YouSaid · the spoken record

Delian Asparouhov

lines on the record: 80
first: 2024-07-29
most recent: 2024-07-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“You know, funny, when I saw this on the agenda, one of the things that I was going to say is people sometimes don't ask enough, why did you decide to not be found or CEO of Varda? And it does basically come down to this where I actually sort of think that, and this may, you know, sort of trend over time, maybe over the course of the next decade or two as I continue to gain experience, become hopefully more emotionally and mentally mature. I'm able to do that CEO job, but I do think that the question I'm not asking enough is why didn't you do the CEO job? And it's because I'm not 100% convinced that I could be in the sort of top 0.1% of CEOs versus I am very convinced that my co-founder is able to. And so I need to focus on the thing that I can, I think, be 0.1% in and that is a bit more of the sort of president chairman role.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rallies the team, grinds through, can operate on four hours of sleep, and still be high energy, high functioning, et cetera. He doesn't want to necessarily do that for months at a time. And so in some ways, even though it's been my greatest flaw, I think because I've recognized it as my flaw, it has forced me to spend far more energy on finding people that can basically mitigate that flaw.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably the one that I'm sort of most ashamed of is I am not somebody who always handles existential sort of stress and threat well in that it really does impact sort of my quality of sleep, physical, mental health in a significant way such that I do require sort of more unplugging than is ideal like when I look at some of the true sort of greatest entrepreneurs and founders if you read about Elon, Steve, et cetera, they're clearly able to even the most stressful moments of their company's lives grind through the 12 to 14 hour days, pull all nighters, et cetera, and be sort of fresh and ready sort of the following day. And that's just like not something that I'm capable of. If I have to pull an all-nighter, I'm like wrecked, not for like a single day, but like for like a week afterwards in terms of being sort of fully productive. And so what that has led me to doing is making sure to surround myself with people that are like that. So, you know, so my co-founder Will Brewie is very much so one of those types where like.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Multitude of times. I mean, I probably had at least six Singermans where he has to be telling what the fuck. Thankfully, those have generally decreased in frequency. I think, you know, especially in the early days, it was like, sorry, I'm such an idiot. I'll try to do better in the future. And then I think thankfully I did generally do better in the future. So thankfully, I think, you know, Brian has not had to do one of those now sit down one-on-ones. And I think two years in a month of my five years at Founders Fund, I think we're at least getting to the point where now I'll be past 50% of the time Brian having to sit me down versus not.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think at the end of the day, it's better to, and I think this goes back to one of my early answers, it's better for people, at least the founders that have to choose who they work with to understand the character of the people that they're going to be working with. And so I generally prefer for more transparency and honesty with how people truly sort of think about one another and their preferences than not. And so, yeah, I'm generally providing back.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have tried to tone down how much on Twitter I sort of attack the individual versus attack the idea. Obviously I've made plenty of enemies in Silicon Valley and some of them I'm sort of comfortable with. Some I've done somewhat unintentionally where I was sort of more meaning to attack the idea and the principle than the actual person and I actually quite enjoyed the person. And so probably have changed my mind on how okay it is to attack the person, let's say”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've gotten to observe a true work, Alfred Lynn, and would love to one day find something where we're actually both the board members. I imagine, though, that given our not super overlapping interests, that may or may not happen, but that would be one that I would love to experience.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably have to be Seth Bannon from 50 years. I think he dives sort of deep into the companies that he's involved in. And you sort of asked some pretty great pointed questions”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I do think the sort of biggest geopolitical and moral crisis that humanity will have over the course of the next minimum 100, but maybe it is closer to 150 to 200 years is sort of fundamentally that humanity is almost certainly going to be speciating, where both with artificial selection pressures from things like polygenic risk scoring of embryos to eventual sort of crispering of embryos where you're changing DNA to natural selection pressures of people being on moon, Mars, and lower Earth orbit stations will fundamentally create a new dynamic that we have not had in the last effectively 15, 20,000 years where people don't appreciate that we all happen to be sort of homo sapiens like the only”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably didn't expect how much my sort of default mood would improve by having a child. You know, it was definitely something that I felt very ready for. I was excited by. I knew that it would bring me sort of a lot of joy. But there is just this very base level of, you know, the fact that you get all these endorphins released every single morning when you pick up this just like, you know, beautiful, happy child that just like screams and giggles and plays, et cetera, and just like evokes your inner child, even when you're in the midst of like what feel like the most existential, stressful, et cetera situations and you're, you know, going through these professional crises in some ways, I feel like all of that washes away when you have just like this like joyous, you know, sort of child to sort of begin every single day and that just erases, I don't know, anything that you could have in terms of stress, you know, depression, mood dampener.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably honesty first because I feel like in some ways the rest of that doesn't matter unless you have that. Then maybe controversially I'd put you sort of sex second. I think like, you know, being truthful, you know, I think Zuckerberg actually had an interesting quote yesterday in his like Emily Chang interview where he talked about how much he just does not believe in the idea of like plug yourself into a computer and upload your consciousness. We're so much more than just our brains. We are the bodies, the sensations, et cetera. So in some ways, you know, sort of sex in a relationship is the sort of epitome of that and needs to be sort of second. And then it's probably sort of laughter in that, I think life is a difficult thing. The fact that it's so short is a difficult thing. You know, you have to deal with many hardships. And if you don't have laughter, you may not be able to get through that. And then, you know, probably fourth is respect where I do think it's important. But when I think about it in the sort of ranking of all those, it is probably sort of fourth most important. If you've got honesty, laughter, honesty, sex and laughter in some ways respect probably falls out of that.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Use the instincts of what you've built and what worked well, and sort of prior relationships and try to find the person where you can most be yourself and they just by default love that. I always felt like there was sort of something wrong and something that I needed to edit out of myself. And that was going to make me the better sort of boyfriend, better potential husband. And I would get critiques from the girlfriends at the time. They were like, I like a lot of you, but there's this 10% that, you know, is maybe the more volatile or the crazier or the thing that post the bombastic things on Twitter that I would love you to edit. I think ultimately the sort of thing that made me realize that my wife was the one was where I could just be 100% of myself. And she actually loved sort of all aspects of it. And so then rather than not being myself, I could actually just even more be myself. And she'd love that, you know, basically even more.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The biggest mistake that I see people go into sort of the stage of life where they're prioritizing, finding their lifelong partner is they come into that process with a pre-prescribed notion of what they think their ideal partner looks like, whether that be a set of attributes, a list, particular family archetype, et cetera. They come in with these very sort of strong predisposed notions. I came into that process sort of with that similar sort of list myself. And arbitrarily one of the things on that list in some ways was I really believed that my wife needed to be a really good skier. Skiing was an incredibly important or still is an incredibly important sport in my life. It's how my family hangs out together all on Christmas Day. And so I felt that how would somebody possibly integrate into my familial life basically without that? And then it turns out my wife who I very much so married up for was a sort of god awful skier and bless her heart at least allowed me to sort of teach her some amount to get her to mediocrity rather than being god-awful. But I think it's recognizing that you probably don't even realize what that ideal person looks like.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bifurcation, where almost certainly there will be more and more people that work less, but there will also be these hyper efficient people that are augmented by AI, have more wealth, have more people around them that actually become even more productive and efficient. And so the answer in some ways is like yes and no. The average yes has gone down, but the like, you know, sort of tail extremes, I think, are only going to go up even further.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know. I think if you look at the obviously average working hours today relative to obviously factory labor and the industrial revolution in the 1920s, the objective answer is no. Magnitude of effort is always an important thing to compete on. But so is direction. And I think the important thing about society becoming more and more wealthy is that for the people that choose to work very, very hard, we continue to allow them to be rewarded. We're not Europe where we try to sort of steal the wealth of the most successful away from them. And we in some ways enable them to have even more infrastructure to be as productive as they would like to be. If you look at the sort of tools available to me in order to be productive relative to even John Rockefeller in the 1920s, the amount of work that I can put in and the preciseness of the direction is far more direct. There are so many things in Rockefeller's life that were sort of, you know, inefficiencies, whether it was like, you know, communication, transportation, et cetera. And so I think what you're going to see is this.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Born and bred, you know, sort of Americans that grow up within this economy, culture, climate, et cetera, don't, they take for granted how special the United States is, our economic system, our political system, and don't recognize how existential it can be if we sort of lose the current system and how bad the rest of the world is. And so I do think that obviously makes people extraordinarily soft. I'll maybe use the sort of Netanyahu quote from the congressional speech that he gave yesterday, which is, you know, there are protesters outside of Capitol Hill that had signs that said, you know, sort of gaze for Gaza. And he was like, you might as well be saying that we're chickens for, you know, sort of KFC. They would eat you alive there. And I think that's like a perfect example of just like the softness of the next generation because they take for granted that you can even be gay in this country.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think this goes back to maybe the beginning of the podcast, where I think in Bulgaria the default is just say what you think and it doesn't really matter that much how society sort of reacts to it. And I used to feel very guilty when I was first, you know, moving to San Francisco and I would say offensive things at the office that people found distasteful or in my early days of Twitter. And then I think at some point I've recognized, I mean,”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was thinking the technology industry great companies movements, technologies only get implemented with people that have extreme sort of long-term thinking. And to me, the epitome of long-term thinking is recognizing that your time on this planet is sort of very short and what you're here ultimately to do is sort of set it up well for the next generation. And in some ways, the epitome of that is recognizing that there needs to be a next generation and we have to be the ones to make them. Babies don't come from storks. They come from people sort of ideally being married and having children. Obviously, unfortunately, there's a lot more being born out of wedlock today than not.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the sort of sector specific specialized funds are going to sort of have a very tough time where if you are a financial services or SaaS focused fund, you for sure sort of had a wave that you could ride for a certain period of time. And it's not obvious that there will be that same wave again. Like Founders Fund is not a aerospace defense focused investor. It happens to be that we picked up on that trend and saw that there was going to be upcoming tailwinds far ahead of anybody else. But we also invested in Airbnb a firm, et cetera. And so in some ways, the firms that will struggle the most over the next 10 years are the ones that sort of have these artificial constraints on the types of investments that they're going to make that don't allow them to optimize for the reality of where is being disrupted and where they're going to be generational returns to again go back to one of Brian's classic isms internally is the only rule that founders find is that there are no rules if we establish any type of arbitrary rule it almost certainly will basically decrease our use of IRR and so a lot of these like sort of specialist firms I think”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Top three VCs a decade ago kind of look like the top three VCs today. And there's almost certainly basically be the top three VCs a decade from now. You are starting to see obviously people's shift in fundamentally different directions like Sequoia and A16Z becoming RIAs maybe points towards a world where they're going to be scaling headcount asset classes, et cetera, to the point where they start to resemble something more like BlackRock versus, you know, sort of the homegrown sort of VCs of the historical Silicon Valley arc. And I do generally believe that at least within the world of like seed series A, technology companies, the most successful ones are going to look more like the Founders Fund model of small teams focused specifically on that asset class versus just being a subset within a larger BlackRock looking like behemoth.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And product. And so there does need to be adaptation. I think what you'll realistically see is just the like, you know, sort of ranks of VCs will fundamentally change. I'm not sure that everyone is going to be capable of reinventing themselves in this way. I just think the up and coming classes will look very different.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's funny is this is actually what historical Silicon Valley was known for, right? Obviously, we became what we are because of the word silicon. We were a chips industry where you had to do extremely deep technical diligence. Things required quite a bit of CapEx to basically scale up. The fact that we had this sort of like low marginal cost free distribution, very simple business model is sort of like a freak outcome of the like mid 2000s to the like sort of late 2010s. And I think in some ways we're sort of reverting to the mean where if you look at the most successful investors from the 80s, 90s, et cetera, they look closer to a node Kosla than a sort of pure SaaS investor sort of Jason sort of Lemkin. And so I think what you will see is the profile of investors start to change. You need these very broad polymaths that can sort of get up to speed across biotech material science, aerospace, et cetera, more so than people who's sort of skill set purely sits in the world of financial analysis and software engineering.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Product statement, I would probably disagree with where I think the deep workflows, et cetera, if you're having to invent them for the first time by determining what your customers' workflows are versus just replicating off of a sort of known outcome, I think the ability to replicate that with, again, a team of 10 killer software engineers and AI just feels incredibly sort of quick today. I do think that distribution point and branding point is real, but then that's what people need to recognize is like, you know, service Titan is actually closer to LVMH than it is to Tesla. And that's fine. People should invest in brands that have great distribution. Clearly, returns can be made there. But let's fundamentally recognize that these are not true technology companies.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, that the marginal returns are zero as well because there is no moat because two stanford kids, especially with today's AI, can replicate your SAS for plumbers effectively in a weekend. And so”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Partner Trey Stevens was obviously extremely early to this trend. I'd like to say in summer 17, when I decided this was what I wanted to focus on, it was not the sort of typical path that junior VCs were obviously taking in the valley, but I think has led to a lot of the success that I've had to date. And so it's been interesting to see that sort of flip on its head where I had a former colleague Everett Randall, who's now a partner at KPCB, who would always critique me and say, oh, Dellian just loves these sort of low margin CapEx intensive businesses that are like highly dilutive. And this was in the 2019, 2025 timeframe where SaaS still felt like it was the sort of number one thing in the valley. And in some ways, sort of those critiques have gone away, even though the fundamental nature of the critique is still true, which is that these things are low margin, CapEx intensive, but ultimately that is where you build your sort of moat. The one liner that I sometimes like to use is people love software because sort of the marginal distribution costs are zero. But perhaps what people need to realize.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sort of closer to the latter, but I do think it still needs to be sort of in family with what is reasonable for the status of the company, I guess, where I think if you're just like, you know, sort of two, three X, you know, sort of beyond, even if other investors are willing to offer it, it just means that you're going to make future decisions that are also similarly low quality. I think it's in some ways reflective of the quality of the founder. And so I think ramp in some ways, it's not particularly unreasonable for a second time exited founder that made money for investors for a seed round to be at sort of 30 post, right? I think that's like not.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thought was in the sort of appropriate, reasonable range that sets the company up for sort of long term success. And so there are hot rounds where the founders are not sort of irrational and we do like to invest in those at Founders Fund.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's not to say the deal heat means it will not be successful, but if you look at the sort of returns, some were hot deals and some were not. And so, you know, it's sort of like a wash, and I shouldn't really focus on it, right? Sword Health was like the epitome of not a hot deal, random Portuguese company. There was nobody on the other side of the table. We sort of set terms. The ramp seed round had five or six other offers and obviously was sort of super hot. Those are basically the two biggest outcomes and on opposite sides of that, you know, sort of spectrum. And so I think it's actually just like uncorrelated. I think obviously at Founders Fund, we definitely have a bias towards seeing it as a negative sort of factor, partially because it does typically end up affecting pricing. But I do think there's a set of hypercompetent founders. I think in some ways at Varda, we take this strategy, which is even in a competitive situation, we don't necessarily take the highest price offer that we have. And every Varda round, we've actually not taken the highest priced offer. We've done what we.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sort of to do to mine into that network versus being so practically so close bare to the metal, you just have a much more extensive understanding of the people that day-to-day work in this sort of field. The third is obviously sort of close rate. I mentioned obviously this recent is not to say that I love investing in these sort of hot competitive deals. But since Varda, I have not lost an opportunity where I've wanted to invest, even in situations where there have been phenomenal partners, general partners on the other side of the table offering competing sort of term sheets. And so”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, a multitude, if we go back to that framework, there's a multitude that have been significantly positively impacted due to Varda. The first just top a funnel. There's just a set of founders that did not know me when I was just the founder on investor versus now because the company is an intriguing company have heard of me sort of through that. Second, my ability to decide on what I would like to invest in significantly improved. In particular, I like to go back to this example of there's this company that I led the seed round in Senra systems. The founder proactively chose to come meet me in Miami, even though he was based in Los Angeles because of sort of the Varda connection. And then I was able to run an extremely extensive diligence over the following basically 36 hours after my initial meeting with him because I was able to call people at Varda that had been his former manager, director poor, had worked with him as a peer. And so the level of sort of depth of network that I have into this field allowed me to do even for other really top tier aerospace investors that type of diligence would have taken them probably weeks.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a true operational day to day role in the last three to five years in some ways, your ability to significantly provide high quality advice really degrades. And the only way to keep it at a top level is, I think, sort of how Keith does it where he just gets so involved in each of the companies where irrespective in theory, if he had not done open door, open store, et cetera. I still think he actually is able to maintain a sort of significant operational sense because he goes so deep and transitioned directly from operator to investor.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there's a couple of different causes. One of the worst outcomes is when a venture investor feels pressure from the firm, whether it's in the like, you know, Uber case of we need liquidity or one of the most worst cases that I've seen is when it's your first sort of like quote unquote big deal, big investments. It's like the thing that you feel like is defining your next three, four, five years at the firm. And that anxiety then creeps in where you're trying to force the founder into like, hey, I need a quick markup or XYZ sort of short-term progress. It's like not quite to the like public markets quarterly, you know, sort of, you know, hamster wheel, but it starts to approximate to that where you like to be really, really sort of short-term thinking focused and impose that anxiety upon the founder. Probably the second is people that are just so decayed on operational skill sets, but still feel like they have really strong opinions on here's how you should do XYZ marketing, this candidate, et cetera. I just think that unless you have been.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, why didn't I look at the set of co investments, board meetings, board rooms that have had to be a part of? I think that's an accurate percentage.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's that sort of fifth part of the venture job. Trey and Bryan are more than welcome to take their approach of write a check to a founder, but then largely be hands off from there because the best founders don't ask for help. The best founders in my portfolio have looked to people that they value their opinion of and want those people sort of around the table. And so I do spend every single time I invest in a company, I try to meet with them on a monthly basis. I go to the board meetings. I try to be very thoughtful about how I engage in those board meetings.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually think it goes back again to that sort of familial nature at Founders Fund. I think because he maintains such closeness to everyone on the team, and obviously it's, you know, when you're on your first year there, it's probably more difficult. But once you're sort of five years in, at that point, you've spent.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to because this is brought up a point if there's a thing that I've learned from Peter the most, it is there is always a way to structure your arguments such that you are on the winning side no matter what and look the best. And I think he does a phenomenal job of that, of structuring his user logogic arguments and frameworks in a way where if you disagree with him, you by default just look like a buffoon because of the fundamental way that the argument is basically sort of structured. And so that's probably the number one thing that I've learned from Peter is being very diligent in how I structure my logic.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And yet, Zuck releases whatever llama three or four and releases it completely free in open source and it is beating all the benchmarks of anything that OpenAI and Microsoft have ever done. Perhaps that actually doesn't matter. And it turns out Zuckerberg is going to be the massive AI platform. And it's because he's willing to take risks and invest into a level of H100s that Satya was not willing to do because Satya had to ultimately serve public markets versus Zuckerberg still has penultimate control over everything that sort of Facebook does. And so it's not to say that professional CEOs can't take it some amount of the way. And obviously Satya has delivered phenomenal returns to investors. But I still think at the end of the day, those entail outcomes aren't possible without founder-led companies.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because I think ultimately in order to deliver generational returns, there's no way for that to happen other than the founder still being at the helm. The moment that you install professional CEO, that person doesn't have the same level of moral authority or capability to sort of take risks that require you, the risks that are required to take in order to generate those types of true entails.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Travis committed no crime and they sort of ousted him despite the fact that they actually didn't necessarily have the legal control to do so. They just cornered him in a hotel room two days after his mother had passed away and convinced him to sign papers that he sort of shouldn't have.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but I think if you just look at the fundamental job of venture capitalists to provide basically sort of high beta strategy, and if you look at the highest beta outcomes in the world, they are all founder-led companies. And so ultimately, even if you disagree with the approach, even if you think that perhaps the company could provide some liquidity if you get rid of the founder, I think in some ways, obviously, sort of benchmark LPs made a lot of money by Dara becoming the CEO, taking the company public. And today it's cash flow profitability. But perhaps those benchmark LPs would have made even more money if Travis was still CEO and the future of self-driving cars lived within Uber rather than living within Google. And maybe Uber becomes a $1 trillion company over the course of the 2020s at the helm rather than Dara. And so I think in some ways you shouldn't overly rely on history. However, Darwinistically, founder-led companies are the only ones that generate the sort of returns that matter for VC.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Part of why I really enjoy working at Founders Fund is because of the sort of fundamental mantra of the firm and why it started in 2004, the idea of sort of Foundler friendly VCs and not fireing founders was extremely contrarian. Obviously, it's become somewhat consensus, not entirely. There are firms here ones that I mentioned, benchmark, A16Z, Sequoia, et cetera, all have examples of founder oustings in the past decade. And so in some ways, it continues to actually be at least somewhat contrary. Do you agree?”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of Travis was talked about more publicly about how morally depraved that entire basically situation was, so that people can choose to opt into is that a firm that you want to work with, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I think that stuff should be sort of more on display than not, more for sake of not the like, you know, VCs winning a point on one another publicly and getting attention for it, but more for the founders to understand how this shit actually happens behind the scenes.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that for the future generation of founders, I think that it is valuable that people's characters are laid on display. It's not to say that anyone comes off unscathed in any of these things, right? Whether you're on the like, you know, sort of Parker versus David Zach side of it, both sides have shown pros and both sides have shown cons. And I think that's valuable because then you as a founder can self-select into it, where I think one of the questions that you sort of threw in the agenda was, you know, has your divisiveness on Twitter sort of lost you or won you a deal? I'm sure that it has. I'm sure that there is a set of founders that have chosen to just not reach out to me whatsoever because of my philosophy. But there's also a set of founders that have self-selected into proactively wanting to work with me. Eric and Kareem of Ramp, you know, maybe being a perfect example of this of really wanting to opt into the immigrant anti-woke, et cetera, mentality and have that be a sort of core part of the sort of early culture. And so I wish that Bill Gurley's firing.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but things in Silicon Valley don't always operate according to legality. They do sometimes operate according to a little bit of the character reputation. Obviously, we're seeing this kind of play out in the drama sphere of Twitter over the past 24, 48 hours with Parker Conrad, Vinod, Mike Solana, David Sachs, etc.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there it was just like I didn't get to it in terms of top of funnel quickly enough relative to the round dynamics but yeah it was sort of that one and then in that thread I mentioned a second that it was a you know sort of double down on a you know sort of portfolio company where I think if I were to critique myself there probably you know sort of felt entitled to the ability to double down”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was this guy Nathaniel? I guess since he's now sort of publicly confirmed himself, I think it's fine to say this guy Nathaniel Manning at this company that was doing wildfire sort of insurance tech enabled using satellite data, et cetera. And I think ultimately that sort of failure point came down to just, yeah, COVID era, I think the company or the founders were not based in the bay area where I was at the time. We just weren't quite able to meet in person, even though I was willing to fly, et cetera, just in the timeframe that he wanted to ultimately come to a decision.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's funny, this actually recently came back up because one of the founders that I lost the deal on for some reason brought up the sort of thread where I sort of mentioned him not directly, but somebody asked me what deals have you lost? And I mentioned him sort of vaguely. He replied to that tweet and was like, the biggest mistake of my company building was actually turning down Dellion's term sheet. So that was a very flattering thing to hear.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, go through in that his speech that he gives is both who has joined the firm since then, but also what children have been born into this sort of like Founders Fun family since the last time we all got together. And in some ways, maybe that anecdote is reflective of that sort of collaborative familial culture.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was the most point person and who gets to claim the most basic credit for an individual investment, that type of politicking sort of doesn't really exist because I think a combination of the team size being small and the personal connections being strong and the way the economics are structured. And so so much of what we do, it's not to the level of like benchmarks like full sort of consensus everybody needs to vote on it culture. But by far, if you look at the best investments, it's when three or four sort of investors collaborated significantly to get to conviction on a particular investment, but also that like the rest of the firm didn't like the investment. And I think it's only possible to both collaborate to that depth and also get deals across this sort of line, even if the rest of the firm doesn't like it, when you have that very small collaborative and basically very personally closed structure. One sort anecdote that I've used that maybe reflects this is Brian, when we do our sort of like, you know, once every year or two year, basically like annual retreat with the whole team, one of the core things that we like.”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing that is probably most underappreciated, the fact that the team is very small allows for there to be very strong sort of personal relationships where obviously in any network, the number of network connections grows by n squared. And so the fact that I probably won't do the sort of counting perfectly, but I think call it 11, 12 of us on the investment team today on the order of n squared, 130, basically permutations of sort of connections that's actually sort of relatively possible to maintain quite strongly once you actually go to even 20 at that point you're talking about 400, which then basically becomes impossible to maintain. And what that allows us to do and the way that we sort of do our economics, which is there's no sort of deal by deal, you know, sort of basis, mixes so the firm is far more collaborative than I think people expect in terms of many of the even like intro calls that we take will have multiple people on the firm and there's not jockeying around who”
2024-07-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source