#48 - Delian Asparouhov

Update: 2023-12-12

Description

Delian Asparouhov is the co-founder, President and Chairman of Varda Space Industries, a company building spacecraft to manufacture materials in microgravity that are difficult or impossible to produce on Earth— starting with pharmaceuticals. He’s also a Partner at Founders Fund.

Previously, he was a principal at Khosla Ventures, head of growth at Teespring, and founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale. Delian is Bulgarian, attended MIT, and likes to ski and play soccer.

0:00 - Intro
3:14 - How Does Innovation Happen?
6:23 - Varda and the No Science Allowed Rule
7:52 - A Primer on Solid State Microgravity Manufacturing
18:25 - Space Industrialization, Trading Posts, and the Chinese and Portuguese Navies
21:13 - Economic Incentives and Future Business Models in Space
24:24 - SpaceX and The Costs of Mass to Orbit
27:45 - Demand for Space Manufacturing and Varda at Scale
33:44 - Manufacturing, Servicing, Machining, and Future Markets for Space
36:42 - Incubating Companies
40:33 - When Would Varda Have Been Started Otherwise?
42:19 - The Hollywood Model of Startups
45:20 - Future of Incubations
47:47 - Media’s Role in Technology
50:39 - What Media Inspired Varda’s Founding?
52:38 - Talent, Culture, and Cementing Company Trajectory
53:57 - Narratives and Talent Recruitment
55:28 - Traits Delian Looks for in Founders
57:38 - The ‘Why Now’ When Investing
1:00:08 - Bring Non-Consensus and Right
1:02:53 - Is Varda Consensus Yet?
1:03:24 - Identifying Non-Consensus Opportunities
1:05:12 - Lessons from Founding and Investing
1:07:40 - What Skill Do You Wish You’d Developed Earlier?
1:10:11 - Immigrant Mentality
1:11:24 - Less Obvious Reasons for Success
1:12:55 - On Speed
1:14:23 - What Should More People Be Thinking About?