, hedonistic, meaningful life. But yeah, I tend to find that entire life philosophy to be deeply morally perverted, especially in a day and age where they are so much wealthier than anybody was in the 1950s. They could very easily afford to, you know, have children. And yet they choose this very alternative lifestyle. I see it as a sort of like, you know, I don't know, cultural cancer that, you know, thankfully in some ways Darwinistically, you know, dies away every generation.

Yeah, they literally breed themselves out or fail to breed themselves into.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so speaking of the future, I love thinking about this. My son is 4 and I think he's going to live a very different life than I did. Looking into the future, your son is brand new. You're 30. So in 30 years you'll be 60, he'll be 30. How will his childhood be different than yours? Do you think he'll have a personal robot? Do you think he has the chance to go to space? What kind of interesting differences do you think he'll have than you did?

A couple. I think the first is I'm very glad that my son happened to be born basically post iPad generation, right? If I was like a, you know, sort of decade older and had him a decade younger, I think it was still unknown what the effects were of this, these screens, social media, etc. I think this stuff can really, really, really sort of harm young children, so young adults. And so, you know, in some ways I hope that I can offer him the same level of access to technology that roughly, you know, I had, which is, you know, I had a brick Nokia phone up until, you know, from like, you know, whatever fifth through ninth grade that, you know, you could play Snake on it and I could like text my parents. That was basically about it. I'm not sure that I really want to afford my child much more than that when he's out of the house. And then, you know, from ninth grade, you know, onwards had a very mediocre sort of smartphone that I bought for myself, very little computing power, etc. Sort of on it probably feels roughly appropriate, you know, for my child as well. And again, you know, I think, you know, no real sort of social media presence on the side of technology that I do think is going to be extremely beneficial. I just think even with where AI is today, my ability to act as his sort of one man tutor for any topic that he's interested in and really push him to the limits on it is even easier than it was when I was a kid. I think my dad did a really phenomenal job of taking me through mathematics and basically by the time I was in sixth grade, I basically completed the equivalent of all the way through freshman year of college. And so life was on easy mode in some ways for everything mathematics and physics related for the rest of my time and got to compete in a lot of really awesome math competitions. I hope to be able to afford the same for that for my son in mathematics and physics because I am very strong at those areas. But if he's also interested in something that I'm less strong at, I actually feel confident in my abilities to guide him through that as well. Just with where AI stays, I think that I find to be very exciting. And then the third is, yeah, I just think the way that he will think about space in orbit is going to be closer to how we think about oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico today than some truly foreign planet. And so I find it to be very exciting that he will almost certainly do weekend trips to the moon when he's 30. And who knows, maybe I'll be up there because as a 16 year old, you know, my guns will, you know, be much happier, you know, walking around and running up there and slightly lower gravity than down here. Maybe I'll spend my summers up.

I love that. Yeah, retirement homes on the moon. Because yeah, you could still jump around in your 80. What a great concept.

Trust me. You know, the villages in Florida real nice. The villages on the moon, even nicer. I love it.

Yeah, well, speaking of jump, you could orbital drop to wherever you want. Okay. On that one. I want to ask you a question.

About legacy because it's really important that we understand from each dad what type of legacy they want to leave their children and their future family. So what is the legacy that you want to leave for your son and your future children? Yeah, it's a good question. Given that my son was first born, just born. I'm not sure that I've fully deeply thought through exactly what I want to do here, but I have some friends that are a few years in front of me in some ways have thought through this stuff more. So I'm going to parrot some of their ideals, which is that, look, if you look at it, the average sort of wealthy American family effectively extinguishes that wealth within three generations. I think it takes real proactive work to prevent that from happening. I think the first is in some ways encouraging my son to optimize for a choice and partner that is more around their intelligence and personality than their looks. I have this thesis that I think a lot of, yeah, you know, sort of rich men in America end up having really bratty children is they end up just, you know, sort of marrying the sort of dumb trophy wives. But it turns out your kids have half the genetics of your wife. And so, you know, it turns out you're going to have a tougher relationship with your son. So I think hopefully encouraging him towards the right partner. I think the second is from a very early age, I think my parents really sort of taught me the sort of value of hard work and encouraged me to actually, you know, sort of get a paying job. You know, my summer after 9th grade, I like was a pretty professional software engineer and you know, got paid way more than the kids serving waffles and burgers and things like that. But then I also, you know, personally selfishly kind of, you know, peered in the future and probably, you know, realized, hey, I will probably only ever be paid more and more over time. And so I decided to, you know, the following summer, rather than take the software engineering job that was available to me, I actually decided to go flip waffles and burgers at somewhere. So I was like, you know what? Like, I kind of want to see like how the other, you know, this is the only time in my life where I probably will have a surprise. I want to like have empathy for that and remember how difficult this is so that in future summers when I go back to software engineering, I really, really appreciate basically what I have. And so, you know, I think from a very early age, yeah, you know, did both, you know, both appreciated how high skilled labor is very valuable, but I also appreciated how backbreaking low skilled labor is. And I hope to instill that in my son as well. And then I think, I guess the thing, you know, that I hope to do, you know, sort of differently, let's say, than my parents. My parents were obviously, you know, not particularly sort of wealthy as we were either growing up. Obviously you became more so especially as I sort of went off to college and were able to, they'd established themselves better in the United States. And so for my younger siblings, we're able to offer them a higher quality of life. But I hope with my son to be able to encourage him in his endeavors with sort of capitalistic measures, whether it's actually giving him a portfolio to manage and giving him carry on that portfolio if he actually trades well, to offering him a seed round and not as a gift, but no, I'm going to take equity in your company and if you want to great equity in your company for some capital, like you're happy to do so. And so I think, you know, giving him those type of capitalistic opportunities, but that like, he only gets to really benefit from if he performs right. And I think a lot of times when you look at like how people set up these like, you know, trust funds, et cetera, it's not really aligned around performance at all. And so I would much prefer to like, rather than giving my kid like a $20 million trust that they get when they're 30 years old or have kids, I'd much prefer to give them a $20 million like fund and then, you know, they get 20% carry on any profit they make off of that fund. That way it's like they actually have to deploy that capital effectively, not just receive the capital and actually like demonstrate.

Some level of skill skin in the game. I love that.

Yeah, there's a 10 sentiment too. So regardless of dads who are listening to this, regardless of your means, your station in life, whatever you want to call it, that principle is universal, right? We can all adopt that same principle of, okay, no matter how successful I may become at whatever, I'm not just going to gift it to my children. They need to understand the struggle to, to make that a reality. Right? Because then that's, that's the real gift. It's not, it's not the money, it's not the things. It's understanding that core principle that no matter what, it takes a great deal of effort and trial and error and risk to, to make it happen one day to come to fruition. So I love your example of that. But I think everyone can take that and tweak that to their own lifestyle and where they are in life and you know, give that to their kids. And that is I think one of the best things that fathers bring to the table because that's kind of naturally our, our charge, right, Is to be the one to forge a path and build a thing and leave it behind. So modeling that is a, is a great skill to have. Justin's got a kind of our final question for you.

Yeah, it's a question we ask every dad.

Now obviously you're new at dad, but what is a core memory that you have already with your kid that you.

Just, just are never going to forget? It's probably just that like, you know, that first day, you know, I remember it, it was like it was on a Thursday morning and I could probably look at the exact date. I want to say it was like early in February, but it was just the first day where always do his like, you know, morning feeding, like the first thing, you know, when he woke up. And it was the first day where I could just see that he for the first time was like actually like tracking me in the room and like his mood was affected by like where I in the room. And it's just like the first time where I was like, oh, this is like not just like a one sided interaction where I'm like your provider, but this is now for the first time like a like two sided interaction where like you are also an observer to the situation and it just something. Yeah, it just felt so fulfilling and special about that. That just like was a huge, you know, sort of flip and again the you know, consciousness and interactivity is only increase but it is just really incredible. You know, you can talk about it so much and you kind of recognize that. Okay, I too once was A slug. But it really is amazing, like relative to anything else in the animal kingdom, humans really have just evolved and just like have this incredible level of like intelligence, consciousness, like, you know, logic capabilities and you know, somebody who's like raised cats and dogs. I've raised a border colony. Border colonies are extremely intelligent. They're most intelligent dogs, et cetera. You could just tell and like, like, you know, when a baby is two months old, it already has capabilities that like a border collie will never have. Even though a border collie at 2 months can like do so many more things than a baby can in two months in some ways. But there is just that like, you know, level of you sort of higher order intelligence that like you can just see even from just like the early ability of like tracking the room and. Yeah, just. Yeah, really, it's crazy that you can take a bunch of carbon atoms, smush them together and eventually you get a human.

It is incredible. I just want to encourage you too. And for all the dads listening, what you just described there, where he started tracking you and it became this two way thing. The power you have as a father with your words and your actions is going to shape him so much. It can, it can turn his whole day around. And it's just an incredible experience to have. And I know he's, he's still a little glow worm right now, crawling around and everything, but as he starts to become a young boy and getting it, you're going to see that play out. And so I'm really excited for you to experience that. It's. It is really hard to put into words, but when it happens, you'll know and, and you'll be like, you'll remember this conversation. Like, oh yeah, that's it, that's the stuff. And so I'm just really pumped for you. But I want to encourage all the dads out there too to don't discount how important your presence, your actions, your words, your thoughtfulness really is, because it is pouring into them and they may not ever vocalize how much of an impact it played with them, but it's huge. So Dellene, where's the best place that people can find you, follow you, support you, check out Varda, all that kind of stuff.

Probably easiest on Twitter. I'm Ebolgar. That's at Z E B U L G A R I on there. Yeah, it's where I'm most active, where.

You got all the memes going on and all the content.

Doing my best to have some fun on there.

Yeah, well, we will certainly put all the description or the links to everything in the description below. Delean, any final thoughts for the audience before we close?

Just keep having more babies, America.

All right, let's get it. Go be patriots. Have some babies. All right, dads, you heard it here. Enough talk. Let's get climbing that mountain of fatherhood. We will see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Present Fathers Podcast. Make sure that you subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Spotify to catch all of our amazing episodes. We will see you in the next one.