Spaceman Explains to Earthman How Things Work (with Delian Asparouhov) | Newcomer podcast

Hey, it's Eric Newcomer. Welcome to the Newcomer Podcast. This week I have Delian Asparohov, the co founder of Varda and a partner at Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. Varda has sent a satellite into space and is planning on manufacturing drugs there. A really exciting company and we dig into space startups more broadly. Give it a listen. Before that, a word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Juniper Square. It's time to let go of the disjointed technology used in venture and private equity. Today. More than 1800 GPs now rely on Juniper Square to manage over $700 billion in investor equity. Juniper Square offers a unified solution for fund administration, fundraising and investor operations. Work with an institutional grade fund administrator you can trust and get a shared source of truth for all your fund and investor data. Learn more@junipersquare.com that's J U N I P E R S Q U A R E dot com. Juniper Square. Thanks so much now for my conversation with Delian. Delian, welcome to the Newcomer Podcast. Thanks for coming.

Thanks for having me, Eric.

Well, I assume you're at Vardo right now. What's the background scene here?

That's basically our facility in the background. This conference room has a nice viewpoint and it happened to be the only one that was available right now.

Where is the facility?

It's about like 10 minutes south of LAX in this town called El Segundo on Aviation Boulevard. It's literally like a boulevard that is filled with like, we're on the same block as like the Space Force's headquarters here in la. There's an Air Force base down the street. Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, etcetera, All have offices within like a quarter of a mile.

When did you open it up?

We moved in this office May 22, so call it a year. And, you know, sort of two, three months ago.

And how many people roughly are working there right now?

We're about 83, 84 people full time. I think that's with interns and everything. Maybe gets up to like 86, 87. Somewhere around there.

Has it hit you? I feel like I run like this little newsletter business. You know, I have an employee, but I feel like being at home really changes the vibe. And then when I go to like a friend whose company has like an office and he's learning, you know, it's intense. And then when I see this, I'm like, oh, man, that must really hit you. Or what was it like to like, open up an office like that?

You know, at the time, I think it was actually more like existential terror in that, you know, it was going to be like a massive expense in that when we were considering the lease and actually signing it, the amount that it was going to increase our burn was definitely not insignificant. And I definitely, at one point, you know, I think it's like the first time I'm revealing this publicly. There was actually a point where after we had already signed the lease, I almost wanted to, like, back out of it because, like, we're not ready. Like, the company isn't going to do well enough to justify this. This is going to be the thing that, like, kills us because, like, we, like, moved into a too big of an office too quickly. And then I actually called Matt Grimm, the CEO over at Andrew, and I was like, bro, like, how the fuck do you get comfortable, right, with this level of, like, monthly burn just on the office, you're, like, accomplishing anything. This is just like, how is the people, like, let alone like, actually invest into, like, the hardware and the things that like, you know, our customers are actually, like, paying for, you know, And I think, you know, he just, he was like, look, you just, like, you're building a startup dial. Like, you have to bet on upside and the fact that it's going to work, if you, like, keep thinking about what's going to happen if it doesn't work, you're never going to give yourself the opportunity to work. And you guys are clearly packed in like sardines. Your prior office. It's a lot of effort for this type of company to switch offices. Like, this isn't like a SaaS company where you're just like, swapping over a bunch of, like, laptops and desks. Like, you can kind of see it. There's a bunch of equipment out there. And that equipment is not something that you can, like, hire Joe's Movers to go move. That is equipment that, like, needs to be uninstalled by a, like, highly skilled engineer technician and then reinstalled at the new location, right? And so if you don't move into an office that you can at least be at for like, two or three years in the upside case, then you're spending a lot of effort, you know, every single year.

How many people could work out of this office?

It depends on who you ask and, you know, what, you know, constraints you focus on. You know, we probably run out of parking at like, like, you know, 1:3140 mark, but we technically could jam in like, you know, 200250 in terms of like, you know, desks and like office space. And so SpaceX did this back in the day where they actually like got a parking lot nearby and they would shuttle people. But I guess there was just some level of like morale hit because, like, you could have just like walk out of the office and go to your car. You had to like walk out, wait for the shuttle, then get to your car, etc. Even at a relatively small scale. So anyways, we have to figure that out. But I feel confident we've got at least another, you know, to two years at minimum in here. And we've already been here for a year and a half and the goal was it needs to be just something that like lasts at least three years. I feel pretty good about. Even if we do have to upgrade in two years.

You tweeted that you were, you had a month where you're July maybe where you're cash flow positive. Is that right? What does that mean exactly?

Technically, it could mean that we just like received investment dollars and that was what caused our bank had to go up. That like, you know, very simple term of it is just like if you look at, you know, sort of cash in the bank, you know, the 31st of the prior month and then the 31st of the next month did basically like cash go up or down. It's a very.

So it was about investment dollars or.

It was not in theory, one could have, you know, done this with investment dollars. So that's why it's not that important of a metric because it confounds many of the different variables. Right. It's nothing like free cash flow positive or EBITDA positive, et cetera. This is why you have these type of terms, because you can't build this type of business just that simply. However, ours was a customer payment from that Air Force contract that we announced earlier this year. And that payment was larger than our total all in burn that month. And so our bank account did go up because of customer payments.

That's great.

Yeah.

Okay. We'll talk more about Varda in a bit. Lk 99, the sort of, the idea that there is a superconductor at room temperature. You know, people think a new maglev type train or certainly consumer electronics. You know, you're working in space manufacturing. I'm sure you're thinking of tons of different ways you could put it to use. What was your initial reaction when you sort of read about the research paper in the first place?

For the first 24 hours, it was definitely sort of like extreme curiosity. You know, my first reaction was go to our chief scientific officer whose prior background was actually at this company called LAM Research that does, you know, phenomenal world class material science and helps basically bring mostly semiconductors to market. So he has a really strong background in the sort of exact type of sort of physics materials that the superconductor was based off of. And so my first reaction was like, this could be a fraud, but let me just like go ask our chief scientific officer. And his response was like, there's a there, like you know, I don't have the time right now to like, you know, dig into this and validate it, but like at first glance it's definitely possible. And so then I was extremely excited for the first 24 hours.

Did you say something negative about it or I forget?

No, I don't remember exactly. I know my emotional states at the various times. I don't remember my like tweets at various times. But for the second 24 hours I was extremely skeptical because there was a handful of the, I think like, if I'm remembering it was like certain graphs in the original like Korean paper just had some weird anomalies that made it look like it was fabricated data. The you know, authors then did eventually, you know, respond and basically 48 hours after the paper was published, then the first handful of like, you know, sort of supportive comments started to come in and some of the dynamics around like the co authors, what, why the drama there started to come out as well. So then I sort of got like more and more bullish and then basically have generally gotten more and more bullish basically since you know, hour 48. So it's an interesting roller coaster where it was like first 24 hours elated, second 24 hours really depressing and then steadily basically improvement over the past like you know, sort of 10 days or so in terms of my, I mean.

You guys interest replicated it, right? I mean basically in some form or what motivated you to sort of actually spend company time on it?

Yeah, you know, I believe we were the first, yeah, at least like you know, sort of public verifiable attempt at the replication. You know, I still think there's you know, work to be done to verify whether did we perfectly replicate it, did we get a, you know, sample, et cetera. Obviously there's work to be done, but.

You had little things standing up basically.

Right. There were some, you know, and those could be explained by, you know, different effects potentially. You know, I'd still say I think there is a decent Likelihood that we had some non just, you know, standard iron filings, ferromagnetic, you know, sort of sample on there. There was some sort of either extremely strong diameter magnetism, which is, you know, weird in and of itself a 1D superconductor or potentially actually superconducting material in those samples. But yeah, we were the very first, basically, I believe, you know, again, publicly, you know, disclosed and verifiable Western, let's say NATO country replication attempt. Why did we decide to do it? This is definitely much more, you know, nights and weekends project than it was like a whole company project or anything like that. But yeah, there's just like a handful of engineers that, you know, in the first 24 hours recognized that because of the type of chemistry that these Koreans were doing and the skills that were necessary for it, it had a oddly weird overlap with the work that we do at VARDA in relation to biopharmaceutical solid state formulation. And so we had all of the necessary equipment to do the replication already in our facility and some of the precursors were obtainable within, call it, 24 hours to three or four days via, you know, sort of commercial supply chains. So yeah, we basically decided, you know, a handful of the sort of engineers said, hey, let's like, you know, try and do a, you know, 19 weekends replication of this. Obviously our chief engineer, Andrew McCaleb got, you know, a ton of attention on Twitter as he was publicly docum, great recruiting, marketing.

Certainly worst case scenario, I imagine.

Yeah, it's if you can see what we can do nights and weekends over the course of eight days. Imagine what we're doing here day in, day out. Yeah, we're really, really happy with, you know, sort of how it portrayed the company over the past, you know, eight, 10 days. And then at this point definitely sort of handing off the project to sort of the academic and national labs where this type of work is sort of more appropriate to be done.

The goal is to produce like this, the Meisner effect. Right.

I would say the goal is to produce superconductors and then obviously an effect that superconductors have could be effect, but there's a wide set of applications of superconduct factories.

I mean right now it sounds like you're like this back to academia. You're not like, oh, this is going to be important to VARDA in any meaningful way in the next couple years.

Or no, this stuff is, you know, where the like, you know, transistor was, you know, in the, you know, very early days. There's still a lot of work that needs to go into like experimenting around the formulation of this, getting the yields higher, understanding how to get this from like right now, what is like crumbles of rocks into something that can actually be like used commercially. Right, right. You know, even like the original sort of high temperature or sorry, you know, they're called high temperature superconductors. But the things that you know, can you operate at the temperatures that liquid nitrogen is at. Those took over a decade from initial discovery to actually large scale commercial use. And now they are used every MRI machine in hospitals. Commonwealth Fusions, Bill Gates Fusion company utilizes them at significant scale. But yeah, that took like a decade plus. And so it's just we're fundamentally a venture backed commercial company. Basic research is not necessarily the best place for us to be doing this. I do hope somebody I was texting with a friend earlier, Locky Groom about how somebody should create the equivalent of like fast grants for Covid, but for LK99 where it's like this stuff is more fundamental basic research, but it could probably be done best outside of a truly traditional academic or like national lab setting. But it needs to be somebody that's like just funding it for goodwill because you're not going to see return on that capital for you know, five, ten years, you know, potentially longer.

After our conversation, Delian tweeted, alas, the rocks we made floated due to iron impurities. We did confirm we were able to synthesize the lead appetite lattice. So it's not looking good for room temperature superconduction. I'm glad you brought up Covid because it felt on Twitter or X or a lot like that moment where Silicon Valley felt like it had caught on to something in a way that the rest of the world can sort of feel flat footed. Right. And clearly with COVID it panned out big time and ended up being a big prediction. It's harder to tell this, you know, to some level. You know, there's nothing wrong with just like enthusiasm on Twitter. It doesn't necessarily have to be world predictive. I feel like in the case of COVID it became sort of a test case for you know, media blindness and, and sort of Twitter accuracy. But yeah, I guess, I mean you see the connection when I'm getting that there, I'm curious, like, yeah, how predictive does this have to be? Or like, is it just like it's fine to be enthusiastic here regardless of whether this is like a world historical event or how much do you take sort of your enthusiasm here to be a sign that this is truly a significant research paper.

You know, I think at this point it's pretty clear that this was, you know, sort of a field of academia that was somewhat discarded after the Soviet Union collapsed. They were by far the sort of world class, you know, in this particular call it like shake and bake chemistry, you know, sort of alchemy especially. Why you see that, you know, sort of Russian, you know, cat, anime girl, Iris gb She actually studied under one of the last Soviet Union professors that previously, you know, had a lab that was running this and then the Koreans also had a connection to that original, you know, sort of last, you know, standing Russian lab. So I think it's sort of pretty clear that this is a sort of academic field that needs to be revived and in some ways, again, borrows a lot of, you know, sort of analogies and, you know, potential techniques from the biopharmaceutical world around you can just make these like, you know, very disparate, unique solid state formulations. They're very difficult to predict in terms of how they interact, but they can have like, very weird, you know, sort of effects. And again, it was just something that like, hasn't been a field of study because it's one that is not particularly like theoretically sexy in that it's a very practically applied, you know, sort of science. And then after you create things, you may be able to understand the theory.

Behind them, to dumb it down and tell me if this is wrong. But it's like you're saying in medicine and drugs it's like there's a lot of value in sort of coming up with random drugs that might have uses without like a clear theory behind why. Right. And similarly here we could have an awesome material that could be really good for industry without it proving something about science that people are necessarily.

Yeah, the biopharma world has like no ego around. We're just going to like throw shit at the wall and see what sticks basically. And then like afterwards figure out basically what's going on. And in materials world, for some reason, you know, especially around superconductors, that just like, hasn't been the way that people have sort of thought about things. And so I think, you know, what this has unlocked is in, or I would hope that it unlocks is like that the NSF funds a billion dollars to basically create like if you look in like the early 2000s, especially around small molecules, which is the sort of primary drug category, if you think of like something like ibuprofen, it's a Small molecule. In the early 2000s, there was a ton of effort basically around doing basically mass scale robotic creation of small molecules and screening of them. So rather having to basically like rely on individual basically scientists doing pipetting and process control and things like that, you'd instead have this like mass scale screening. And now this is like an extremely standardized, like commoditized offering even so much so that like we actually exported a decent amount of it to, you know, the Chinese, like companies like Wuxi for example. This is basically like their, you know, sort of bread and butter is like doing this stuff as like a service. And so one would hope that basically the NSF is recognizing, hey, there's a parallel pattern here. We actually need to invest like a billion dollars into incentivizing people to actually go create this type of, you know, mass scale robotics. And it is going to have to look very different than biopharma. If you think about the temperature ranges, the types of elements that you're working with, they're very different than what you're working with in biopharma. These things are obviously like non organic, you know, metal compounds that are being done at much higher temperatures. Some of these things have explosive properties. And so there's definitely like somebody needs to go create a robotic facility that does this stuff basically like you know, at scale, you know, safely to go figure out what is eventually that chemistry that really does produce like kind of like the blockbuster result. And then that's the thing that one day can get commercialized. But you know, if I had to put finger in the air, guessing on timeline, it's like minimum two years, probably closer to like five years for that infrastructure to get built. Somebody defined that formulation that actually is sort of viable, then it's going to like begin the commercialization and like, you know, the early places will probably just be where superconductors are already used today, like MRI machines, like fusion, etc. And it's going to be like a ways away until like you have like, I don't know, you know, consumer floating skateboards or you know, whatever you want to think about.

Okay, so Varda, what is your focus at the moment? What are you trying to build today?

So our goal is to basically take some of the research that's been shown on the International Space Station to have a ton of promise in terms of, you know, like we've been talking about solid state formulation. It turns out solid state formulation is significantly affected by gravity. That may also be true in superconductors. So one day down the line, if somebody does discover these formulations and they're showing issues that we think gravity could actually solve. There's a world where Varda flies a superconductor in four or five years, but definitely not anytime soon, given that the biopharmacy is so much more sort of proven.

Sorry, I'm going to be dumb again. To me, solid state, I think of like hard drives. Is that or. What do you mean solid state formation?

Oh yeah. So if you look at basically what's happening both in the superconductors and what we do in like biopharma world, you're basically taking things that were previously like very fine grained powders or liquids. You're basically making solid state crystalline like versions of them. And so in the biopharma world that ends up looking like a little bit of table salt that you take. And it turns out that thing actually has like a, you know, drug cancer molecule in it or MRNA molecules. In the world of superconductors, it turns into these things that look like, I mean, you've seen the money. Anders, Twitter. They look like these kind of like weird half ceramic, half metal, shiny, you know, kind of objects. So solid state is just what form is the matter, you know, sort of in. And solid state in particular typically means it's a larger crystalline lattice structure, not just like individual small.

And the atoms thesis then is that solid state manufacturing is easier in space.

Yeah. Basically when you think about what is solid state manufacturing, it's not just the individual atoms. Right. Being solids themselves, it's specifically what is that crystalline lattice structure that is formed as you're like melting down. This is why, for example, the superconductors are having this like yield problem where you have these like, you know, lead and then these copper, phosphorus, you know, atoms, occasionally they happen to arrange themselves in just the perfect state where they like, you know, appear to potentially creating a superconductor. You sometimes see the same issues in biopharmaceuticals where things arrange themselves in just a particular state where it then allows it to be like dissolved in your blood or delivered through the blood brain barrier or allows it to be shelf stable on a shelf at a pharmacy. And when you go up to gravity, basically what you remove are what are known as convective currents. And so to explain those sort of really quickly, if I basically light a candle in front of me here on the desk and I put my hand above it, I basically taught that as a kid, hot air rises. Why is that actually happening? You basically have this like combustion reaction. It's creating Thermal energy, that atmosphere around it is basically becoming less dense because it's basically got that thermal energy getting transferred to kinetic energy. And when you're in a gravitational field, right, less dense gases or less dense liquids move to the top. Right Is why you're not as a kid again, the hot air rises. So let's take that same candle. Imagine you and I were on a space station. I light it, you know, in front of us. What actually happens, you still can light the candle and it's still basically like, we'll start that combustion reaction. The gas around it still gets hotter and actually, you know, becomes less dense. But there's no gravity to make it like go up or down, right? And so what ends up happening is instead basically that gas just very steadily diffuses throughout the entire room. So think about, you know, both. Again, this is why it's been kind of fun. This is the first time actually talking about both in parallel, but it applies to basically both, right? Imagine you have a bunch of lead or copper atoms, or you have a bunch of like, you know, sort of, you know, carbon and oxygen and hydrogen atoms or whatever you have in biopharma land. If you are thinking about what is a solid state formulation, you're basically typically applying some level of like thermal energy to disparate atom structures. And those atoms typically have different weights. And so the lead might end up starting to move faster or slower than the copper does. And so because that one's less dense than the other. And so just like on a candle where you have that hot air rising and then you actually have cold air coming in, typically at these like crystalline lattice scales, so not at like the super microscopic scale, which is like two atoms attaching, but you're thinking about hundreds of atoms and how they form lattices. They're like dominant, basically like what's known as like a transport mechanism or basically the dominant factor that affects how these atoms arrange themselves when you're in a gravitational field is convective pressures. So basically, like, how do they move, you know, due to the thermal pressure versus when you go up into zero gravity? There is no up, there's no down, there's no convective pressures. And so instead you can actually heat things up and they just stay in a very basically like stable state. So in some ways you can kind of arrange them how you want, heat them up, cool them down, freeze them basically in that solid state form that you want. And you don't have these basic convective pressures constantly moving around. So this has been, you know, proven on The International Space Station in the world of biopharmaceuticals, you know decently well. So one of the blockbuster results was done by Merck, by the scientist Paul Reichardt. He basically showed that Merck has his blockbuster drug, Keytruda does $25 billion a year of revenue for them right now. It's a monoclonal antibody, biologic, basically just it's a drug that is very large and simpler way of saying it. And when this drug that is very large, they try to make a solid state form of it because it's very large and basically flops around. It moves a lot when it's being like basically crystallized because it's particularly they.

Does Merck make it in space? Or they just show they could, but they end up making it.

Merc currently makes it on the ground. And when they make it on the ground it flops around so much that it makes these really large crystals. They basically are very varying in size, diameter, et cetera. And so because of that it's difficult for them to control dosing when they give it to a patient because it breaks down in disparate rates in your blood. And so you end up having to go into an intravenous clinic every single day for anywhere from like one to four hours and actually have a nurse basically monitoring your dosing so you get it appropriately. They're able to show on the International Space Station when they crystallize it because you don't have any gravity there, it's not flopping around. And so instead it basically just forms a bunch of individual crystals that are basically all the exact same size. And so what does that mean? I know exactly how it's going to dose and how much I can give you. Second incentive is basically send you home with a bunch of syringes. So Merck and Paul Reichert from Merck in particular proved this out on the International Space Station. But they had no way of commercializing it because fundamentally a government run, human rated space station is not a place where even a company like Merck can say, hey, shut down the like you know, Dubai or you know, shut down like you know, Saudi Arabia sending, you know, astronauts up there or the Russians instead let me take over this whole station and do mass manufacturing. Merck both doesn't know how to do that because they don't develop hardware and you know, NASA, you know, wouldn't let them do so. So Varda's whole thesis was how do we take those types of results and allow companies like Merck to scale them up and I think one of the most exciting moments for the company was on the day of our launch we had a CNN article come out that unbeknownst to us, the journalist had actually reached out to Paul Reichardt at Merck. This, like, you know, world famous, you know, probably the most famous scientist in microgravity, you know, pharmaceutical manufacturing. He had a quote in there. Well, you know, try to roughly paraphrase, which is basically like the International Space Station was like a great place for me to do my initial research, but there are significant limitations in cost and cadence. I'm really excited by what, you know, Varda is working on. We don't yet have a contract, but we're looking forward to basically like collaborating.

You heard it first. Media good.

Accidentally good.

What's your capacity to do this right now? Or like, how close are you to actually being able to manufacture anything in space?

So we sent our first satellite up on June 12th of this year on a transporter mission with SpaceX. So think of those as basically the ride shares. A lot of what enables a company like Varda to work is the fact that, you know, even three, four, five years ago, you basically had to book whole individual rocket flights entirely on your own. Those things were massively expensive. Instead, now I can basically do a rideshare flight which, you know, costs anywhere from like 5000 to $7000 a kilogram. So think about something that like Varda that, you know, weighs roughly 300 kilograms. You're talking about us being able to go to space for like 1.5 to 2 million rather than like 30 or 40 million. So that is something that is like possible with like a seed in a series, a round versus obviously previously was very much so not possible.

You're taking like a piece of manufacturing equipment for that much money.

So that is just the like, ticket. And then yes, we do also have to design the like, manufacturing equipment and everything. So yeah, on our basically first mission, it's about a 300 kilogram, basically total satellite. You can think of it as about like, you know, a third of the satellite is basically what looks like a standard satellite. Basically the infrastructure that you need to operate up there in orbit. So this is everything from like solar panels to a satellite radio to communicate with the software down at the ground. You know, reaction wheels that allow you to keep the satellite pointed in the right place. Basically all the infrastructure that you need typically for a satellite. The second portion is basically what you would think of as like manufacturing equipment that actually has basically all of the reagents and all the Molecules preloaded on board and. And then the third part is basically a small re entry pod that basically brings those finished pharmaceuticals back down. Amazing. So we launched on June 12, we executed that first manufacturing run, I want to say somewhere around like July 6th or 7th or something like that. And then we're looking forward to hopefully being able to reenter. Right now we're still working and collaborating with several of our government and commercial partners to work on bringing the capsule back, but we're looking to hopefully bring it back caught like you know, late August, mid September and somebody paid you.

Like other companies, you're doing research on behalf of companies and government agencies or.

This first one was very much so like demonstration mission, like show our customers that this type of thing is possible. Given that, you know, despite the fact that, you know, companies like Merck, you know, have been super enthusiastic about these value propositions, I think they've been actually somewhat skeptical there would ever be a way for them to commercialize. And so they sort of needed you know, an existence proof of something like VARD actually showing it end to end, you know, before being willing but. And do we know, pretty confident.

Do you know, worked yet or I mean it partially depends on how it comes back, I assume.

But so we know that the satellite generally worked quite well. We know that the manufacturing equipment. The analogy that my co founder likes to give that, you know, I like to use is imagine that in the world of pharma manufacturing, imagine that it's basically like a kitchen. And in the kitchen you have a whole series of appliances and you might have everything from a toaster to a convection oven to a blender, to, you know, a little scale that weighs your various sort of ingredients. On this first mission, we very much so built like a very basic like toaster. It is basically like the simplest appliance, you know, possible. And all that I can tell you is that the like toaster did heat up and cool down as we wanted it to. I cannot tell you whether or not the toast inside got like fully burned to a crisp or got toasted appropriately, et cetera. But generally, as we know, toast does do certain things when you apply certain temperatures to it. So I feel pretty confident that the toast inside is nicely baked. And now that toast also does need to basically survive reentry. So I'd say there were like three or four things we want to prove out on this first mission. We have been able to prove out roughly half of them already, but there are some future things that we need to prove out. But even if the mission were to die tomorrow. We still definitely learned a lot that will make it even more likely that future missions are able to do everything that they need to end.

When does the toast come back home?

Basically as I mentioned, you know, sort of working with our government partners to get that you sort of fully lined up. We have to work with both the FAA around approval and license to re enter the Utah testing range, which is a military range that allows us to basically land in their land and then rocket lab, which is our partner that actually executes the actual deorbit burn, basically the rocket small rocket engine that basically brings us back from space into the atmosphere. But we're you know, nominally targeting basically like a, you know, sort of a late August reentry date.

I mean it's amazing, it's like a great thing you're doing. I feel like it's such an unambiguously like awesome thing to be working on. I feel like from the outside the whole sort of story of like the milestones and you're sort of talking about, you know, what would be sort of a viable thing and like what it reminded me of the whole like SpaceX experience where I forget it was like a couple months ago where one of their shuttles like blew up or something. Do you remember that whole. What was, you know, much more about this than I do. I. Yeah, this one. It's so hard for the, I guess the sort of layman world, myself included to know like and believe like obviously, you know, my experience as a reporter, like every company tells you everything that happens in the most positive light. So it's so hard even when you're like cheering for these things to know sort of as an external observer what is a sign that the company is like on track versus like what's not and like what's the level like. Yeah, I don't know. What was your reaction to sort of, I mean the media obviously like sort of the New York Times especially like frame that the SpaceX like blow up like super negatively it seemed.

Right. Yeah. I think the layman's view and in particular obviously the New York Times blue is like completely, you know, sort of clueless and off base what I generally say. You know, I'll maybe touch on a one part comment which is I think at least in aerospace it's a lot easier to like publicly verify how a company is doing in that the, you know, sort of the traction is not like oh, we're not going to tell you our revenue numbers, we're like doing well and our software is Good. It is like did the rocket launch, did the spacecraft re enter? Those are like physically verifiable facts or not facts. And so you can't really sugarcoat it as much as you can in software world. In relation to the SpaceX thing, maybe I'll provide a little bit of context here. So SpaceX is trying to develop an extremely ambitious, completely new rocket, right? So they have a rocket that we launch on called a Falcon 9. That rocket is a workhorse. It is not now exploded for like 210 or 12 launches in a row, which is by far the most that any rocket has ever done in a row. By far the fastest, cheapest, et cetera. So they have this workhorse that is like the safest thing that humanity has ever developed and is working really well. Yeah, they are trying to now build a new very risky rocket, but it is a new rocket that is even more capable. The reason this rocket is particularly interesting is you may be familiar with the Falcon 9 in that it actually lands a portion of itself back onto a landing pad. However, even though this is the best that we've done and it's the cheapest, it still is not perfect in that it still loses basically like the top fifth of the rocket every single time. And that's just how it's designed. Basically that top fifth like basically burns up every single time, is like a one time use. So if you've ever like heard, you know, Elon's basically like, you know, imagine you were taking like a 747 across the country and every single time basically the 747 like completely disintegrated when you like landed on the other side. Air travel would be pretty damn expensive, right? So we've gotten better for sure. Imagine that like most of the planes survive but like the cockpit fell off every single time. You like rebuild the cockpit every time. That's basically like how rocket travel like works today. So we definitely improved. This new rocket that Elon's trying to make is basically like the full 747, goes all the way up to space, comes back and lands. It's very difficult. It's been basically single stage reusable rocket, you know, orbital rocket. So because it's so risky, you know, SpaceX has taken the approach of rather than certain groups where they get stuck in infinite, you know, decades long of sort of like analysis paralysis, they like try to engineer the perfect thing. Elon's approach, which has worked very well, if you remember, the early Falcon rockets definitely exploded and blew up. His approach has been Just, you know, ship things and do it and you'll learn even from, like, what is perceived as failure. And so if you were to pull most of hell, the Varda team, or most of the team with SpaceX that worked on Starship, nobody thought the thing was even going to get off the pad. Like, they thought it was just going to blow up, like on the ground, basically before it even managed to get in the air. It made it way further than anybody expected. It made it through Max Q, one of the most difficult things. It basically actually, like, you know, basically failed around stage separation. And so I think to claim that it's like a failure is like, insane to me, given that this is like the most ambitious project that like humanity has ever taken on. It did way better than anybody possibly expected. Like, people thought it was going to blow up on the ground, let alone up in the air. And then this is just like the state of engineering. Like you need to test things and obviously if it only works, then you haven't been ambitious enough and like, pushing the way forward. It's like the New York Times framing of it is just like complete cluelessness. To even call it like a space shuttle, like, you know, failure type thing is like, first the space shuttle was supposed to be the workhorse, safe thing, and that blew up. That is a different thing. Everybody in the space community knows there are no humans anywhere near that rocket. Like, this thing is explicitly in development. Right, Right. In order to get to something that is safe, it originally has to be like, unsafe to be able to prove it out and build it over time.

How much does varda depend on SpaceX's continued success and, like, bringing down the cost curve? Like, could Varda work with the cost of satellite deployment today, or are you counting on sort of further reductions in the cost of deployment?

I would say at today's launch costs, where we're spending the 1.5 to $2 million sort of per flight, that is sort of more than low enough for us to be able to build a really strong sort of business around what we're currently doing today. So I would say none of our business models, the way that we think about the world, are predicated on any sort of future, you know, cost dropping. Obviously. You know, I'd be thrilled for either something like Starship to come online. I think that'll take some time. I'd be thrilled for, you know, sort of more players come into the market and actually start landing rockets. Nobody's really, you know, sort of done that yet. Even though it's been you know, eight and a half years at this point since SpaceX landed their first rocket. So I'm not counting, you know, on it, you know, happening anytime soon. And we've made sure to architect our business so that it's not, you know, sort of predicated on it.

I'm going to continue my spaceman explain to Earth man how things work. But, you know, you hear people, like, worry about, like, oh, is the sky gonna get too, like, cluttered? Like, we had a UFO conversation that turned into, like, oh, satellite density. Like, what is the capacity? Like, how much more crowded can the sky get with satellites?

A couple of different ways to sort of explain this. First, let's just think about, like, the Earth's crust. How crowded is it? I'm sure you've flown on a, like, 747 flight at certain times, and you, like, stare down in the middle of, like, Kansas or even, like, you know, you drive. I'm currently in la. If you, like, fly two hours northeast of here, it is like a completely empty desert, right? So imagine that you only had a, like, single, you know, crust equivalent of the Earth in orbit. You had to fit all the satellites on there. Well, the amount of satellites that we've set are obviously way, way smaller than what we've built on the entire Earth's crust. And even then, the Earth's crust is pretty, like, not crowded. And in space, by the way, you have a, like, a whole multitude of altitudes that you can be at, right? When you're on Earth, you basically really only be at a single altitude wherever the crust is. Basically, when you're up in space, you can be at 500km, 600, 700, 800. So imagine a bunch of, like, shells of the Earth's crust, each of which may hold its own individual satellite. There's a lot of room in space, when you think about it that way, especially because the further away you get, the bigger the shell becomes, because, like, the larger the shell is relative sort of to the Earth. Now, I'll provide the caveat that things are moving much faster up there. And so because of that, even very small things, you know, sort of coming close to you or hitting you are much more dangerous than, like, a little pigeon, you know, basically, like, hitting you when you're, like, driving along a highway. So there are risks in that. And then the last comment that I'll make is also, people underappreciate. There are basically these, like, lower altitudes where things will basically, like, naturally decay because space isn't this, like, strict line of, like, atmosphere to no atmosphere. It is said, like, actually like steadily basically decays. And so even satellites that are up in space still actually experience atmospheric drag at certain altitudes and so they'll basically like naturally decay. So there's sort of like this like.

Self cleaning or are you counting on sort of further reductions in the cost of deployment?

I would say at today's launch cost, where we're spending the 1.5 to $2 million, you know, sort of per flight that is, you know, sort of more than low enough for us to be able to build a really strong, you know, sort of business around what we're currently doing today. So I would say none of our business models, the way that we think about the world, are predicated on any sort of future, you know, cost dropping. Obviously. You know, I'd be thrilled for either something like starship to come online. I think that'll take some time. I'd be thrilled for, you know, sort of more players coming to the market and actually start landing rockets. Nobody's really, you know, sort of done that yet, even though it's been, you know, eight and a half years at this point since SpaceX landed their first rocket. So I'm not counting, you know, on it, you know, happening anytime soon. And we've made sure to architect our business so it's not, you know, sort of predicated on it.

I'm going to continue my spaceman explain to Earth man how things work. But, you know, you hear people like, worry about like, oh, is the sky going to get too, like, cluttered? Like, we had a UFO conversation that turned into like, oh, satellite density. Like, what is the capacity? Like, how much more crowded can the sky get with satellites?

A couple of different ways to. You should explain this. First, let's just think about, like, the Earth's crust. How crowded is it? I'm sure you've flown on a like 747 flight at certain times and you like, stare down in like the middle of like, Kansas or even, like, you know, you drive. I'm currently in la. If you, like, fly two hours northeast of here, it is like a completely empty desert, right? So imagine that you only had a like, single, you know, crushed equivalent of the Earth in orbit. You had to fit all the satellites on there. Well, the amount of satellites that we've set are obviously way, way smaller than what we've built on the entire Earth's crust. And even then, the Earth's crust is pretty, like, not crowded. And in space, by the way, you have like a whole multitude of altitudes that you can be at right when you're on Earth, you basically really only be at a single altitude wherever the crust is. Basically when you're up in space, you can be at 500km, 600, 700, 800. So imagine a bunch of like shells of the Earth's crust, each of which may hold its own individual satellite. There's a lot of room in space, when you think about it that way, especially because the further away you get, the bigger the shell becomes. Because like, the larger the shell is relative, you know, sort of to the Earth. Now I'll provide the caveat that things are moving much faster up there. And so because of that, even very small things, you know, sort of coming close to you or hitting you are much more dangerous than like a little pigeon, you know, basically like hitting you when you're like driving along a highway. So there are risks in that. And then the last comment that I'll make is also, people underappreciate. There are basically these like lower altitudes where things will basically like naturally decay. Because space isn't this like strict line of like atmosphere to no atmosphere. It is said, like actually like steadily basically decays. And so even satellites that are up in space still actually experience atmospheric drag at certain altitudes. And so they'll basically like naturally decay. So there's sort of like this like self cleaning mechanism that the Earth has basically for a decent amount of the altitudes that we operate at now. Once you get up to like geosynchronous, where you're super far away from Earth at that point, it's like, you know, I think on the order of like billions of years, something like that to ever like, you know, clean itself. So is it a problem? Like, yes, it is something that like, you know, needs to be managed with. Is it this like existential thing where like humanity's totally screwed? Like, you know. No.

Is it well regulated? Like right now you can like send up a satellite, leave it there, or you need to sort of, you're culpable if you're like satellite collides with something.

Yeah, it's not particularly like, you know, there's some light regulations today. And like, I think eventually what you want to get to is basically requiring people that send satellites to space either deorbit themselves or they have to set aside capital as a bounty for somebody else to come into orbit them. So that way you could have basically these like cleanup crews where, you know, I send my saddle up for, you know, whatever $1.52 million, but then I leave a like $200,000 bounty and then whoever like, you know, comes grabs me, ditches me in the atmosphere and they go on to like the next guy can make like money off of that. So I think that would be like the ideal situation that you have like some sort of regulating agency that handles the verification of that. But that type of regulatory framework require pretty sort of forward thinking probably like, you know, this something that it feels like a vice president would be doing given that typically space stuff falls under the vice president. And so who knows, maybe even in the, you know, whatever next administration there's a world where whoever ends up being tackles this is a project because it is roughly starting to become appropriate timing to start to think about something like this. But yeah, nothing really today in the total fun category.

And since I referenced it, do you have a view on this UFO situation or have you spent much time thinking about it?

You know, I admit relative to like, you know, some of my colleagues, like you know, Solana and crew, I definitely have not spent you know, sort of nearly as much time on this. So I can't claim that my views are super sophisticated other than like there's clearly some weird data. There's also some like mixed incentives in terms of like, you know, some of these people that are testifying in front of Congress might be just doing it for the attention. But you know, there are also obviously some like weird, anomalous, you know, sort of, you know, videos and things like that have been published. I don't have like a strong opinion other than like what's your percentage that.

The UFOs are aliens?

I have this like, you know, somewhat net new conspiracy theory that like I actually think that what we're, you know, seeing is actually an intelligent life that lives on our same planet. But it's like a like, you know, Atlantis style, like under the Pacific Ocean. Because if you look at it, there's basically like a whole half of the earth. Like you can actually look at the Earth. If you look at just the Pacific, it's basically literally almost entirely like, you know, water. And it could have not been water.

You know, dolphins just.

Yeah, or something that we like, you know, you know, some off branch of humans that like, you know, discovered, you know, some set of technologies, you know, 10,000 years ago and like advanced very rapidly in isolation and then decided to isolate themselves.

Would you give that a percentage chance?

Hard to like give like a betting odds, but yeah, I don't know, 15%.

But you think majority. It's like some military vessel or something?

No, not necessarily. Like I think it could be like some sort of radio anomaly, some sort of like physics phenomenon that we don't appreciate or something where it's like, you know, ball lightning or something like that, where it's just like some crazy freak edge case of like electromagnetism that we just don't totally understand yet. So my guess is more like freak, you know, edge case of the universe.

You're convinced it is a real physical phenomenon that people are.

Yeah, no, I think there is a real physical phenomenon. There's like way too many like, you know, sort of, you know, instances of this. But I'm not convinced that it's necessarily like an intelligent, you know, thing that is causing it.

Back to our serious part of the, like, what's the Air Force and what's NASA like paying you for? What are these contracts like, given that you're still in the early development of manufacturing?

Yeah, so the Air Force and NASA are not paying us for anything manufacturing related. Basically. If you remember, I gave that, you know, sort of three part spacecraft summary before the like, satellite, the manufacturing and then that reentry pod, that re entry pod has been of significant interest to various groups within the government because basically when we're coming back because we don't have any humans on board, we come back basically at much higher sort of speed, G load, you know, sort of heat flux. Basically like the amount of thermal energy that's being, you know, sort of created than what a vehicle that has typically humans on board. Like, if you think about the ones that have humans on board, they're kind of trying to like surf their way into the atmosphere so that they like just steadily slow down. And the, you know, astronauts don't experience too many G forces and they keep everybody alive. Whereas like we don't have a humans on board. So we're just like, screw it, rip it, just like, you know, dig right in. And so because of that, we experience an environment that is very useful both for groups like NASA to basically test out like new heat shields that they want to use for like a Mars mission, as well as groups like the Air Force that want to actually be able to use this as a way to basically test out. For example, like they want to build hypersonic interceptors to intercept, you know, China's basically hypersonic boost glide like space missiles. And so they use us as a way to test out. Okay, how do we build out like sensors and navigation equipment and heat shields and wing shapes and things like that. So you can kind of think of it as like, imagine like you were trying to Build an airplane before there was a wind tunnel. And every single time, in order to test it, you basically just had to, like, throw it out in the air. That's basically what we're doing anytime. We're trying to build these hypersonic, like, interceptor systems. And so we're basically that wind tunnel where instead you go and basically test things out so that when you go and build the full hypersonic interceptor, you feel really confident. And so if, like, you know, the Wright brothers or, like, Boeing didn't have a wind tunnel, it'd be a huge pain in the ass right now. It's a huge pain in the ass for the government. They basically don't have a, like, hypersonic wind tunnel. And Varda is basically the, you know, sort of closest equivalent to what you can get to a hypersonic wind tunnel, given how quickly we come in.

The wind tunnel is the year of the experiment that they can test like they would in a wind tunnel or.

We are the wind tunnel, or they're.

Literally, like, following behind you and using.

They're in, like. Imagine that our re entry capsule is the wind tunnel. They're inside the capsule being tested. So, like, the capsule is the wind.

Tunnel, like, blocking it.

Yeah, exactly. So, like, they might test different things. They might test a wing inside of that wind tunnel. They might test, like, a piece of, like, sensors and equipment. You know, it's basically, you know, each of the various, like, government customers has different things that we test, and we figure out where to put them in the wind tunnel so that it, like, gets the test that they want. Basically. Basically. And so we basically do all our pharma manufacturing, and we come down, and if we just only had our pharmaceuticals on board, we just look like a, you know, sort of boring, you know, reentry capsule. And instead we have a bunch of things sticking out and, like, in various places, basically, to, like, test out, you know, for the, you know, it's basically, you know, each of the various, like, government customers is different things that we test, and we figure out where to put them in the wind tunnel so that it, like, gets the test that they want, basically. And so we basically do all our pharma manufacturing and we come down, and if we just only had our pharmaceuticals on board, we just look like a, you know, sort of boring, you know, reentry capsule. And instead we have a bunch of things sticking out and, like, in various places basically, to, like, test out, you know, for the, you know, sort of DOD and NASA.

What's your. And I don't know how open you would be on this now that you have government contractors, but what's your general like view of what pieces of space are best for like private industry and which parts are like best sort of in government and like how effective you think sort of NASA is today?

I guess that you're sort of DOD and NASA.

What's your. And I don't know how open you would be on this now that you have government contractors, but what's your general like view of what pieces of space are best for like private industry and which parts are like best sort of in government and like how effective you think sort of NASA is today?

I guess, yeah. If we're going to go like NASA specific, you know, rather I thought you're asking like a broad government question, but for NASA. If I were to you know, sort of give a general, you know, sort of pitch and philosophy on what I think NASA should be doing, I think they should continue to lean into the things that are just like very far out and difficult. True basic research and science. So it's like, you know, lean into like helicopter on Mars. Super. Like probably the. Yeah, if we're going to go like NASA specific, you know, rather you're asking like a broad government question, but for NASA. If I were to you know, sort of give a general, you know, sort of pitch and philosophy on what I think NASA should be doing, I think they should continue to lean into the things that are just like very far out and difficult. True basic research and science. So it's like, you know, lean into like helicopter on Mars. Super. Like probably the coolest thing that humanity's made in like the past two or three years. Like take that like little drone and turn it into like human scale helicopters that like, you know, when we land humans there, we're doing that and they are starting to already like work on that. That team is getting like, you know, a huge boost in, you know, funding.

You know, just like a helicopter works in martian atmosphere. Basically.

Yeah, we've already proven that. So, you know, they landed a mini helicopter alongside the rover in the last Mars rover miss. That helicopter has now been flying for like, you know, forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I probably guess like 15 or 16 months or so. It has covered like more ground than all of our rovers over the past 30 years, like combined basically because it flies and by the way, it flies on a different pool thing that humanity's made in like the past two or three years. Like take that like little drone and turn it into like human scale helicopters that like, you know, when we land humans there. We're doing that and they are starting to already like work on that. That team is getting like planet like it is a thing that humanity has done. We like made it. And by the way, in order to fly in like that, you know, a huge boost in, you know, funding.

You know, it looks like a helicopter works in Martian atmosphere basically.

Yeah, we've already proven that. So, you know, they landed a mini helicopter alongside the rover in the last Mars Rover mission. That helicopter has now been flying for like, you know, forgive me if I'm taken, but I probably guess like 15 or 16 months or so. It has covered like more ground than all of our rovers over the past 30 years like combined basically because it flies and by the way it flies on a different planet. Like that is a thing that humanity has done. We like made it. And by the way, in order to fly in like that thin of an atmosphere, like it's like wingtips are going like Mach 4 or something like that. So it's like, I call it a helicopter, but it's like closer to like a like jet engine helicopter that you know, is like just spinning crazy fast blades. But it's like really like you. They literally, they have like a video where they basically had the rover filming the helicopter taking off and landing. So like there are like videos not from like it has onboard cameras that are like pretty good, but there's like an off board camera like the rover that like does it. And like watching a video of a helicopter on Mars is probably like the coolest experience one can have.

So NASA do do that.

Okay, yeah, keep doing, you know, if it atmosphere like it's like wingtips are going like Mach 4 or something like that. So it's like, I call it helicopter sort of that stuff. And then they have a portion of their mandate which is basically like kickstart the like, you know, economic flywheel of humanity expanding into space. They did a really phenomenal job of that with basically like launch services. Right. So basically like, rather than saying like, here's how you should go build your rocket, here's how you should go basically like resupply the International Space Station instead they said we'll pay you like you know, 50,000 doctor but it's like closer to like a like jet engine helicopter that you know, is like just spinning crazy fast blades. But it's like really like you. They literally, they have like a video where they basically had the rover filming the helicopter taking off and landing. So like there are like videos not from like it has Onboard cameras that are like pretty good dollars per kilogram that you get to lower Earth orbit and we'll pay you $200,000 per kilogram that you basically like deliver to the International Space Station. Do with that what you wish basically. And so that's how you've seen the success of programs, you know, like commercial resupply, like commercial launch. And so now they're starting to think about how they do that sort of basically for future programs. And I think they should continue to have this like split world where basically like anything that is sort of like close to Earth and in the realm of what like venture backed companies should do, can do. They should basically just act as the first buyer in the marketplace and that's what kickstarts the supplies that, you know, in the early days maybe NASA was, but there's like an off board camera like the rover that like does it and like watching a video of a helicopter on Mars. Buying most of SpaceX's launches. But now companies like Varda can buy SpaceX's launches, do the same thing for these like you know, sort of commercial services. Be that first like guaranteed buyer and then don't focus on engineering as much, there just be a buyer and then focus all the engineering, basic science, etc. And the things that are like super.

Far out, like who do you think would do a Martian mission? Like the government or SpaceX.

Right now it's just the government that is like you know, sort of playing on those and I think that is the place where they should continue to play in. Same thing with like you know, the first lunar base will be done by the government as well.

I feel like one of the challenges when NASA or like the government does something like I feel like every American can feel like some sense of like ownership over it because it's like their money, it's their part of it in some ways, like I don't know if I'm incriminating myself with this view or not. Like when SpaceX does something it can feel like you have to like go and like say Elon's great. Like it's like, it's almost like, like you're obligated to like go thank this sort of like strong man billionaire. Instead of when the government like does something it feels like oh that's like us. Or like do you think there's like part of the barrier to sort of national sort of popular embrace of sort of the space exploration stuff is this private enterprise and that it's done in a way that sort of the regular Person feels like irrelevant too.

Well, I mean, there are plenty of political polls that show that Elon Musk is the most favored, like, public figure in the United States. So I would argue that your entire thesis is flawed, basically, which is, you know, Elon does the best job of any figure of making the public populace feel like a part of space exploration even better than any other government.

It's very much like it's a strong man. Like, he gets the credit for it. Like, even more, I don't think even more than like the SpaceX engineers and stuff. It's a very centralized, like, the story that humanity is telling is one of the brilliant. Sort of Elon Musk taking us there. Right? Yeah. I mean, that's collectivist.

Always been true in history is that, like, stories are like, the great man is always the easiest, like, sort of story to tell rather than the collective. But yeah, I guess I'm not sure entirely where the, you know, sort of like how to answer the question.

I don't know. Yeah, it's not a very pointed question. It's just something I'm like, I struggle with or it's like, on the one hand, I want. I mean, yeah, I guess I'm not going to let ideology get in the way of cheering for something that I'm.

Yeah, I guess it's like struggling with, like, the sky being blue. Like, I say, like, you know, go talk to your therapist, but like, you know, it's like a law of physics.

So I assume you watch Oppenheimer. Like, I mean, the reality of SpaceX is that there are a lot of people, like, doing it. He's doing a lot of things. Like, some of it is there's sort of the myth building around one person, but the reality is like, they are collective endeavors. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like just like the stories that are paired with, you know, the scientific accomplishments of our time is you're.

The one telling the stories. Change the narrative. Go, go interview.

Like, you know, you're telling the stories as well. I mean, yeah, I mean, we highlight our team members.

You know, we have Andrew McCaleb, you know, out and doing public interviews and talking about things. We, I think, do a pretty good job of like, highlighting like, the broader talent of Arda beyond just like the founding team. And I would, you know, put it on the media of like, you know, I don't know, like the information did like this, like, profile, please, on Gwynne Shotwell, who's like, one of the most like, phenomenal executives, you know, in the Space industry. And like, like, her article was like half like a takedown article. So, you know, I would put it on like the onus of like, yeah, media and journalists should do a better job of like, recognizing that there are a collective of people that either contribute significantly to SpaceX and they aren't highlighted or appreciated well enough. Like, people should be banging down Gwynne Shotwell's door to be like, writing books about her. And people don't, I'm sure.

Well, I'd happily write a book about her. You know, I feel like she's probably hard to access, but yeah, maybe because.

People write takedown pieces about her.

I do think there's, you know. Yeah, the media can't sort of help itself, but sort of have sort of a negative angle at any given moment.

It does feel, for some reason media loves to destroy powerful women. I don't know why.

Do you think it's women specific or it's just. Yeah, I think stories.

There's definitely a trend of like, every strong woman founder, every strong woman, like aerospace leader, like, gets torn down by the media for some reason.

Yeah, I mean, I agree, I agree. No quibble on that. That there was like, especially, you know, the startup founder period.

Yeah. Like the away story, the outdoor voices story. Like, there were so many of these that were just like complete nonsense.

Do you, I mean, do you think, are you supportive of like, Musk's time spent on X Twitter, like, or do you think it is sort of a detriment to SpaceX?

I think he's a phenomenal entrepreneur and, you know, it's not up to me to judge where and how he spends his time, if he's like, most intrigued by and thinks that like, like X is going to be the most impactful. Like, you know, good on him. And I think, you know, he obviously is still a phenomenal visionary and leader for SpaceX, but also the company is like, in a very mature state where it has a really great set of leaders, including people like Gwynne Shotwell, and, you know, seems to be making really phenomenal progress. So, you know, I don't think that like, you know, the marginal hour that he spends on like, Twitter is somehow like, preventing Starship from coming online or anything like that. So, you know, I think Starship is just like a very difficult project and that is just going to take a series of cycles and iterations and, and it's really exciting to see what's happening at Boca Chica and the progress that's being made there. But, you know, I don't think that, like, Twitter is somehow, you know, preventing that progress from happening.

You got promoted at Founders recently.

Yeah, yeah. And it's like new set of funds and I think we announced it, you know, late May, June timeframe.

How do you do both? Or like. Yeah, it's certainly a lot of time.

Yeah, I think it's mostly that, like, one plus one equals three in that. You know, I think part of what allows me to, you know, I think do decently in both roles is there are times where when I'm working at Varda, there's a huge sort of upside to having the Founders Fund, your sort of brand and the investing sort of hat on whether it be when I'm fundraising on behalf of Varda, when I'm on Capitol Hill meeting with particular congressional figures that may have a lot of respect for the Founders Fund name, but may or may not have actually heard about Varda quite yet. To my ability to understand the broader landscape and how things are going in aerospace, in the aerospace world, given that not only do I know how Varda is doing, but I also know how a lot of the near peer companies are doing as well. And so. So that really unlocks an insight of like, where are we in terms of headcount, burn, revenue, et cetera, relative to like, you know, sort of certain peers. And I think having that broader perspective makes me very affected at Varda. And then on the flip side, you know, on the Founders Fund side of things, you know, being the man in the arena, I think is the thing that makes me both the most helpful to founders that are starting companies and just significantly increases the like, you know, sort of top of funnel of people that are interested in working with me conversion rate, you know, all the way down through making investing. So although over the past year, since starting Varda, about three years, I've definitely spent less time on the investing sort of role. I actually think I've been able to sort of deploy at just as high of a pace and with just as great of a irr, if not higher than where I was sort of before. I think it's a unique setup for two reasons, which is, you know, one, obviously being a part of a platform like Founders Fund that is very encouraging basically of this type of role. Right. If you look at our team, it's almost like half the team now that is in this type of role where they're actively basically building something alongside investing.

Brian Peterson, the chairman of. Yeah. Flexport. Yeah.

Trey Stevens, Keith Redboy. You know, I'd argue Peter Thiel as Well, and then, you know, I think the other thing that's Peter's company, you know, I can't claim that I have a specific one in mind right now, more that he does spend a lot of time with certain like biotech companies that's been publicly reported on where he's like, you know, chairman. And I'm not like super deeply familiar with it, but there are like a handful of biotech companies where he goes like very, you know, sort of deep.

The life extension type or.

I don't think any of them are life extension related. One of them was like an antibodies company, but I'm not even like that deeply familiar with the company, but.

Okay. Anyway. Sorry.

Oh yeah, no problem. What I was going to say is I think, at least when I think about when is it sort of worth incubating something and actually, you know, subjecting your yourself to the torture of two jobs, you know, when you, I think, fit a certain set of criteria. One, is the company that you're going to incubate isn't something that is already available on the market that you could just like invest in, given that the opportunity cost of building something is like massive. Two, it's something that is like uniquely suited to be incubated and built by a venture capitalist in that it's something that either like your ability to fundraise because it's capitally intensive or your ability to put together disparate talent that may not come together otherwise makes the company possible. And then third, ideally that this is a company that is also in a category that you're highly interested in investing in. So that by basically working deeply in this category, you could assess things more easily and you get basically the best top of funnel. And so for me, Varda sort of fit all three of those categories where there wasn't really anybody working on it, it's going to be capital intensive and I can help basically put together the financing that's necessary. And three, I was highly interested in investing even more in aerospace than I was before. And so what better way to basically have as much top of funnel and like access in aerospace than starting a company? And so I think, you know, it's rare to, you know, to feel very sort of fortunate and grateful to find myself in this situation where I am able to balance these two. I think there's sort of a million different variations of this that you know, wouldn't quite work. But the particular variation that I'm in right now sort of happens. It happens to work.

What are your main investments at Founders.

Fund that I've made, you know, if you look at top performing over the course of my entire investing career, both at Founders Fund and at Coastal Ventures. At Coastal Ventures, I led the Series A of Sword Health and then continue to double down at it from Founders Fund. That company was last valued at roughly $1.8 billion. And we originally invested in the Series A at 25 posts and then at Founders Fund when I moved over at I believe like 40 posts. I also, you know, I worked alongside Keith, but did source Ramp Financial, their original basically both seed and Series A round was the point person on both of those where we originally invested again in similar roughly price points to Sword and ultimately obviously that company was Last valued at $8 billion in their last financing. So these are probably the two, let's say, you know, sort of unicorns and there's a whole set of like, let's say mid stage companies that are, you know, tracking relatively well. Lula for example, and Insuratech in Miami just announced their Series B. Hadrian, another aerospace company, sort of down the block cover this home building company in la. Those are some of the examples in the mid stage range.

Don't want to deprive our listeners of your wonderful tweets. You had a great one. Imagine having to wake up every day and work in SaaS while the world is regularly landing orbital rockets, breathing life into silicon and synthesizing superconductors using alchemy. And then Rune, always the troll, says, now tell us how you really feel about corporate cards. Are you guys writing off SASS or like, I mean, I know that just comes from you, but what is sort of the view over a founder's fund on software investments right now?

That's very much so my personal view. And it more has to do with my personal motivation than necessarily, you know, where IRR is. Obviously we've hired some phenomenal folks, including, you know, Sam Blonde, who is formerly, you know, CRO at Brex, that, you know, his primary focus is in, you know, sort of SaaS and previously had, you know, phenomenal SaaS career before Brex.

So no, Parker.

Yeah, he was at Echosign back in the day under Jason Lemkin, is it? And then was at, you know, Zenefits with Parker and then Brex with Henrique and I forget the other guy's name. Yeah, at Brex and then, and then joined us. So. No, not at all. You know, obviously SAS is something that we're going to continue to invest in. It's just something that I personally at least prefer to, you Know, not spend time on. So I'm very glad we've hired people like Sam that can go get all the returns.

Somebody shit on you in the replies saying, didn't you sell T shirts for seven months or so? What was that? I didn't even know that about you or what was your seven month.

Oh yeah, I worked at a Teespring for about. Oh yeah.

Would you learn from that experience?

I did learn a lot. It was one of these examples where I was at the time, I believe, 22 or 23 year old, like single time, sort of failed founder. The company was in a little bit of a floundering state where they basically had a very highly priced and they were flying high. Let's say they were like the hot startup darling of Silicon Valley in the call 2015, 16 time frame. And then basically shortly after that round, they basically flatlined in revenue for the next like two and a half years, if not slightly declining revenue. And so there was interest in, you know, sort of making some more risky moves. And so one of those moves that the board was convinced of was let's give this 23 year old, you know, single time failed founder, like a whole department of the company, just like, see what he does with it. So I really enjoyed it. Like, you know, I think I did a decent job of also like drinking the Kool Aid while I was there. So I really believed in T shirt selling. Even if, you know, looking back maybe it's not the most exciting thing. But I was really appreciative for the opportunity to like get to lead the largest team that I think to date is still the largest that I've ever led in terms of like the number of direct reports that I had that reported into me and managed to grow, you know. So the revenue line that I was handed from like roughly 12 and a half million million annualized GMV to about 75 million annualized in GMV. And so I learned a ton during that time about just like how to manage how to be an executive, you.

Know, Teespring Exit or whatever happened that.

Was like, I believe there is still a privately held company. And they've been like ebitda positive actually basically since roughly the quarter after my left. Basically we like went through a riff around the same time that I actually decided to leave. And the company has actually been profitable now for an extended period of time. And some of the stuff that actually worked on back in the day, some of the things that are actually like working the best for the company now. So it's cool to See that finally play out.

What's your political involvement these days? Or. I'm very happy that we've made the piece. You've come back on. Like, our first, I think Silicon Valley encounter was over that, like, Chesa Boudin thing when we were all going crazy during the clubhouse era. But then we got to see each other at Web Summit, and I think both are Twitter. Well, you're much more feisty on Twitter than I am, though. I think also my. My combativeness and time spent on Twitter has calmed down. But are you active in, you know, looking out for the presidential candidates or San Francisco politics stuff these days?

Yeah, I think at the time, I was deeply passionate. You know, back in even 2018, I want to say I actually was one of the. Or no, 2019. I was actually one of the largest fundraisers for Leaf Douche, who was one of the DA candidates. You know, I campaigned for him, you know, spent a ton of energy and resources, you know, sort of personally trying to get people to understand basically why this race was very important. I couldn't get, like, the light of day from anybody, including people like Solano, for example, who, like, you know, came around to how important it was. But at the time, Mike Solano, who's.

Also Founders Fund and writes what's his newsletter called, Pirate Wiser, which is always fascinating and worth at least having on your radar if diametrically opposed and stylings to.

Exactly. But, yeah, you know, nobody really paid attention. And so that was definitely, at least for me, my breaking moment with, like, basically interest in San Francisco, you know, sort of politics and that. I felt like I put in a ton of effort and like, nobody in the tech community was basically, like, paying any attention, you know, sort of to this. And it ended up having a real impact on my life and obviously ended up, you know, sort of deciding to move away almost like two years to the date after, you know, that campaign, to Miami. So, yeah, since moving to Miami, obviously, I don't feel like I have much incentive to care much about San Francisco politics. I mean, credit to, like, Sorry.

Varda is in California though, right?

Varda is in Los Angeles, where I do about, like, four months of the year and then seven, eight months of the year I'm in Miami anyway. So credit to folks like Gary Tan. And then I forget the guy's name Sachin, with, like, grow sf, maybe not pronouncing his name correctly. So it's really good to see some people that maybe are starting to get, you know, sort of more traction. Although still doesn't seem like there's, you know, sort of been the change that people have been, you know, sort of hoping for and then, you know, beyond that, you know, sort of particular incident, I'd say I'm definitely not opposed to, you know, sort of becoming more politically involved over time, but at least right now, very narrowly focused in on basically Varda. And so all of my political contributions go into the Varda pack. All of the vardapack contributions basically go to our particular company policy priorities that are very specific to basically our work around reentry, hypersonic testing, the future programs of NASA.

All right, great. Thanks so much for coming on the show. This was awesome.

Cool. Thanks for having me, Eric.

That's our episode. Thanks so much to Delian for coming on the show. Shout out to Juniper Square, our sponsor for the episode, Tommy Heron, the audio editor, Riley Kinsella, my chief from staff, Annie Wen, who's producing for the summer and of course, young Chomsky for the theme music. Like. Comment subscribe on YouTube, give us a review on Apple podcasts and please subscribe to the substack Newcomer co. See you next week.

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