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?
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