On immigrant beginnings, unconventional paths, and space factories.
Delian Asparouhov is a principal at Founders Fund. Before joining Founders Fund, he was a principal at Khosla Ventures, head of growth at Teespring, and founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale. He’s now co-founder at Varda, a space manufacturing company, which we’ll get into later. Delian is Bulgarian, attended MIT, and likes to ski and play soccer.
Alex: [00:00:00] Delian Asparouhov is a principal at founders fund. Before joining founders fund he was principal at Khosla ventures, head of growth at Teespring and founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale. He's now co-founder at Varda, a space manufacturing company, which we'll get into later. Delian is Bulgarian, attended MIT and likes to ski and play soccer.
Today we talked about immigrant beginnings, unconventional paths and space factories.
It's great to get to chat.
Delian: [00:00:35] Yeah, no problem, man.
Alex: [00:00:36] To start us off, I think it's really, you have a cool background.
I mean, you grew up in, what is it? A Bulgarian family, right?
Delian: [00:00:45] Yeah in Bulgaria and then moved out here.
Alex: [00:00:48] The, the immigrant story, right? Like I'm curious for starters, how that's impacted you, not just from like, you know, political philosophy but generally like going about life, because I think a lot of people in the U S sort of operate in a bubble in the sense that the U S is, you know, sort of contained in a lot of ways.
So how has that been, you know, interacting with people on a day to day basis?
Delian: [00:01:09] Yeah. I mean, you know, I moved here when I was four, four and a half years old, but my parents would like ship me back every, you know, summer as a kid to Bulgaria for like the first full summer. Right. So like, I would get out of school, whatever, you know, May 15th, but I'd be there until August 15.
And so a lot of my most formative years, cause like, in some ways, like the fun parts are like, there's like empty summer months. We're all in Bulgaria, you know, growing up on like my grandparents farm you know, as I started getting older, they actually let me do you sort of more like summer camps where I was completely out on my own, like, you know, doing these like math and computer science camps.
Out on like the beach towns in Bulgaria and like, you know, working all day or then like clubbing at night and basically like living entirely on my own. Like, doing my own laundry, et cetera. When I was like in like, whatever, seventh grade or sixth grade. So there's like a ton of independence, a ton of like very formative experiences and this like very international world that made it to that.
Like, you know, when I was growing up in the states, I actually like very much. I was not an American. Like I was like, I am a Bulgarian who happens to like live in America, but like all of my, friends, all the fun that I'm having are on Bulgaria then, you know, finally sort of after that eighth grade summer which was like the last time I did it, it was only finally in high school where like I stayed around in the states during the summer and maybe starting to have a little bit more of a shift and it was maybe finally--
once I went to MIT and then dropped out and was out of San Francisco or like two or three years in, I was like, oh, I actually feel like proud to be an American immigrant. And I'm actually most proud of that culture in some ways, even more so than I'm, you know, prideful of the like, you know, Bulgarian culture.
And there was for sure some amount of like I remember in high school, Having all of these, like just odd moments where I was maybe either a little too direct or harsh or the way that I would act on dates was a little weird or just like, I felt like there were things that just like, you know, kind of stuck out like a sore thumb, and again, continued at MIT.
And then even when I dropped out and I finally like visited Bulgaria for the first time, since that eighth grade summer in like 2015 when I was you know, 20 let's see 22 or 21 And went and hung out with my cousin. Who's a, you know, my same, like literally the exact same age as me, I think within like six months or something like that in Bulgaria.
And I remember literally just like hanging out with him, like during the day, like you had like a girl that he was dating at the time and they'd be like brought around. I remember just feeling like, oh my fucking God, all these things that like, kind of would rub up incorrectly, whether the directness or It was literally just like, it wasn't me being weird. It was me just being Bulgarian. Cause that's what I fucking grew up. Like that was what, like, you know, I had at home and that was also what I had, like, you know, in the summer it was like, again, you know, maybe it wasn't quite this extreme, you know, when I was like in high school, but to give you a sense of it, of like, I remember like we were you know, whenever I was like 22 in Bulgaria with my cousin and we were like driving somewhere in the girl that he was dating and was like driving.
And she makes like one, like incorrect, like a right turn, rather than the left turn. And my cousin just starts fucking like ripping into her.
And I was like, oh my fucking God. I think the girl is, looks at him. He's like, Hey, you're like, you're so funny. Like, you're right. I was just like, Oh, my God. Okay. Yeah. Maybe flirting in Bulgaria was a little different and maybe that's why we would always be like deli and you're like, you know, so fucking traditional as to gender roles, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, yeah, like Bulgarian dating culture is still very much in like the equivalent of like where the United States was like the sixties and like the things that are acceptable and say there is a very different order. It's a little to say in the United States it said that obviously like color.
There was a relationship that I was in, like, you know, like you're very different than, you know, most American men. So yeah, lots of, you know, things where it's like, you know, painted like the day to day life, and then I'd be like, now I've kind of found a happy medium where it's like, yeah, like I literally got pitched by this one founder from like New York on this, like it's like like whatever, like sex, like toy and lube and whatever, like marketplace thing.
And like the whole pitch was this like. You know, gender roles, aren't real sexualities a spectrum. Like, you know, it was very like, and I literally responded to him. I was like, why, why do you think this would ever be a fit for me? Like if I'm at, if there's any thesis that I have is that like gender roles in the United States are actually going to reverse closer.
Not at like, not quite with all the downsides of the things in the sixties, but within parts of the upsides of the sixties that were like maybe more family oriented and like, you know stronger and more distinct generals are one. I just like disagree with that. And two, I just generally don't get along with like what I call Portlandia sexuals.
Like, that's just not my thing. So anyways, so there are still times where, like, I still lean it. I like that, you know, sort of Bulgarian traditionalist taking my girlfriend out to like that farm and Bulgaria where I grew up on and like had all these experiences and, you know, getting dressed up a traditional Bleriot attire and then that's what I'm actually going to be proposing to her.
It's how, you know, I still definitely, you know, have a part of me that is. Very much still, you know, in, in wrapped in that culture. It affects how I think on a day-to-day basis. And then for sure, there's all the lines. Later stage in life, then political implications that I start to see when I see, like, I don't know, Taylor Lorenz and like, you know, white waspy, fucking, you know, women like going after me on Twitter and saying I'm a white supremacist.
And I'm like, you're the person that's like, you know, NIMBY anti-immigration. And like, in my opinion, it was like, The fucking most racist people that I encounter are these just like white liberals from like, you know, the Northeast and Northwest that like, you know, think that they're all hunky Dory and are like, you know, super, you know, pro whatever, everybody, but they're not pro you building, you know, a, an apartment building next to their house.
It's like, what do you, who do you think moves into that apartment building? It's a fucking immigrants. Like, you know, we're the ones that like, you know, get to use those units and, you know, build new housing turns out there's just the old rich people you know, a little more rich. And so anyways, definitely, you know, affects some of that, you know, political things later life.
When I see people either complain about you know, working hard being too pro socialism or communism, or you know, try to claim that I'm a white supremacy is just for like wearing a mag at and voting for Trump. Which I'm proud to say that I did in the last election. So that is well, lots of different ways.
Alex: [00:06:27] A lot of stuff there. You know, you, you mentioned this a little. Earlier, and I think it'd be a shame to, to gloss over it, but you know, being in VC now, obviously you've gone through like sort of a, a pretty non-traditional path, right? Like you're an MIT dropout and it's, it's, there's a cool contrast there. Cause most of the kids that I talk to here in college that want to get into VC are all like, okay, you got to go into like investment banking first.
Like that's, you know, so I I'd be curious to hear a little bit about like the path that you took because originally you wanted to go into like academia, right? Now you're, you know, incubating a, a space company and you're working as a VC. So it's two very different things going on.
Delian: [00:07:06] Yeah. I mean, it was, it was all with his original goal, like eventually getting into like, you know, space exploration.
And it was just originally the path that I only had available to me was, you know, if you guys heard of my parents both being academics from around Caltech JPL, I was like, great. You know, undergrad, MIT, grad school at Caltech, I work at JPL. That'll be sort of like, you know, my career and sort of discovering like the world of startups, you know, in sort of like freshman year of college at MIT, which eventually led me you know, to to dropping out.
And so. Yeah. I mean, I, I very much have enjoyed sort of, you know, discovering, you know, this, this approach and, you know, in terms of actually like getting into venture is very much like an accidental thing. Like it wasn't like I, and a lot of things that I think is it like people, you know, it's easy to form a retrospective, you know, thread that, you know, we set a science versus like each step along the way didn't necessarily make a lot of sense.
It was more just kind of following my gut towards the things where I was like, I'm just going to follow where I think are the most interesting, unique people and ideas. And when it feels like people having a lot of impact, Miami being the latest example of that, right? Like these could totally end up being a complete fad, but I'm at least glad that like all the weirdos that I know are moving here and like, you know, I'm glad to be around a bunch of weirdos and typically put a bunch of weirdos in a room and like something pretty interesting happens.
And then, yeah, we're going to see the world venture for sure. There's a path where you do investment banking. And then you joined inside partners and eventually joined co-teach or something like that. And it's a very different style of investing in what I do, right? Like I don't open up, you know, Excel spreadsheets, you know, cold email, you know, founders all day.
That's a, it's a different job that I wouldn't miss somebody willing to do. It's much later stages, much more financially driven. I do like, you know, early stage, crazy ideas to founders in like a garage you know, type of investing that require as being a little bit more creative, crazy, and having a bit of like that founder of sort of, you know, background Yeah, there's, there's different approaches to getting into it, but you know, the, the most important thing, in some ways it's like get yourself near the pool of weirdos.
And start to work with them and, you know, angel invest in them, you know, work at one of the companies that are venture capitalist is funded. Then you'll end up sort of stumbling your way into the world of venture. Even if you don't mean to.
Alex: [00:08:58] So what does that process look like for you versus.
Anybody at founders fund versus VC in general. And in your mind, cause like how much of this is conviction based? How much of it is, you know, I'm investing in people, I guess it depends on what stage you are. Right. But I've heard this story of you being on like a plane to Portugal after like a couple of calls with, with sword health.
Right. So how how's that all look for you? Do you have like a thesis that you operate by.
Delian: [00:09:23] No. I mean, I think, you know this, this especially early stages is much more gut-based, you know, that people appreciate it. You're just looking for like that sort of spidey central, like spark, right?
Like the idea that you should like start a company that could potentially change the world is like fucking crazy. Like that just makes no sense. Like, you know, it's, it's extremely difficult and effectively impossible to do. And anybody embarking on that journey is crazy. You're trying to find that people that are crazy that actually like have that shock then either to a potential can, you know, show up in a variety of ways.
You can show up via a very well formatted cold email. Right. I get a variety of cold emails that I don't respond to. Like I responded to yours. Cause it was just like, well-structured clear, concise, like you brought up interesting points. I was like, I don't know, like, you know what the like, you know, upsides would be here, but like there's at least, you know, something interesting.
There does the same thing with sword. I was like, you know, I feel like I've been thinking about the physical therapy space is interesting, but it's a very well-written cold email and that'll just like indexing off of that spark. That was just like, you know, hopping on the phone with the sort of health founder and just being like, wow, okay.
He's like in the middle of like, not even like Lisbon Portugal, capital, he's in the middle of Porto Portugal in the suburbs. It's like the second largest town in Portugal. And in the suburbs of that, going to like some academic school, figuring out how to like, learn about the world of startups, building some technology, actually getting.
Traction, revenue investors from Portugal, and like, starting to build that up, it was just like, man, there's just like a lot of obstacles versus like the kid in like Menlo park high school that goes to Stanford and like fucking like stumbles into an angel round. Cause he just like, you know you know, tweaked that idea for a startup.
Basically. It's like a different level of like, you know, adversity that you kind of have to go through when you're coming from Portugal. And so the sparks can show up in different ways. Sometimes it's from something that the person is really passionate about and maybe it's like a NCAA athlete or something like that.
Like, honestly, a lot of the founders that I work with have come either from, you know you know, adversity via the world of sports. They've overcome adversity via the world of like, yeah, I probably. 60% of the founders I've invested in are like have similar immigrant backgrounds, partially for sure.
There's some positive bias towards wanting to invest in people that kind of look like yourself and have similar backgrounds. But part of it is that like, yeah, immigrants have to go through a lot more adversity than like the Taylor Lorenzes of the world. And. Yeah. I just felt like he had gone through, you know, a lot of adversity and then like, it's like once you sort of see that spark in the different, you know, parts of life, it's just like having that conviction to you, you know, once you, you know, flip over flip over to, you know, feeling like you've seen that spark right.
Do whatever it takes to sort of like quote unquote, like win the deal. And so you know, in, in sort of health, in particular ones that identified, I was like, man, this feels really strong. You kind of have to take every village that you can as a junior register. Right. That was like, definitely like my third deal that I'd done at the time.
And like, the advantage that I had was that like the Keiths and the Vinods and the Alfred liens, et cetera of the world, no matter how fucking cool your company is, they're not hopping on a plane and flying internationally a week after meeting you. Like, they have a lot of stuff going on and they're not going to do that.
You know, versus like, okay, I need to, you know, use use my, you know, junior free schedule to my advantage and I'm going to go fly to port. You'll be crazy. And like, rather than letting him go run a process a month from now, if you meet a ton of people in Silicon valley, I'm going to go fly to him and run the process and stuff.
And so yeah, there's no, I don't think there's like any like particular framework in some ways like you can use for it in some ways it's like gut and it definitely helps just like building more, you know at, at bats and more reps of it. Cause then you start to like, you know, recognize different signals.
Yeah, max, max levchin's resilience and ability to overcome adversity looks very different than like Elon's looks very different than max Rhodes at Faire or, you know, Jeff Bezos' is et cetera. Right. And so you start to realize, okay, there's different ways. She's sort of like in a pattern for, you're always kind of looking for that sort of like can this person become like a world-class CEO.
Alex: [00:12:46] Definitely. All right. So I do want to spend some time talking about Varda cause it's like the coolest thing ever. And it probably sounds a little Sy-fy to a lot of people still, but okay. So whenever you're talking to anybody and you bring up Varda and you're like, this is what we do. How do you even describe what a space factory is?
Because that sounds so far out there that it's what's, what's like the elevator pitch basically.
Delian: [00:13:09] Totally. Yeah, there's basically a series of very high value, but extremely sensitive materials that can be fabricated in a microgravity environment E or a G, but cannot be fabricated on earth. And this has been well, well studied and proven on the international space station.
Over the past 15 years, people have done experiments with everything from human organs, semiconductors there's various pharma. Fiber optics lots of benefits that has been shown to manufacture things in zero gravity and real commercial benefit things. Something that people would be willing to pay for the problem is the international space station.
Isn't exactly set up to be a step into somebody's sort of commercial supply chain, right? That is a research station that requires a ton of layers of bureaucracy to get anything onto and off of, and extremely long schedules and extreme expenses. Right. That is not something that can be, you know, the, the.
The, the step in the supply chain that like apple relies on to get there, like Silicon and one chip out. And so what Varna is doing is sort of, I call it like the transition path for that research. I take that research was done on the ISS, but just do it independently of the ISS. So, well, what does that mean?
Getting up to space. It's actually relatively quote unquote easy at this point. There's a lot of people that will get you up there. Right? So, you know, rocket lab space acts you know, Virgin galactic, Virgin orbit you know, et cetera. The next step to be independent of the ISX is like, okay, you can't just like fly the ice and ice and run your experiment on there.
You gotta like run it on your own like platform. And what does that platform with? Like, well, it turns out it looks a lot like a satellite, basically you need like, you know, solar panels and radios and things like that. And then that's the thing that you, like, you put the factory on top of, right? I, whatever it was, there was manufacturing, fiber optics are making human organs that are making the farmer drug, just build that same factory, but put it on top of the satellite and then the final thing that you need.
And this is the thing that everybody really scared of all these academics that didn't want to, you know, sort of you know, work on the sort of commercial approach. When you're on the ice and get free rides down, you got, you know, the, so use the sickness, the dragon, et cetera. If you're off on your own, you don't get no free ride down.
And it turns out people that appreciate you're really fast up there. The ride down is a lot more painful than the write up and you're going really fast. There's a lot of heat. And so we basically are also building a sort of miniature reentry vehicle. That it's super cheap and isn't like human rated, like right.
You and I would not survive if we went in and there but you know, organs in glass and semiconductors, et cetera, will it's yeah, that's sort of what the space factory means is you signed up what kind of looks like a satellite with a little factory attached to it in a little reentry vehicle. It fabricates the stuff, puts it in the reentry vehicle and brings it back.
And so that's what Varda's is doing and you know, scaling that up and, you know, then finding the customers on the backend to buy all his materials that were producing
Alex: [00:15:34] What's the starting point for fabrication. Right. Cause the first, you know, Couple iterations of this, I'm sure. Like it's going to cost a lot of money and there's not going to be a lot of economies of scale that you are sort of working with.
So what's like the most cost-effective thing to start with. Is it human organs? Is it like, what is it?
Delian: [00:15:51] We're not yet talking about the material that we're like working on it. We will reveal it sort of later in the year. You know, we want it to like reveal at once move actually like show sort of quote unquote showed success with it.
Like I you know, not just talking about the material, but like here's the customer that's buying the material and they're part of the press release and saying it, but yeah. Yeah, if you go and if you go and read all these, these are international space station you know, research papers and things like that.
It's relatively obvious, like sort of which set of materials are just much higher value command, a higher price. So that the economics are like easier to start, but so we chose the sort of highest value, one per unit mass that also has this sort of like easiest engineering and like simply sort of fabrication.
Like it's not like robot arms we have around that. But yeah, sure. The first couple of relatively net negative margin, but, you know, co-productions make it seem like, you know, I think we should be able to get to sort of positive margins by sort of mission, you know, three or four. So first of all, missions, for sure, lose money on but missions three and beyond, you know, making money off.
Alex: [00:16:42] So you're starting pretty small obviously, but what is this whole thing look like at scale? Like what's the vision 10 years from now?
Delian: [00:16:48] Yeah. So the first, like, you know, let's say, you know, eight or nine missions, we're calling that a sort of like disposable space factory, right? So we go up and fabricate the thing, we basically ditch the factory that burns up an orbit and then the reentry capsule brings the materials back down.
But over time it starts to make sense to create like a reusable space factory. Leave the factory up there and instead develop docking capabilities dock with the factory, exchange the raw materials for process materials, and then come back down. And so in the long-term we start to look like, you know, a 500 kilogram sort of like robotic facility that is like up there permanent.
But as we start to use up all that production volume that it tends to look like at that thousand kilograms in 2000 and 10,000. And the size of the ISS 10 times, the size of the ISS that eventually, you know, something like an industrial park, the size of Shanghai you know, in low-earth orbit. And that's, that's the size and scale that we need to build to sort of satisfy that demand from the customers that we're talking to.
Alex: [00:17:39] Definitely. So another question is in terms of dealing with raw materials, Obviously not like the most cost-effective thing to just blast stuff up there every time. Are you guys thinking about anything? Like, I don't know, lunar ice mining or asteroid mining, like has any of that in the books?
Delian: [00:17:56] So not something that I think Varda will necessarily tackle directly, but part of why I get excited about Varda is like twofold one, the way that you will eventually get the humanity out into the star, it's it isn't just by like exploration or, you know, throwing big rockets at Mars.
Right? If you think about California, California became California. Now when like Lewis and Clark came out here and maybe they came out in a really big boat, a small boat, doesn't fucking matter. How big, like the size of the boat is the reason California became California was the gold rush. It was the industrialization of California and the economic incentive for it.
Varda is the first important base. I at least drawn well material, economic incentive for being in space, not just like satellites, being photons up and down and communicating with earth. And so the reason I get excited is like, that's actually what, you know, expands our ability to you know, get into the star as much faster.
And then the second part then, you know, relates to sort of your question. Yeah. For a long time, we will be getting the raw materials from space. But like when the next company comes along and is like, Hey, Varda, you're consuming a lot of water in space. We can bring it from the moon, like half the price.
I'm like, hell yeah, I'll be a commercial customer. And so part of what I get excited about as a VC is like right now, lunar ice mining is not venture backable. It's just like, not the thing that I can find, make sense to do commercially in the short term, but for sure once Varda is up and functioning and we're consuming a lot of materials,
it is definitely very viable. Now, do I like start a new company? And you know, co-found and incubate that as well, maybe do I just, you know, expand the product lines Varda focuses on and, you know, start to do that as well. Maybe that as well.
Alex: [00:19:20] I got what you're saying. So it makes sense as, you know, sort of a bridge to those like super, super Sci-fi like totally non venture backable things right now, like sort of as a base layer of infrastructure for that. Does that have any other implications for things that relate to humans, right.
Because, you know, obviously you're not going to have guys with, you know, next to the, the, the assembly line, like making shit in space, like that's not going to happen. Does this play into, you know, actual human space exploration more directly in the sense of like space tourism or anything like that?
Delian: [00:19:57] For sure. Once you have a robotic, that's like the size of the ISS, or two times or three times the size of the ISS creating a human rated component to it, or creating a human rated reentry vehicle, like starts to actually sort of make marginal cost sense cause like, there are things that like humans are good at in terms of like dexterity and repairs and things like that.
So yes, either part of why I get excited is that also provides more, you know, human incentive for having people up there. That's like commercial incentive, not just like a government research station, right. That is extremely risk averse for sure. I am sure that, you know, there there's almost really, I could guarantee that somebody will die on a Varda space station at some point, right?
Like that is, you know, in some ways a given, but I think that's sort of part of progress is being willing to like, you know, push the fold on these things. And so yes, you know, at some point it starts to make sense to, you know, have humans up there that comes with some risks, but that also comes with a nice amount of upside as well.
And you know, it, it the marginal engineering that needs to be built to be done to To create a human rated component to it. It's worth the upsides you get from having a human up there. They can go and repair things when they break.
Alex: [00:20:57] Got it. And I guess taking a step back, just like in terms of operationally like engineering you know, team, all of this stuff, you're not the CEO, but you had a pretty big say.
Putting the team together and picking a CEO and all that stuff. How do you go about building a team for an operation like this? Like what are some key sort of components that you need for looking for guys like that?
Delian: [00:21:21] Yeah. And obviously the CEO is the most critical thing, right? Like, you know, this is an extremely difficult, ambitious, like, you know, capital intensive project.
You can't do without the right CEO and I'm not the right CEO you know, I'm a good storyteller, I'm a good financier. I'm not somebody who can like, you know, build these spacecraft, recruit these engineers you know, convince them to join. And so the key thing was one finding a chief scientist that had done microgravity manufacturing before.
So that was like the initial co-founder that we sort of pulled together. And the second was find somebody that can. Build this deeptech ambitious idea and recruit the quality of engineers that we need. And so yeah, I helped put together the sort of founding team, I, the two co-founders, but then, you know, Will Bri, our CEO is basically recruited everybody since then.
And then I was the skillset that I was looking for in him was can he recruit he's an absolute, you know, a monster of a recruiter just, you know, pulls people in basically, you know, left and right. And he's just. He's he's a very good storyteller and he's kind of sometimes joke is that spirit animal.
Is that a golden retriever? It's kind of hard to say no to a golden retriever when they want to play fetch,
Alex: [00:22:18] Like that way of putting it. So what about you, do you, I'm assuming you have ambitions to go to space at some point space orbit, moon, Mars. Like what's the dream here.
Delian: [00:22:27] Yeah. I mean, I told my girlfriend on our first date that, you know, she would have to be comfortable with the idea of us moving to space appropriately as a part of my work.
And I think when I said that, you know, back in whatever it was 2019 you know, I think she saw it as like sort of more of a joke. She was like, aha. You know, a lot of you know, a lot of crazy people, you know, especially in Silicon valley, like that, you know, talk about space, but you know, that's kind of a joke and, you know, nothing's ever going to happen.
And then I think sort of as Varda's come along, certainly to realize that it's sort of, you know, more and more serious. And so. Yeah, no, very excited to, you know be one of the very early people, you know, operating one of those Varda space stations, hopefully we don't die. But yeah, that's definitely, you know, part of the risk that you take on with ambitious, endeavours like this.
Alex: [00:23:03] Cool dude. Well, listen, I appreciate the time. It was great. Great chatting with you.
Delian: [00:23:09] So yeah. Very nice to meet you, Alex. Have a great rest of your day. Cheers.