He Built A Factory To Launch Into Space!! | Pomp Podcast #588

Foreign.

Guys. Bang, bang. I have the mayor of my.

Oh, just kidding.

I've Delian here.

What's up, Prince of Miami.

The prince of Miami. Exactly. Let's get started talking about space. Varda is a company that you co founded while working at Founders Fund. What is going on in space? Like, why do you want to do this?

I've been thinking about space since, like, I don't know, I was a kid, maybe like 2007, eight, like, you know, freshman year of high school and. And was just like fascinated with this world of like the commercialization of space. Like, at the end of the day, the Apollo era was like, super cool, but it was government dollars. And government dollars are limited. They can't grow exponentially. But it was like, super cool to see. I've been tracking SpaceX since like the very first launch. I was like, oh, my God, like, if they figure out how to pull off a commercial rocket that makes it to the commercial satellites and all these other things are like, so much more viable. And so I've been tracking it for like, sort of years and years. And then finally Maybe in like 2016, I started being like, okay, I need to start considering, like, not just having this as like a hobby where I'm like, reading books and like watching the launches. Like, I got to start to do this, like, actually professionally. And that was part of why I actually joined Venture was because, like, I found it to be the best way to sort of do it earlier on in my career. Because, like, I basically thought that there were a couple different paths. One at a bunch of friends from MIT that actually, like, went to like, work at Space X, right. Some of whom, you know, still work there. But I'm like, I'm a pretty good engineer. I don't know if I want to be like an engineer like 90% of the day. Like, what I like is like, I can do the engineering plus business, plus a little marketing, storytelling. Like, I kind of like a diverse set of like, you know, skill sets that like, I work on. So I didn't want to do that. The other path that I thought was the only possible option was like, you do the like, chamath Jervits in Elon approach. I like, make it big in like regular tech and then you get to do space stuff. But I was like, man, that path to you, like, is going to take too long. And so that was where like sort of path three sort of showed itself to me where I was like, oh, the world of Venture allows me to like, actually kind of learn about Space because like venture is one of the only jobs in the valley where like I feel you actually get paid to like learn whatever you kind of want to learn. And so six months into like this role at Coastal Ventures, which was originally supposed to be like a one year stand, I was just supposed to like, you know, figure out how to like co found a company and like kind of was like half air, half chief of staff type thing. I actually sourced a space company and I was like, oh shit, I can do the space stuff today. And so it's kind of this like whole like, I don't know, like left turn in my life. I was like, okay, screw the being the founder thing. I'm going to do the venture thing, really lean into this and I'm going to make sure that one of my focus areas is just like I'm going to keep doing space. And so invested in that first space company, started spending a ton of time going to like space conferences, meeting everybody. And like when you see it from afar it feels like, you know, I'm sure you know crypto and other industries the same way where it's like, it feels like there's a ton going on, blah, blah, but once you get into it it's like actually there's like, you know, probably 20 companies that have raised north of $15 million that represent basically the entire commercial space industry. And I literally just met basically every CEO except you know, Elon and got to know all of them and like you start to understand okay like how do you satellites get sent, what are rockets made out of, what are the components, what's the supply chain, how do you do all this? And you actually start to realize okay here like the possible sort of angles of attack and like potential other ideas and you know, things you could work on. And that's kind of eventually how Varda came about. But the thing that I kept tracking was like, you know, a lot of the like, let's say like, you know, mobile industry and a lot of like, you know, SaaS was enabled by AWS, you know, getting really, really cheap in 2006, 2007. And I always describe that like Elon with SpaceX is basically the equivalent of AWS where this asset that used to be extremely expensive, only accessible to governments, like was in the ass I rocket launches is now like dude, you can book on SpaceX's website a 200 kilogram satellite, you can send it up for a million bucks. Literally just like there's like an e commerce flow. Like they literally like you click through for sure you got to like talk to a sales dude to like, you know, submit the wire, but like you do like a little prepayment and like entirely digitally, right? And then like one.

That's wild.

That's wild. Like one day it'll be like full online. Like we're not that far away from like literally, like you literally don't have to talk to anybody. There's still a lot of like hard engineering that has to go into like right now when you like book a SpaceX launch, you still like, it's not like you just talk to the sales guys, like the engineers over there have to like integrate your satellite into it. But like there's a lot of companies working on, okay, how do we standardize this, make it so that like, you know, you can literally just do this purely, purely digitally. And so that's what I started to track and got me really excited about Varda where I was like, okay, this aws like cost, launch costs are now cheap enough where it's not just satellites that are now economical. Space manufacturing is economical.

Okay, so what is space manufacturing? That's the whole point of Varda is to do space manufacturing. So what is that?

Yeah, so I described as like we're doing space manufacturing for Earth. There's a lot of people that think about space manufacturing in space. So it's like building stuff in space or doing like lunar ice mining and stuff like that. Like that's, that's cool, but that stuff's like sci fi. Like venture capitalists can't really back that. Like there's cool government projects going on, but that stuff is again very small dollars versus what we're doing is we're building materials in space for use back here on Earth, which means there's Earth sized markets, very large commercial markets. And so there's already been a ton of research done on the ISS over the past literally like 15 years that has showed everything from cancer drugs like Amgen and Eli Lilly have showed that they have better yields of their cancer drugs when they manufacture them in microgravity. There's been human organs that have been printed in space. Basically the way you can think about it is if you try to print a human organ on Earth, it like flops over because of gravity versus if you're in zero G, you can kind of keep printing it and you can see, you can print a really complex organ. There are semiconductors that have been shown, fiber optic cables, basically a ton of materials that have been shown up there. And so in early 2020 actually before starting Varda, I went and talked to all these researchers that had done this type of microgravity stuff and I was like, great, super cool, you guys have done this on the iss. But the ISS is never going to be like a commercial factory. NASA's not going to allow a bunch of fucking, like, you know, line workers up there. We got to do this independently of the iss. And they're all like, yes, we need to do it independently. I'm like, great, can I give you money to do that? They're like, no. I was like, well, why the fuck not? They're like, well, we don't know how to go independent of the iss. Like, we're researchers that rely on NASA for getting up there, running our, like, research and then coming back down.

So, right. Basically you can kind of the workflow would be, I want to run a test in space, in microgravity, for, let's say, fiber optic cable development. And so what I do is I get all my materials, I book it on SpaceX rocket, they launch my shit gets to the ISS. Then somebody who's on the ISS is given instructions, essentially do my test, send it back, and when a rocket comes back, then I get my results and like, just do that over and over and over again. Obviously there's limitations around how much can go on the rocket, how many people are on the iss, what's the complexity, what's their knowledge, et cetera.

Exactly. I mean, like, from start to finish, that whole process you talked about takes on average four years. Um, the largest thing you can set up is roughly the size of like a glove box. So really limited, like total volume. And then there's extreme limitations on, like, for example, in a lot of fiber optics, there's a toxic chemical that you want to coat the fiber optic with that protects it at the end of the process. No fucking way is NASA going to let you put that toxic chemical in the isis. If that thing gets out, like, you're potentially killing astronauts. So there's like severe limitations on the processes, the size, how long it takes. If you want to iterate on that process, you're like sending it up and then four years later you get to iterate on the process once again. And so it just takes way, way too long. And so our whole idea was like, okay, how would we do this independent of the ISS? Great, we can still get up there via SpaceX Rocket Lab.

You know, they can just send the rockets and you can, you don't have to go to the iss. You can go to any destination.

Exactly. You can go wherever you want to. So that part still stays the same, but now, okay, we got to go independent of the iss. That means now we gotta power ourselves, communicate with ourselves. That part actually also pretty easy because look at Starlink, look at, you know, Planet Labs. They, they power satellites up there. They communicate with them. They have batteries up there. Okay, so that part's pretty easy. The actual glove box, it's like, okay, well, now we're gonna take that same glove box, that fiber optic unit that, you know, whatever or human organs that people are making take that same thing. Now we can go a lot bigger. Now we can put that toxic chemical in there. Now we can go a lot hotter. Now we can bring more materials up there. So that part, if anything, is like easier in some ways than it was on the iss. The only like, wrinkle is the ISS is pressurized in atmosphere versus to keep it really low cost, we're putting everything in vacuum.

What explain the engineering difference.

Yeah, so in atmosphere the biggest thing is actually the like, thermal environment. So, you know, right now I'm in this room, right? My body is generating heat and it's getting moved away from me, from the like, cold air that's basically around me. And that's how most things get cooled down in manufacturing processes. So you have like a, you know, a really hot semiconductor. The way that it cools off on a typical, like, you know, intel manufacturing line is the air around it basically just cools it down. In vacuum, there's no air. And so if something gets hot, it just stays hot. And so what you have to do is you have to use these, what are called like radiative cooling tubes. And then the way that they basically work is like the little like, you know, semiconductor glows a little bit red when it gets too hot. The radiative cooling tube absorbs that, and then it actually sends it out to these like little wires that are on the outside of the satellite and that are basically made to glow extra red when they get hot. And that glowing of that red light is the only way you actually quote, unquote, cool down. And so that's the really hard part, is basically cooling down is really hard when there's no atmosphere.

So basically what you're doing is you're taking the same principle of bring something here to cool this down. The difference is that you're doing it in a much more kind of thoughtful, intentional way versus just allowing the air around it.

Exactly, exactly. So that's the maybe tricky part, but other than that, everything in some ways is much easier. When you leave the iss, because you can go bigger, more materials, more chemicals. The iss, you know, doesn't have those same, or you don't have the limitations from the iss. But then the part that all these researchers were really scared of is, okay, we finished those materials, got to bring them back down to Earth. That's what everybody's really scared of. Because the counterintuitive thing is right now it's actually quite easy to get up to space. What we do is we take a rocket, we get it out of the atmosphere, and then we go really, really fast. Right. And that's how we actually orbit. And the hard part for a rocket isn't the getting out of the atmosphere. Like that's only like, you know, the first like whatever 120 seconds of the flight. The hard part is like then the going really, really fast so that you stay in orbit rather than just coming back down. So when you think about it is when you're coming back, you're going really fast and like, yeah, you could like send a whole rocket up there, slow yourself down and then hit the atmosphere. But that's really inefficient. The much better way to do it is just come into the atmosphere really fucking fast and use the atmosphere to slow you down. That process of reentry has never really been done by commercial organizations other than SpaceX with their Dragon program. Right. So whenever you see the astronauts coming back, the like trickiest part of that whole journey is when they come back going really, really fast. The atmosphere, same thing with the Apollo era days. That's like the most dangerous part for the astronauts.

When they're coming back, how fast are they going?

When they're reentering, you're going like, man, I hope any space engineer reading this doesn't like correct me on this, but I think 14,000 kilometers per second. So you're talking like real, real fast.

Like, yeah, multiple G forces in terms.

To give you a sense of like. So you know, we take these material. Yes, you go through roughly eight GS at the peak. So in our type of reentry, because we're not taking back humans. So the reason that like sort of our vehicle in some ways is much simpler is like we are just taking back some like raw materials. We don't have to take back a bunch of humans. And so I sometimes describe like our thing that we're using to bring down the materials is like a, you know, delivery van versus like the SpaceX Dragon vehicle is like a gold plated limousine with like great AC and Soft seats for the astronauts, you know, I mean, that thing cost 100 million. We're making something for like 100k to bring back our material.

So I send up materials. Yep, there's a satellite or a vehicle there and then I have to get back. What is the process to get the materials off of the thing that goes up into the actual like testing or manufacturing facility and then how do I get it back? Is that all robotic?

Yeah. So the first time we're actually just sending everything up already pre connected. In the future for sure, we'll be doing docking and moving around, but the first time we actually send the satellite looking thing, the factory looking thing, and what we call the reentry capsule, we actually just send that all connected already. So basically it's like already ready to go in the future for sure. For a variety of reasons, that actually gets much more economical to not send it up altogether, but to do sort of that demonstration mission. We're sending it all up together and basically literally the raw materials pass from the factory into that like reentry module. The reentry module comes back in. But like, to give you a sense, so like, you know, we actually, you know, have to, we have our regulated by the FAA because like we're reentering over airspace if we like miss, you know, the atmosphere even literally by like three or four seconds. You're talking about like, rather than like landing in the United States, you're like accidentally like landing in like Europe. And so you're going so, so fast. Like you have to be extremely precise about like where you enter. And so a lot of the problem is like convincing the faa, hey, we're going to make sure to do a very sort of like controlled reentry in a very sort of tight area such that we don't accidentally like, you know, land in somebody's house and like kill them.

Is this the whole. I think it was a Chinese rocket or something that was like coming back and then people were like, oh, it could land in Asia or the United States. They were like, that's a pretty big area.

Exactly. So that gives you a sense of like how fast you're going. I think about like. You think about like a 747? Yeah, that's fast. That's 500 miles per hour. When you're up there, you're going 14,000 kilometers per second. So it's just like the speeds in orbit I think sometimes are like hard to comprehend because like you can't actually go that fast on Earth. Like if you're going that fast on Earth, you melt basically instantaneously. The only reason you can go that fast up there is because you're in vacuum. And so if you miss even by a little bit, and it's like kind of hard with like that rocket, people are just using radar to try to figure out where the hell it was because, like, there's a little bit of atmosphere up there. And so the drag and how you hit it, like, can just like buffet around that rocket. And so that's why it was really hard. Part of what we're doing is we're coming in hot and fast on purpose. That little atmosphere that's up high doesn't sort of affect our path. And we can actually much more precisely say, hey, faa, we're going to come down like right here and we're going to make sure there's no humans around and like, not going to hit anybody.

Do you want to land on land or in the ocean?

It is much simpler engineering problem to land on land. And so when we, when we fly, we will be the commercial reentry vehicle to ever land on land. So Dragon, Apollo, all of those have landed like on water. We would be the first ones to do it on land.

Why do they all want to land in the ocean? Or SpaceX basically lands on like a drone ship.

SpaceX's original plan was actually to land on land. So the Dragon was originally going to have retro propulsive boosters that actually just landed it on a landing pad on land. But the qualification process for getting NASA comfortable with that was basically going to take way too long. And so about maybe, I think it was like two years into the Dragon program, they pivoted just being like, screw it, we're just doing the Apollo style, basically. Just like, it's a lot easier to just like, you throw a parachute up and then you just hit the water rather than like, you know, if you hit ground going those speeds that actually can be like, you know, harmful to the astronauts. And so mostly it's like the reason we land on water is just like, it's an easier engineering problem. Yeah, splashdowns a lot easier than hard ground.

Yeah. And it's funny because they're reusable rocket lands. Like, oh, the land thing, there's like regulation stuff. Why don't we just create a drone, a drone ship and then we'll just use that to land on? Like, that's wild.

Yeah, I mean, that was part of the reason they did the drone ship too was just like, you know, it makes it a, easier for testing, you don't have to clear everything. Like, it's in the middle of the ocean. Like, there's no risk of, like, yeah, the rocket blows up, whatever, there's nobody around. But over time, SpaceX does want to get more consistent. And they do it occasionally. Right. When they have enough fuel. They've gotten the FAA comfortable now with, like, landing the rockets on land. But for sure, I'm sure in the long term, they're thinking about, okay, how do we eventually make it so that, like, when we're flying humans, they also land on land because, like, the seaports are kind of a pain in the ass.

Is the idea that SpaceX, you guys, whoever else, these rockets are going to take off, like, every 10 minutes?

Yeah. I mean, with Varda, the initial product that we're going after, if we were to eventually satisfy the entire market that we're going after, we would have multiple of our reentry capsules coming down per day, and we would be buying a Space X rocket every other day. And that's just us. And so there is a world where, you know, SpaceX, between, you know, Varda and all the other companies that are coming up are literally launching a rocket multiple times a day. And, like, we're not talking about that being, like, you know, a decade away. We're talking about that being, like, you know, this year they launched so far already 28 rockets. So it means they're on track for, you know, doing on the order of like 50 or 60. And so we're already talking about, like, we're already at one a week. And like, three years ago, we were at like one a month. And so, you know, you extrapolate that out in another three years, it wouldn't be surprising if there's like a SpaceX rocket launch basically every other day and another three years after that. Multiple a day.

Yeah. When you think about the cost. So you take your device, you want to get it up to space, the. And then get it back, is that you said, I think the device itself is like 100k, and then the whole round trip is like 2, 3 million dollars. Or what's the economics?

Yeah. So the way you can kind of think about it, launch costs basically $5,000 a kilogram today for, like, Space X. Okay. And so when we think about it, we think about, okay, how much of our entire. So I mentioned that whole thing, the satellite, the factory, the reentry, how much of that is actually the useful raw materials. Right. Because, like, that's what we're really getting paid for in our early missions, it'll probably more look like 5% of the entire thing is going to be the useful raw materials. Part of why eventually we want to leave the factory up there and dock with the raw materials is it makes it to the. Rather than being 5%, it's actually like 50%, because then we're just bringing up a bunch of raw materials, document the factory, and then taking them back down. And so the way that I think about it is sort of like the net cost of launch for the raw materials the first time is if it's 5%, it's basically, well, okay, you're basically paying 20x the launch costs rather than 5,000. It's like $1,000 per kilogram to get up there. But once it's 50% of the actual payload, then it's only $10,000 per kilogram of the actual raw materials to get it up there. And so that's kind of the economics. But then when you think about it of like, okay, well, how many very useful materials are there that you could sell for more than $100,000 a kilogram? Turns out if you look at semiconductors and fiber optics and human organs and things like that, most of those things, if you wear it on a per kilo basis, they actually sell for a lot more than that. And so that was basically what I was tracking in the back of my head. I'd been thinking about space manufacturing for like a decade. It just didn't work if it was $100,000 a kilogram, because again, that net cost of taking things launch was like millions of dollars a kilogram. There's not many materials that sell for millions of dollars a kilogram, but there's a lot of things that sell for hundreds of thousands.

So really the equation, it seems like, is what's the cost of the raw goods? What's the cost of getting their manufacturing getting back? And if you add up those two costs, if you can sell it for two, three times that, whatever you bring back, then you've got a business that's.

Literally what we get kept up at night, all night, every single day. We're in the bits of digging into this right now, all right?

And then really this idea of like a reusable factory is really what you're building, right? And so it's it right now you've got to set it up all connected. But the ideal thing is like, literally there's a factory there and you're just bringing the input of materials. There's some process that happens, and then there's the Output, you bring it back.

Exactly, exactly. And that makes the economics a lot better because, like, right now, each time we're paying for the factory with each mission that we send up. But the factory, once the reentry module leaves, that thing just unfortunately burns up in the atmosphere because it doesn't have a heat shield and all the things you need to bring it back down. But over time, we'll just have factories up there, and we'll start off with 1, and then we'll start off with 2, and then 10. And then, like, the thing that gets me really excited about Varda is again, we scale based off of commercial markets the size on Earth rather than just pure government dollars. And so if you track that exponential equation of like, once you need one factory and then 10 factories, 100 factories you're talking about. You know, I think it wouldn't be totally unrealistic to say that by the end of the decade we have something that is bigger than 10 times the size of the entire International Space Station. That is just our factories that are all connected together. And then that also makes it much more economical. For a long time they'll be purely robotic, but once you have something that large, it's actually not that expensive to then be like, okay, well, why don't we add a human compatible, you know, module to it? And then it gets a lot easier to think about, okay, actually having permanent human stationed up there on the factory. Because, you know, it turns out it's actually a lot easier to get to space than it is to build a robotic arm that it's as dexterous as a human is.

When you think about this, you're going really, really fast after a massive market. One of the things that I noticed you do, I've seen Keith Raboy on the Open Door, or I'm sorry, open Store deck he recently had is the number of days since you started. And I don't know where this came from, but I've now noticed on multiple people doing it. Why do you guys do that? Why do you track how many days it's been? And then I also noticed that you have a countdown clock to, I guess, the first launch. So walk me through kind of the timeline thought process and why so obsessive about those timelines?

Yeah, it actually started with one of our portfolio companies, Ramp. And I think part of like, their, you know, culture and why they've done so well is because they're so obsessive on days. It was actually that first board meeting, they were like day 59 of like, you know, Ramp's life. Like, Keith and I went to that first board meeting and it was literally the first thing that you see in the deck. And Keith and I just both turned to each other. We're like, this is just fucking brilliant. Like, this is the best way to institute an ethos. Because at the end of the day, the thing that is always difficult about startups is early on, it's easy to move super fast. When you're like six people in a room, you all can communicate, really easy, etc. Once you become 600, all of a sudden just decisions start to slow down, things start to slow down. And so in some ways you can almost always predict how successful a startup is going to be just off of how fast they move. And this is just like a really simple cultural way of enforcing very fast movement. Because when you're measuring things on the order of days, then it's a great, like, you know, I sometimes joke, like, you know, we have like a big deadline at Varda, for example. Like, that's like, you know, this Monday. And I think today is like, whatever, Thursday, Thursday to Monday, pre Varda felt like a, you know, a snap in time versus now with like the Varda mentality. It's like, oh yeah, Thursday to Monday, that's basically like a month. Like, I have plenty of time to like, you know, all the things that we need to do. Like we'll have like six meetings between now and then to discuss all the progress. Like Saturday and Sunday, everybody's going to be like, totally online. And so I think it just like, you know, forces this just mentality was like extreme speed. And then also it's even more relevant in the world of like space stuff because there are these just like such clear delineations of like, you know, in a software company, like you do have like launch days, but like in a space company you have like launch days. Like, you know, those are clear delineation and like marker in the company's life. And so, yeah, it started there and then it's. I feel like it is kind of spreading amongst other founders that I know that are also now starting to be obsessive about it. But yeah, every single, all hands, you know, at Varda, every single Monday morning, we start off with like, you know, it is day X, Y, Z, this number of days till launch. You know, we're, you know, whatever, 15% of the way, you know, to our first launch.

Why is the all hands on Monday? Most companies in Silicon Valley have done them Friday. People can ask questions. It's kind of A Kumbaya, whatever. Calling it in all hands and doing it on Monday seems more like a kickoff meeting for the week or what is that?

Yeah, it's funny, you know, I'm not the CEO of Varda, and the CEO comes from Space X, and a lot of the early engineers come from Space X. So through them I've got to learn a lot about sort of like, you know, I'd say, you know, say 60 to 70% of our culture is kind of like Space X culture. And so there's just less of this. Like, there's so many things that I really love about it. One, like, I walked into the factory one day and there was like a 70 foot American flag hanging in the factory. And I was like, this is amazing. Like, in the San Francisco Bay area, being patriotic is actually like somehow a polarizing topic versus something about your. When you're working in the world of aerospace, it's by default patriotic. And we're just asking. I was like, I love that. I didn't like, ask for this at all. And I was like, who did this? And like, a couple of engineers were like, yeah, we got drunk last night, got a big ladder or this off Amazon and like, you know, immediately installed. I was like, this is. I love that part of the culture. And the second is there's just less of like a culture around. Like, I don't know, there's not this, like, yeah, all hands need to like, ask questions, feel like my feelings get padded, etc. It's just like Mondays we start like, this is what we got to do. Like, you know, everybody like checks in. Like, yes, this is what we're doing. It's like, definitely like a kickoff meeting. And then Fridays it's like, no, there's no questions. Like, if you have a question, email the CEO. He doesn't have time to like, sit around and have everybody, like, you know, have a Kumbaya moment. Like, there's no time for fucking Kumbaya. Like email. Did you get the thing done that you said you're going to get done on Monday? And then we rinse and repeat the next week and so, yeah, I like that style.

Are there free snacks?

We're limited. Yeah, it's definitely closer to like, you know, Apple culture of, you know, no free lunches. We do actually do free lunches, but.

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It's been a longtime supporter of this show, so to say thanks, it would mean the world to me if you would go and download their new mobile app. All right, let's get back into this episode. I hope you're enjoying this one. You work at Founders Fund and spend majority of your time investing. So Varda is a big piece of what you're focused on now but you do spend a lot of time investing. I feel like everyone at Founders Fund is red pilled like, like just everyone has unique views. They say what they want and what they mean. Is it self selection or is there something going on or is there something in the water at Founders Fund that gets everyone kind of A lot of times I even necessarily agreeing with each other but just having the confidence, courage and conviction to say what they actually believe.

Yeah, I mean I'll front run this by saying also I think you'd be surprised that probably, I mean I don't want to put an exact number on it, but I'd probably guess like 60 to 70% of the investment team in the last election like almost certainly voted by and so there's for sure some amount of like red pilling but I don't think that also necessarily correlates with like people's exact underlying politics because there is actually a wide array of politics for sure. Maybe certain people on the team are a little bit like you know, louder than others and so you might think that we're like all biased in one direction but actually the entire team I'd say Is quite, you know, diverse in terms of politics and you know. Yeah. Very willing to be, you know, sort of very upfront about that. And it's absolutely sort of like self selection both in terms of like when we interview people there is sort of just like that does the person fit the like Founders Fund ethos, which is just like, are they very comfortable being themselves? Being actually like quite divisive. Like I in some ways like love our team in that. Very willing to like disagree with each other both publicly online. Right. You've seen Keith and I even like get into arguments online. But then just imagine that like if we're like shielding a little bit externally, internally, it's like, you know, people will. Yeah, it is full time war at all times. Right. But I really like that because it forces like a sense of like intellectual honesty where it's like it doesn't feel like there's any politics at Founders Fund. Like everything is just like very intellectually open and honest and like can be very disagreeable and there can be people that have like, you know, really significant arguments for extended periods of time. But at least it's sort of like out in the open. And I think it is self selecting both in terms of people that want to choose to work in that environment. But then also I feel like during the interview process we're like, man, is this person going to like, you know, survive the like intellectual battlefield of Founders Fund?

Yeah. And so when somebody comes in new or somebody who's been there for a while, let's use Founders Fund as an example. But I think there's other fronts, firms that have some of these dynamics as well. You've got very well known people, right, that are participating in the investment process. You've got kind of legacy investments, legacy LPs, legacy kind of reputation, all this stuff. And then you've got this like zero fox. Like everyone say what you want and let's kind of have that of attrition of ideas, etc. How does that work in terms of making investment decisions? Is it just like, hey deleon, here's a pot of money, like go invest it and like come back and tell us what you did. Right. Or is there like, no, we all have to vote and everyone has to agree or like, like, how do you think through that and what do you like and not like about the process?

Yeah. So I'd say in the grand scheme of Silicon Valley there's like sort of a bell curve of types of firms. I call them like consensus based investing and like conviction based investing and Both Coastal Ventures, where I worked prior to Founders Fund and Founders Fund, I would describe as like, on the extreme end of conviction based investing. That is, if one person really, really loves and is like, pounding on the table, like, the thing sort of like gets done for sure. There's like, amount of rope that is given to you. Right. Like if. If Peter is pounding on the table, that is like a larger check than like, if Dalian is pounding on the table. Obviously, I thought it was the opposite. That's funny.

Okay, I learned everything. Something new every day.

But, like, at least there's that opportunity to sort of like pound on the table. And then what I like about Founders Fund is Cyan Bannister actually did an interview on this maybe like, you know, a year and a half or like two years ago. And so we actually like, relatively publicly share this, but we actually have just like a very strict and regimented, you know, process around how investments get made. But we're actually not very strict and regimented on how to go through that process. That makes sense, like, as an investor. So like, basically from like 0 to 1.5 million, any two people on the team, basically, thumbs up, 1 point, 5 to 5, it basically becomes like 3 people, 5 to 10 becomes 4 people, 10 to 30, 5 people, 30 and above, 6 people. And so basically, as the checks get larger and larger, you need basically a thumbs up, but the thumbs up is closer to, like, you kind of need, like, let's say for the six people, you know, on the super large Chucks, it's more like you need like three people to be really enthusiastic and three people that are more like, it's not a no. I, like, I don't think this is a bad idea. Not like I'm also as equally like pounding on the table as you are. And so for sure, there are times where, like, I've seen Keith, like, basically say, like, I wouldn't do this investment, but I'm giving you my thumbs up, to be clear. Because, like, I don't think it's like a bad investment. I just wouldn't necessarily do it.

And I'm assuming some of that is like, let's say you really understand space. And let's say that Keith, I don't actually know what. How into space he is, but let's just say he didn't understand anything about space. If you could make the argument and say, hey, I want to do the space investment, he's like, oh, I don't really know that much about space. But like, yeah, that makes sense to me. Okay. I'll give you the thumbs up, but, like, I'm not going to go pound the table because I don't. I'm not an expert in space for sure.

That's partially why, like, you'll see it. Even in my portfolio, I kind of say that, like, I feel like there's like two or three different parts of my portfolio. There's like a third that's like the pure space stuff. There's a third that I kind of describe, like, kind of space ish stuff, but it's on earth. Like, whether it's like robotics or industrial automation or it's like, still kind of like hard tech. And there's like a third of the stuff that I do that it's like, I literally just say, like, shit that I learned from Keith. And partially because it's like, it's easier for me to, like, work through the investment process when, like, I'm investing into a financial services thing, like, you know, ramp, for example, because I know that Keith will also understand it really well and we can work on it together. And when the two of us are like, hey, here's a financial services thing, both Keith and Dellian are excited. We really want to do this. It's like, actually, you know, quite easy to get the deal done versus, let's say, you know, in the world of space, there's like, less people on the team that understand the space stuff. It's really like Scott, Nolan and I are the only ones. And so at some point, like, it's kind of hard for other people on the team to really give a super strong feedback. And that also makes it so that it's like a little bit less likely that we'll take a super, super big swing, you know, in the world of space, like our, you know, interest or willingness to take a $50 million check into a space thing, probably less likely. Like, you know, we did recently invest a lot of money into SpaceX, but at a relatively late stage. Lots of revenue. Starlink was going online and so it's like, easier to understand now. There's also, like, revenue flowing and like, numbers. And so more of the team got that. But yes, there's definitely like, domain areas of expertise. And then what I really like about Founders Fund, especially in comparison to most firms, most firms are not super willing to give a lot of rope to junior investors. Like, they're pretty restrictive. You really can only, you know, report to one particular person or they really limit your sectors. Founders Fund and we sometimes describe as like, almost like the blockchain of, like, you know, investing, where it's just like, we don't have partner meetings. We don't meet up on any, like, regular basis. Everybody kind of goes off and, like, does their own thing. And like, the way that Keith runs his investment process versus I run it versus, like, you know, Brian or Peter are like, wildly different. At the end of day, you get to get that same outcome of, like, the votes. But, like, for example, if I'm working on like a space thing, I might like, go first go to Scott and then maybe rope in one other person and then one other person versus maybe if it's like something that I know a lot of the team understands, I'll have it meet four people at once. Right. It's just kind of up to you how you want to take a founder through that process as long as you do eventually get to that very specific, like, set of those.

So there's no Monday meeting? There's none of that?

Yeah, there's no, like, we never have a. Like, you know, basically every other firm in Silicon Valley has like a Monday meeting where, like, they have companies come in and present to like, the entire partnership. We almost never. Actually the only time that we ever have full sort of partner presentations is actually only for incubations, interestingly enough, partially because it's just like, hey, this is our company. Let's all meet and like, see how things are going. But we never do that for external companies.

Hereticon is, I think, the best manifestation of everything you just described is kind of internal. Then you guys are willing to put like a stamp on and say, like, no, this is actually what we believe. Like, we believe we should go talk to people who everyone else thinks, you know, aren't worth talking to or whatever. Like, there's this conference, and I don't actually know how much of this is like, Founders Fund backed versus, like, people at Founders Fund are helping to organize it. But, like, talk a little bit just about the public component, because there's almost this element of, like, there's lots of trolls. There's lots of like, kind of the woke crowd and like all this stuff that I think most people now are just kind of saying, like, look, there's things that legitimately our society needs to improve. And then there's like all the virtue signaling stuff that's just like a waste of time. It almost feels like you guys are trolling the trolls, right? To some degree and like saying, like, look like you guys are being ridiculous. So, like, okay, cool, we'll just ratchet it up and we'll Be more ridiculous on the other side. And that's not something that most venture funds do. So, like, explain kind of your viewpoint of that.

Yeah, I mean, it's been interesting to see. You know, obviously, I've only been a part of Founders Fund for the past, you know, whatever, two and a half years now. But the firms, like, let's say both public viewpoint and the way that it's presented have shifted as sort of like the media landscape has shifted as well, right? So if you think about, like, you know, 2010, publishing the manifesto, you know, we wanted flying cars. Instead we got 140 characters. The brand was much more the firm, but that was sort of the ethos at the time, right? This is pre Twitter. This is pre sort of individual creators being as much of a thing. Institutions were the brands. But now, over the past decade, right, things have shifted. Like, you know, people are much more interested in talking to the CEO of Tesla. They don't want to hear from the Tesla brand account on Twitter. Right. And so I feel like we've just sort of embodied that same thing, which is like, you know, it probably flipped in. You know, honestly, maybe when Keith and I joined, we're all of a sudden, okay, the, like, core Founders Fund Twitter account was not as much of, like, the voice anymore. It was now all the individuals that are at Founders Fund that represent, like, the, like, online voice. And what I like is, like, we're just much more willing to, you know, unlike most other firms, there's almost. And you'd have to really push the bounds. There's almost nothing that you could, like, say on Twitter that would get you, like, fired at Founders Fund. And so people are willing to sort of be much more intellectually honest with their, like, core values. But then what I like about it is, like, we follow up with it, right? When, you know, people complain about, oh, they're coming to Miami and they're like, xyz not appreciating the locals or whatever, and then it's like. And then we're actually like, funding the largest Series A in Miami, right? We just back it up and, you know, with our actions. And so I like that when we, like, discuss these ideas, it's not just like, just for sake of trolling the trolls. It's also because there's, like, I feel like, real substance behind it. And I feel like that's why people seem to, you know, enjoy, enjoy. The voice is like, I feel like most of the voices that I feel like on Twitter are either packaged corporate. Like, you can tell, like, this Went through compliance committee to like get out. Not super interesting. You have like the just true virtue signaling like you know, talking about like, you know, social justice. Then you have the troll accounts that are just the memes and humor, but there's no substance behind it versus I feel like we do for sure do some amount of trolling, but I feel like there is substantive. When you read Mike Salana's Pirate wires, he's talking about fundamental society issues in those and then we follow up with that with fundamental societal investments. I think Anduril being the perfect example of this, we believe that in order to maintain western society and democracy and allow individuals to have freedom, you need to invest in capabilities like the future of warfare. And most VCs are like not even willing to touch the idea of that. Like anything that is like oh, military, contractor, government, something like that. Complete unwillingness to versus like we've had phenomenal returns between Palantir, SpaceX Anduril. We've anything like forged a new type of company that can do technologies that both benefit the government a lot but then also end up benefiting like the end consumer a lot.

Solana is probably the best example. Mike Solanas who we're talking about is probably one of the best examples because he can very expertly navigate like complete shit posting and trolling on Twitter. So then you read pirate wires, you're like, wait a minute, like that was actually very intelligent and like well thought out and well articulated. And I think that's part of what makes Founders Fund. Founders Fund.

Right.

It's basically what you're saying is like the ability. No, we can go shitpost and troll everyone and yell and scream and be idiots on the Internet just like everybody else. But then, oh by the way, like we're actually very thoughtful and we also can put money to work and do the things that, that we need.

Yeah, I mean there's like team discussions that we have and obviously like you know, Peter being like the epitome of this or just like extremely intellectual, broad ranging discussions. Right. Even really debating a particular investment, there's a lot of times where it's like in the framing of like this like extremely large. Like I wouldn't say that we're like super thesis driven, but we think about like the macro environment and why this is an important investment to get done. And then sometimes we even debate like, oh, are we investing in this just because we have this macro bias towards X, Y or Z and we want this to exist in the world and we're investing this even though Maybe it's not a top tier founder, but it just like, you know, matches our ethos. Right. There's a lot of these, I think, like very, you know, interesting discussions that we have. And I think that is definitely something that the team optimizes for is like both somebody that's capable of doing that, but then also like, you know, grabbing a drink at the bar and like having fun. Like the founders fun, like off sites, let me tell you, like they're a fun time. Like I enjoy those quite a bit. You know, both the intellectual discussions at dinner, but then we're getting trashed after dinner.

All right, three people that I want you to tell me what you've learned from them and then we'll move on. One from Peter, one thing from Keith, and then one pick somebody else on the team that you're like. I really learned a lot from this person. Here's what it is.

Yeah, I mean the Peter like single nugget that I always think about and this actually like kind of comes from, you know, Trey Stevens who sort of says that this is the same nugget that he shares from him which is both prioritize having very unique thoughts, but also how difficult it is to do so. Like most of the time, even like most of the ideas that I reiterate, whether it's like, you know, crazy out there, space manufacturing or you know, talking about, you know, why, you know, SpaceX is like the AWS, most times aren't my ideas, you know, I mean like they're almost certainly something that I've read somewhere pulled together and it's like very rare that I'm like coming up with like an actual truly unique individual formulation in doing that actually requires extremely deep thought while also having very broad ranging intellectual curiosity both in terms of the people that you meet that you talk to, that you read. And. And so that's definitely, I feel like the thing that I both admire the most from Peter and aspire to. And I think that is something that he does. Obviously he's like, you know, world class at, but probably prioritizing. That is something that I feel like I've learned the most and. Sorry, who's the Keith? Keith is probably like that there is actually a science to operating companies. Like I feel like, you know, so I was his chief of staff for, you know, basically almost two years, a year and eight months. And you know, watching him across all the variety of companies that he's involved in. Right. Whether it's, you know, open door, like prop tack, you know, affirm, fintech consumer, social, all the types of companies that he's done. At the end of the day, building a company is actually the same across all those verticals. It all comes down to the people that you're hiring, the operating cadence that you maintain, the way that you set your goals, the way that you communicate in the company, how you run interviews, like all of these things actually, like, there's a just best way to do them. And for sure you like, kind of need to adapt them. Right? Any rule obviously needs to be broken to like, you know, fit into your company, but like, actually that they're all the same thing. And I feel like it took me like, you know, I sent him a joke. Like, the way that I sort of learned from Keith is like, he has this like gigantic tree of knowledge. And in some ways he probably couldn't even describe that whole tree himself. But each time we meet one particular founder in one particular situation, I get to watch him traverse that particular branch and then I see that branch and then I see another branch the next day and the next day. And I feel like my job and part of why I wrote this like, series of, I think it was like six or seven essays at the end of that sort of like two year stint where I just tried to distill, like, there were some things that Keith has done, like a really good job of, like, distilling over the course of various, like, podcasts and interviews. And for those, I mostly just like stole his previous frameworks. But there's one that I was like, kind of proud of, which, like, you know, how to be an effective, how to interview executives effectively. That one was actually like, Keith had never really talked about or written down his framework for interviewing executives. But having watched him like interview like 15 CFOs and 15 VPs of marketing and 15, like VPs of sales, I was like, oh, there's actually a pattern to how you're doing all of these. And this pattern is actually like quite useful, like, framework to think through. But, like, this isn't something that he had even like, thought about. And I remember like showing him the essay. I was like, is this framework correct? And he's like reading. He's like, huh, that is correct. Like, yes. Like, I hadn't thought about framing it this way, but like, yes, this is basically like the decision making framework that I go through. And so, yeah, I guess, like the science of operating is, I feel like what I learned from him.

Yeah, it's fascinating that once you understand the science, then you just replicate it over and over. And over again.

That's why he's had such success, is, like, the reason that Keith is a successful investor. Obviously there's some amount of, like, reflexivity to it of, like, when you've had such success, the best founders want to have you on their board. But then part of it is like, I think people have different philosophies on this. Some people are like, VCs are useless, blah, blah, blah. But the reason the really, really good founders want to have Keith on their board is, like, there's very, very difficult situations where even like the top tier founders can't quite figure it out on their own. Keith has seen the situation, knows how to deal with it, and, like, actually gives you, like, meaningful advice. And, like, you can talk to everybody from like, you know, Tony Hsu at Doordash to Max Rhodes at Fair to like, literally any company that he's involved in. I will guarantee you that they will say there is at least 20 instances of really critical moments in the path of the company where Keith changed their mind on a particular topic or candidate or like, something that was actually quite core that actually ended up helping the company become much, much more successful. And is he perfect? No, but he's right, like 90% of the time. And so if you're disagreeing with Keith, you better have, like, a really good reason you're disagreeing with Keith.

One time I was getting coffee with them and I said something, I was like, yeah, you're pretty good investor. He goes, actually, I've averaged one unicorn every year since I've been investing. Yeah, I was like, okay, you're really, really good.

Right?

Like, it was just when you start to actually put data around it, it's unbelievable. I mean, I think 20 years, 20 unicorns or something.

Yeah, he had, I think, eight IPOs over the course of six months last year from whatever June 2020 to December 2020. It was literally just, you know, back to back to back. Every single one. And it's not even like, oh, he was like a small angel check. It's like, no Airbnb. He was the first investor. He put in a decent amount of money into that seed round and then like, brought it to Sequoia for them to do the seed doordash. Seed round of doordash. Right. Like, you know, there's like all these companies that have been extremely great IPOs. It's like when you get to the, like, eighth one down the list, you don't even think about it, but it's like, oh, yeah, wish. Also one of the early angel investors in wish. Right. But that's not even like, something that either even, like, talks about or most people, like, even realize.

Yeah, well, they only list the top four. The rest is forgotten. All right. I feel like we talked a little bit about being red pilled. I feel like you got orange pilled or whatever you want to call it with bitcoin and crypto for a little bit. It seems like you had conversations with a few folks. You can say who they are if you want, and you start to go down, and then you kind of have, like, slowed your roll a little bit on crypto. So just talk about, like, what your thoughts on crypto were before, how you started to get a little bit interested in and what you think now.

Yeah, man. My first foray into crypto is probably like 2013 or 14. Like, definitely got convinced. I was like, cool. Bitcoin is a store of value. And I definitely debated and, like, invested some amount. Then I was like, maybe I should just hold this for the long term. Then I was like, I'm like, 22. I'd prefer to spend my money on, like, beer and, like, startups and, like, just like, kind of enjoying life rather than like, really investing at the time. And so I kind of put it on the shelf for a while. I maybe held on to, like, one bitcoin or something like that for a while.

Whole coiner?

Yeah, one coiner, exactly. And so, yeah, kind of put it on the shelf for a while, then I'd watch it and I'd like, you know, occasionally catch up with friends. And I have this friend, Arjun Balaji. You know, we've known each other, I think, since fall 2011, literally, basically since, like, you know, freshman year of college. And so he's obviously gotten, you know, very much into crypto. I don't know exactly when he started, but most recently he's now, you know, one of the investment partners at Paradigm. And so I've been watching crypto from afar, occasionally catching up to, you know, generally still felt I was like, you know, store value, still really feels like the only, like, I don't know, like, what I call, like, business use case, like, where I felt like there really was something that, like, made a sense for a business to use. And then, you know, we were grabbing, you know, lunch maybe like three or four weeks ago, and I'd been kind of poking into Defi a little bit. But it was that lunch with him that really convinced me that, like, algorithmic liquidity pools were like, this aha moment for me where I was like, Whoa. There is actually like a second, you know, true business use case because there is a long tail of assets. The example that I always like to give, you know, I won't say who it is, but, like, I have a friend that is, like, now working on this extremely interesting startup, basically trying to, like, securitize musicians and artists, basically, like future earnings and create a way for that artist to basically sell some of that, you know, future cash flow up front. But then ideally also have a market where people, you know, can trade them along the way and do that not only for all their future cash flows, but even down to, like, particular albums. The problem is for creating a liquidity market for that. You can't afford to have, like, a trading desk behind that, right? Jane Street's not going to invest in some random Joe Schmo, you know, R and B musician from Chicago's, you know, trading desk for his, like, album. But Defi and liquidity pools felt like a way. I was like, oh, okay, here's a way where you could actually create, you know, an algorithmic, you know, liquidity pool.

And real quick, just so for people who are listening, who don't understand what this is, basically there's an entire idea of. Let's say there's a couple of different assets. Liquidity providers put the assets into these pools, and then there's literally a decentralized protocol in an automated fashion that says, Delian wants X asset, he's willing to give Y asset, and literally it takes Y gives him X. And the different pools provide various returns to liquidity providers as a way to incentivize more or less assets in the pool.

And the way that it was sort of, like, pitched to me, which is slightly different than how you pitched it, which is part of why I got maybe slightly unenthused with it, was that let's say that this was actually. Let's say, you know, Kanye drops a new album and there's a share price. The way that, like, typically share prices are generated is like, you actually have a, like, market maker. I somebody who's finding buyers and finding sellers and finding the basically, like, middle price. And then that's how the price gets determined. And instead, the way that I was pitched, the liquidity pool, was instead, there's just like. As you buy a share, it actually, rather than getting given to somebody else, it actually gets put into this, like, pool of money. The larger the pool of money goes, logarithmically, the price of the stock goes up. So that each time you want to buy an Individual sort of new share, it gets more and more expensive until it basically gets infinitely expensive at the final share. And then the reverse happens is as people are selling, they just take their money out of the pool and then the price logarithmically goes down and the price actually never reaches zero because it just keeps shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. So the liquidity pool also never really reaches zero. In practice. I basically started to play around with this and there were some parts that were disappointing where I was like, oh, well, I do kind of understand, yeah, there needs to be a sort of counter token, let's say. And I found that some of the liquidity pools that I was playing around with, it was more that they were like playing around with the fact that there was actually volatility on both sides of the markets. If you had like a, you know, an Ether uni swap liquidity pool, well, the problem was like, it didn't really feel like I was trading into one or the other is mostly like dealing with the volatility of the two assets. Now you can obviously fix that if instead you had like a, you know, what I understand to be like a stable coin. And then, you know, Kanye's album on one side, great, the stable coin should stay stable and therefore the like, you know, volatility only comes from Kanye's album price basically like moving up and down. But after playing around with it for a weekend, I purposely, like, you know, I'm a relatively decent software engineer, you know, started playing around with it and it kind of started from scratch. Honestly, if I hadn't done the KYC from Coinbase, it would have taken even longer. I did that obviously six years ago, but like, it literally took me like, I think almost like 36 hours from start to finish from like buying Ether, buying Uni swap, to eventually actually getting those into a liquidity pool. And it was like obviously not continuous 36 hours, but like waiting for one thing, waiting for, you know, whatever. You know, gas prices that day were super high and things were taking forever, blah, blah. And even then just like understanding like, what is my LP position in this pool and the fees that I'm generating from like liquidity. Anyways, I came away from it being like, this is still probably a little closer to DARPA days than it is like ready for like Google to get co founded. And so I feel like my like, net conclusion was like, I'm not short crypto, I'm just more like I'm going to probably put it on a shelf for another two or three years, wait for like the True crypto believers to make it a little bit more mass market. And then I'm like, great, I'm ready to like fund a company maybe in another two or three years.

It almost feels like I'm cheating because we talked a little bit about this already off air, but you see the light at the end of the tunnel to some degree. Right? It's like, okay, cool. Like if this continues progressing, like there is going to be a lot of value created here. And there's bitcoin, there's other stuff, whatever. Right now though, it's hard to use the user experiences, the interfaces are different. Like it's just going to be really, really hard to go build a multi billion dollar, multi, you know, tens of billions of dollar company based on that idea. With that said, do you think at all about like that's company, right? Like a centralized entity versus these protocols that get created and like, let's hold constant for a second. Like there's just some, you know, manipulation that goes on or like, you know, Dogecoin ends up being, you know, $60 billion. Everyone's like, Ah, maybe. Right. But the protocol have value. Like have you thought yet about kind of protocols or market caps versus like company valuations and like how you, how they are similar or different?

Yeah, I mean somebody had a funny tweet on this and I might not be able to like remember the like exact wording, but it was basically like if you're thinking about how you're going to make a lot of money off your protocol, it's probably a company and it's not a protocol.

That's a great way to look at.

It because if you look at smtp, nobody made a lot of money off of SMTP or SMS or all these other protocols that like, you know, people talk about. And so I guess that's where, you know, I agree there's maybe something of like, yes, you want to incentivize early adopters of a protocol via token, et cetera. But I may be more skeptical of the world of decentralized companies. I think at the end of the day, really great things only happen when a small group of people come together, have an aligned vision and build it together. And protocols don't necessarily totally satisfy that.

Do you think that makes bitcoin an outlier in terms of this thing got built with millions of volunteers on the Internet or however you want to describe it? Is that because it's vying to be money versus like a productive, decentralized like entity?

Yeah, I mean it's like store value Feels like something that's like, yes, that does feel decentralized in some ways. Like, you want it to be like, that's part of why gold is such a great store of value, is like, nobody, like, owns gold. Gold is just like a material that is fully independent versus with, like, decentralized liquidity. Well, you know, if I'm Kanye and I'm listing my album somewhere, I'm probably only going to do that if I've got, like, a support number to call. You know what I mean? Like, they want. They still want a corporate entity as, like, a part of that. I think we're a ways away from people being willing to, like, trade such large assets. Again, why does Airbnb go IPO in the NASDAQ and not in, like, some, you know, crypto equivalent? It's like, there's somebody to call at the end of the day to, like, you know, deal with these large assets. I sometimes think about when people talk about, like, this is the thing that I always like, you know, I was actually pushing Arjun, you know, from Paradigm, really hard on this. I was like, how does a crypto transaction eventually happen where I buy a physical asset? Like, I buy a home at the end of the day, like, it still feels like mostly what happens today is it gets converted into fiat, and then fiat is used to go like, you know, buy the home. Because it turns out, like, you know, people, there's both regulations around buying homes. There's, you know, titles and things like that. And the world of like, all of that shifting fully to crypto in some ways requires the government buy in. And so you need the government to somehow start to issue these tokens. But in the day, there is a backing entity behind this. It's not like there's like some decentralized protocol for real estate, partially because it's like, well, okay, so if somebody like, you know, steals my. Whatever, you know, secret key and then literally, do they get to, like, steal my house? And is there literally, like, no retribution for that? Like, with bitcoin, I get it. Somebody steals your bitcoin, there's no retribution. That's fine. Same thing, kind of. You know, honestly, in the real world, there is at least some retribution for gold. Like, the US Government will try to, like, investigate on your behalf. Man, if people can, like, steal my house, if they just get into my secret key, and the government's not going to help me like that. And that's the world of, like, a decentralized protocol, that seems kind of tough. And so I still think there's going to be some amount of centralization.

Speaking of houses, last thing I want to talk about is Miami. You have a house here. You are one of many people who came to visit, I think, kind of as like a. Let me go check this out. Let's see. And then you're like, no, I'm actually going to move. And I hear you, dmv. And I was like, wait, is he kidding? Like, like, no way. He just got here like three days ago. And then you're like, no, no, no. Like, seriously, like, I'm doing it. So walk me back to you. Tweet while in San Francisco, you get retweeted by the mayor and he's like, how can I help? It's this whole thing now. What's your perspective on the whole Miami thing and, like, your role in this?

Yeah, I mean, we originally started debating, like, where would we open a second office in like July 2020, because Keith was really looking to, like, leave the Bay Area. And finally, maybe like September, October, we, like, settled in Miami. He, like, bought the house, decided to move. The entire time, I was just like, dude, like, how is he going to be as like, top tier investor? How is he going to win? Really competitive series is like, this in person stuff really does matter. That's going to come rebounding back, like, it feels totally impossible. And then in December was just like, sitting there and this is like in deep in the grout of Varda, you know, I mean, like, I've been working on, like, basically pulling the company from scratch, dealing with all the, you know, convincing the co founders that we should work on this equity splits, business plan, fundraising, etc. And it was like, it was rough doing that while also trying to do my founders fund job at the same time. Like, I felt like I was working crazy hours. The one thing that was keeping me sane was I could go have outdoor dining at the fucking Wild seed restaurant next to my house. It was like a nice way to, like, cap the night. And I remember just seeing the like, you know, announcement of like, we're shutting down outdoor dining. And I was like, sitting on the can, I was like, are you fucking kidding me? There's no scientific evidence that there's any outdoor spread. Why are they doing this? If anything's gonna make things worse? Because I guarantee you, people have now started to become accustomed to being social outdoors. Now they're gonna all go all indoors. It's gonna be even worse than if you just kept the outdoor dining. And so I said what I thought was, like, very obviously a Pithy tweet to my followers because I've been tweeting about, like, anti Miami things for the past, like, you know, month. And, like, arguing with Keith about it, like, publicly. And I was like, oh, fuck it. Like, what if we just, like, picked up Silicon Valley and, like, move to Miami so we don't have to deal with it's like outdoor dining stuff. And then, you know, lo and behold, like, the mayor, quote, tweeted it and he was like, you got to come visit. Like, this went viral, blah, blah. And I was like, dude, like, I just started this company and like, we have 14 people that are starting, like, in our LA office on like, whatever, Jan.19th. I don't have time to fucking, like, think about a Miami trip. But anyways, Varda sort of got off the ground. We got everybody onboarded. We had this first, you know, whatever board meeting early March, and like, Keith's birthday was like, you know, second or third week of March. And I was like, you know, maybe I can afford to go, like, visit Miami for a week. Go check it out. I remember talking to my girlfriend, like that Sunday before we arrived. We're like, there's no fudgeing way we're moving. Like, Varda's in L. A. Like, all my friends are in San Francisco. Keith totally wrong about this thing. Like, there's no way. And then over the course of the week, a couple, like, you know, cracks started to appear in my argument. Like, you know, on Wednesday, I remember, like, going out to dinner with Keith and just like looking around the restaurant, be like, Jesus, like, this is like the deck, which is like this, you know, restaurant that's actually like pretty close here. And I was like, this is a more vibrant and happy and like, laughing, like, lifestyle and vibe in this restaurant than like even like the best restaurant. And like, choose your favorite evening, San Francisco, whatever you want, New Year's, anything. It is like, less fun and less happy than, like, how happy I feel right now. And I care a lot about being happy because I think it does make you, like, work harder. And I found that in Miami that I work a lot harder. And then the following night I went to this, like, tech party that you were also at, like, whatever in March, where I just walked in the room and I remember just being like, oh, my God, there are more top tier VCs, builders, like, you know, engineers, founders in this room than what I've seen in San Francisco for years. San Francisco used to have these, like, very fun, ostentatious parties. Like, I remember in like 2014, 15, going to these, like, crazy pool parties in Woodside. You'd see, like, everybody. All these types of builders. And, like, it sounds kind of silly, but I actually do think those parties are important because, like, those spontaneous interactions sometimes lead, you know, somebody who maybe works in space to talk with a D2C E commerce thing. And turns out there's actually some sort of collaboration. And, like, when those sort of parties started to get canceled over the course of, like, you know, cancel culture in San Francisco, you just lost out on that. And so people didn't have these, like, spontaneous interactions nearly as often. And I do think that's quite important. Like, I remember from that party in March, I knew that, like, six or seven investments happened. Like, multiple deals got signed. Like, a lot of things happened from that party. And I walked in and I sort of. Like, I said it originally as a joke to a friend, but then the moment the words left my mouth, I was literally like, I don't know how the fuck I'm getting on that return flight to San Francisco. And the moment that hit, and I said it, and, like, I had not been thinking about it until that moment. And then I said it, and I looked at my friend, I was like, oh, my God, I'm moving to fucking Miami, aren't I? I was like, I think I am. And then Nadia, by the way, my girlfriend, was having a completely, like, parallel experience where she had actually left Miami for two days to go to Disney World with all of her friends. And I kind of describe her as, like, you know, she's much more like, the public intellectual, writer, researcher, like, much more creative than I am.

Smarter.

Much smarter than I am. You know, she was having this parallel experience where one, all of her, like, friends had already moved to Miami. And she just felt like her, like, creative energy was so much more unlocked by being in this place that was much more intellectually diverse, physically diverse, so many more colors and beauty than she was seeing in San Francisco. And so she had actually been having this whole discussion with her friends as she was driving back down from Disney World for, like, this dinner that we were gonna have Friday night together, where she was like, oh, my God, I need to have this, like, very serious conversation with Delian where, like, I want to spend more time in Miami because I'm really happier here, and I'm enjoying it here. And I know he really loves San Francisco, but, like, I really. I can't go back to San Francisco. I need to be, like, spending more time here. And she's like, arrives at dinner and it's like, delian, I think we should spend more time in Miami. And I just, like, replied to her. I was like, I think she just moved to Miami. She was like, what? I was like, I think we should just move. And that was literally, like. We basically, like, didn't talk about it after that. We were like, great, we're moving to Miami. That was, like, it. That was the extent of the discussion. Then Sunday morning, we woke up, took a Vespa around the city, went to a couple of open houses, and basically, like, bought the, like, you know, second house that we visited. And we're like, great. Put in the offer the next morning, and, you know, started planning the move. And that was the extent of it. 48 hours from, you know, deciding to moving.

What was Keith's reaction when you told him?

He was, at first, I think, like, almost, like, in disbelief that, like, it happened. But there was actually a sort of nice text that I got where the actual moment that I texted him that we got the offer accepted, he actually happened to be on a zoom call with a, like, mutual friend of ours. The mutual friend said that, like, that was, like, the happiest he'd ever seen Keith in a long time. So it was nice to, you know, nice to get that text.

I feel like he really, really stuck his neck out there, like, put his reputation online and said, hey, like, this is real. And your story is very common where even myself, I came and I came because I just wanted to get out of New York for a weekend, Right?

Yep.

And then I was like, wait, this is, like, weird. Like, I think it was Mateo and Alex from eight Sleep, Stephen from Cameo, Keith, Like. Like, there was an. And I was like, wait a minute. Like, there's way more people here than I thought there were. And then we came back the next weekend for a whole week, and I was like, are we gonna do. Like, you almost are like, am I getting tricked? Like, like, what's the catch?

Exactly.

And then the. It's funny you say happiness. That's how I describe people. I say, I'm a happier Miami that encompasses a whole bunch of different things. I don't know if it's the sun, if it's the people, if it's just the environment, if it's the diversity of, you know, kind of. This is, like, the capital of South America. Some people describe it, whatever it is. I do feel like people are happier and there's higher energy. And some people will look at that from a work perspective and say, I work harder. Some people just look at it like it's a higher quality of life.

Yeah, I mean for me, I'm like, all I care about is, you know, my number one goal in life is I want to be one of the best investors of all time. And I want to build a lot of very big space companies over the course of my career. And when I'm happier, I just work harder. And so I just like can't imagine like ever deprioritizing that and like moving somewhere elsewhere than Miami. Cause it's just like there's no fucking way I like work harder here than I did in San Francisco. Moving back would involve like compromising my productivity and I have like zero willingness to do so. And then, yeah, also it turns out like the weekends are a lot more fun. And then like part of the reason I'm also much more productive is like I'll work a 12 hour day and then like, you know, in San Francisco if it was 9pm, it's like you're going home, all the restaurants are closed, you're uber eating like some shitty burrito. And like you're watching Netflix with like your girlfriend versus here at 9pm it's like I can go to Mila, I can have a quick like one hour meal. And by the way, there's like fire dancers, a dj. I'm having a great fucking time. And like what I've realized is like this took me a while to figure out how to articulate like why it was so refreshing is because when you're in that like burrito Netflix watching mode in San Francisco, it's kind of still like the same Delian that was like the work delian. Like it's not like change versus 15 minutes or so into Mila. Like for sure, the first 15 minutes I'm kind of like in work mode. And then at some point you just like have so many people laughing around you and the lounge music and the fire dancers that about like 20 or 30 minutes in, you just kind of transform into like what I call like vacation dalian. And it's like you're happier and you're excited and all the stress and like the shit you had to deal with all day like totally melt away. And just being able to sort of have that like literally like daily reset of like having everything just totally melt away allows me to like then approach the next day. I feel like a much fresher, clearer mind and like work super hard again.

Everyone in San Francisco knows the tech industry is there and everyone's in tech. And therefore like you go to the Bar. Everyone should talk about work stuff, right? Especially if you're public on Twitter. Like, if somebody sees you at the bar, like, hey, let's talk about this. Oh, space founder, fun. Whatever. I got to start up. Let me pitch you. Like, like, all the craziness here. Nobody gives a shit.

Exactly.

Like, literally, there's not a person in Mila who gives a shit about the tech industry. They're literally here from every industry, all different cities. Some people from the United States. Not from the United States, whatever. Like, there's. There. Have a good time.

Time.

And I think that's what you're kind of getting at is, like, you don't feel like everywhere you go from the coffee shop where you see all the VCs and founders to then work, to then you go to a restaurant and then you go home and you do it all over again. Like, it's just. You just are seeing the same people that are in the same industry over and over and over again in San Francisco. And Miami is completely different.

There's such a melting pot here in so many different ways, right? Like, I love the fact that you have people that are, like, Barry Stern, like, one of the best real estate investors, operators of, like, all time. You have Thomas Bravo, one of the best PE firms of all time. You have, like, Antonio Gracias, one of the best deep tech investors of all time. And you have Keith Rabboy, one of the best, like, fintech, health care tech, like, you know, more consumer venture investors of all time. Those never were ever. Like, it was impossible to get all four of those types of people in one room anywhere in the world. Because, like, the likelihood of them actually coordinating travel or going to the same conference is quite low. Whereas in Miami, that happens all the time. So you both have this, like, intellectual melting pot. But then obviously also you have the, like, cultural, like, diverse melting pot. Like, what I love about Miami is, like, nobody's talking about race, because there's just so many different people from so many different types. Like, why, like, nobody. It's not even, like, ridiculous to even, like, talk about it. Versus I went back to, like, San Francisco this past weekend for, like, a friend's birthday. And I remember it was, like, shocking to me. Like, I walked on Chestnut street literally for, like, five minutes. And, like, the thing that just kept going through my head, I was like, there are so many fucking white people here. And I never appreciated it until, like, now living in Miami, we're, like, now. It just feels, like, so jarring, where I'm like, oh, my God, I just, like, my olive skin does not fucking fit in here. And now I get why I feel so much more relaxed in a city of immigrants that is much closer weather to Bulgarian weather, where, like, nobody asks me who I am, where I'm from, etc. Because, like, doesn't fucking matter. Everybody's got a weird name and has a weird accent and, like, has, you know, weird colored skin. And so it doesn't fucking matter. Nobody's gonna ask you about it. Nobody's gonna judge you based off it versus in San Francisco. They're all fucking looking the same. And they're the ones that are constantly talking about, like, racial politics, critical race theory. And it's like the only reason you guys are talking about that is gonna fucking look the same.

I wish I had a microphone you could drop. All right, I got three questions before I let you go. You could ask me one. Most important book you've ever read.

Oh, man. Probably. God, I just love. I mean, I don't know if it's, like, important in that it changed me, but I just love 7eves by Neal Stephenson. It's about this, basically, this, like, they call it, like a critical event where basically what is probably like a small amount of antimatter passes through the moon, causes the moon to start breaking up, and then basically causes like an Armageddon type situation where eventually a bunch of meteorites from that basically collision two years later are going to rain down onto the moon. And it's just like this amazing story of just like the whole, like, you know, world having to coalesce around. Oh, my God, the Earth is ending. We have two years to figure out a ton of different interesting space technologies and figure out how to make ourselves a space faring, you know, civilization. But I like it because it's like, written in a very, like, hard science, very realistic way based off of, like, today's technologies. Like, it's not written with some, like, crazy. We have nuclear or whatever, you know, starships. Like, it's like, if we like, literally today had to figure this shit out and figure out how to like, you know, make it so the entire human race could survive off Earth, like, what would we do basically for the next two years? And I always think about that because I'm like, that's almost like the pace that I want Varda operating at is like, if we don't make VAR to work and like, make ourselves a multi planetary organization, like civilization, like, you know, we could actually end up in the scenario where, you know, an asteroid comes and kills us all that's very deep.

All right, eight sleep. I sleep on the thermoregulated bed. I'm assuming you do as well. What's your sleep schedule?

I'm pretty diligent about it. I'd say it's probably like, you know, in bed at like 10:30, 10:45, asleep by basically like 11, 11:15. I have, I think at this point I was counting it up. I think it's like six, eight sleeps in my life. So I have one that sits in the Varda office in la. So every time I fly there I go directly to the office, pick it up and then I go install it at the hotel room that I'm at. There's not enough hotel rooms right now with eight sleeps near the office. I have two in my parents house in Utah and then two, you know, here in Miami.

So you're, you're a believer?

Yeah, I'm 100% a believer. I actually slept on the very first eight sleep outside of the founders. It was like a jumble of wires, some sketchy looking pump. It woke me up a couple of times because it was like, you know, way too cold.

But did you think you like peed in the bed or something?

Yeah, exactly, exactly. There are a lot of. There were some rough moments the first couple of years of prototyping.

Yeah. But it's great. I love it. Aliens believer or non believer?

That's a good question. I don't know if I believe that the UFO stuff that we're seeing is caused by aliens, but I for sure think that there are sentient aliens that are probably much closer to us, almost certainly for sure in the Milky Way and also much closer to us than probably we expect.

So I agree. Difference between UFOs and aliens, the odds that the UFOs are just things that we haven't identified or figured out yet, but not aliens, probably pretty high if they're in the Milky Way or closer than we think. Do you think in our lifetimes we'll be able to communicate even from afar or like recognize? Or do you think it's something where they're probably out there, but it's just the technology barrier is too big and we won't be able to actually find them?

I don't think in our lifetime, but I mean, yeah, when you're doing these far up projections, kind of hard. But next 300 years. Absolutely. If you like, you know, just track the pace of our exponential progress in space in terms of just like sphere of influence and how quickly humanity can grow and just say okay. Imagine that bubble just continues to expand for sure, over the next 300 years. Almost certainly, at some point, that bubble will get large enough where we will eventually interact with a. With another alien species.

All right, you could ask me one question to finish up. What you got for me.

Okay. What is your favorite part about dating somebody that's Bulgarian? Or, sorry, married? Married to somebody that's Bulgarian and maybe least favorite as well. Yeah, but it has to be Bulgarian specific. Can't you really be, like, Polina specific?

Yeah, yeah. Due to the fact that she's Bulgarian, I think that. Well, there's the Bulgarian experience is what I'll call it. So there's this element of, like, toughness, which I actually can't separate. Is it just, like, the immigrant element of it versus, like, the Bulgarian specific element of it? But there's many situations where you just kind of, like, you didn't complain, you didn't whatever. Like, just the way that you handle that situation is very, very different than almost any other person. I know that in that situation. And, like, that toughness, to me, has to be from the experience, whether it's immigrant or Bulgaria together. And one of the funniest things I think, in terms of. I've been to Bulgaria now, I think, three or four times. I know enough words to be dangerous to, like, tell her mother, like, or her grandmother, I love her, and she's beautiful and, like, you know, whatever. Right. But Polina's father lived through the hype, hyperinflation in Bulgaria, literally. At one point, his salary ended being the clone of, like, 30 cents a month. And so he just, like, stopped going to work.

Yeah.

And talking to him, I get reminded all the time of the American ideals and, like, the ethos and the freedom and, like, democracy and capitalism. Like, all the things that sound so stupid. Like, why do you care about that stuff? Like, no, go talk to somebody who lived through communism. Like, they literally will be like, that sucked. This is way better.

Exactly.

And so, like, Polina has an element to it, too, where she's not as vocal about it, but, like, there's, you know, a lot of stuff that happened over the last year. So she's just like, man, it's a lot of complaining going on, but, like, I came from a country, like, that wasn't so cool. Compared to this country, it's kind of pretty cool. And so I think, like, you just get that constant reminder of, like, hey, there's a lot of things that can be improved, but we got it pretty good right now.

Yeah, I think that's partially why I love Miami so much is like, it's a bunch of people that all hate communism. Like, I remember I was just like, political event. And like, this, like, old Cuban guy comes up to me. He's probably, like, 55 or 60, and he's like, like, you know, why are you here at this event? Like, why do you like it so much? And he was like, well, I grew up in Bulgaria. And then he cut me off. He's like, that's all you gotta say. I was like, yep, that's it.

It's crazy because I do think that there. There's this element of, like, America was the upstart, America was the challenger, and we did such a great job, and we ascended to this position of power and, frankly, privilege right in the world of. Just, like, I was born in the United States, and I never had to worry about hyperinflation, never had to worry about communism, never had to worry about this stuff. And also, we were indoctrinated into like, well, democracy is good. Like, yeah, no shit, right? Like, okay, capitalism, whatever. But there's a different appreciation for it when you come from a place that doesn't have it and now you have it, right? Like, you almost. You get to understand what the other side looks like versus, like, reading it in a book. And so just like, there is this element of many immigrants that have experienced that they just. They understand.

That's why we're so fearful of, like, you know, when you start to see things that, like, diverge away from what we believe to be, like, democratic capitalism. I think there's much more of, like, an averse reaction to that as an immigrant versus I feel like some of my friends that are born and raised here have become somewhat complacent with the idea of, like, oh, well, maybe we can do, like, universal xyz, you know, benefit and just pay everybody to not work xyz. And, like, all the people that have come from there, you're like, no, no, no, no. We know how this starts and where this game ends. Like, no fucking way are we going down that path.

We're not gonna go there. Where can we send people to find more about Varda, Founders Fund, or you on the Internet?

So for varda, it's just varda.com so pretty easy. We put up, you know, a bunch of interesting stuff. We'll have a new website coming pretty soon for myself, probably my Twitter handle at Zebulgar. Z E B U L G A R And then founders fund, probably founders fund.com and the founders Fund handle at Founders Fund.

Awesome, man. Thank you. We'll do this again.

Absolutely. Thanks, Pomp.