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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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“If anything, the biggest change is I would double down on what we've done sort of best historically, which is if you look at the general partners today at Founders Fund beyond Peter, which is sort of Brian Singerman, Tracy Stevens, Napoleon, all three of them began as either interns or relatively junior investors at Founders Fond over a decade ago. The best thing that we could be doing today is ensuring that we have people on the team today that in a decade are going to be the future Brian Napoleon's sort of trays. Right now, technically, sort of full-time at Founders Fund, there is only one person that is under the age of 20, 37 that is probably not a, you know, sort of sufficient class of future up-and-coming investors that would, you know, sort of be those future general partners in 10, 15, sort of 20 years. I would say probably the big.”
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
“Sequoia Andreessen probably more historical benchmark than modern benchmark, but I still think there's lessons to be had there. And, you know, if I were to look over the past sort of five years, generally the Founders Fund decision making has led to generally superior drones and also less gaffes in various ways, whether it's the sort of FTX type fraud debaccles, whether it's the holding publics beyond when you should on behalf of your LPs.”
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, my biggest sort of misinvestment and one that I think about a lot was in December 2019, I had the opportunity to double down on Sword and invest in the company basically 10 on a hundred million post. And we had”
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
“On, decided I'm going to focus on two core things that I'm going to differentiate myself on. I'm going to spend a lot of time in Frontier Tech and in particular in aerospace and understand that entire industry extremely well so that anytime somebody thinks about a space deal, they immediately think of me top of mind. Versus if you don't have that type of defining trait, you're just not going to be top of mind when people are thinking about co-investors and that's the ultimate sort of failure case. And out of all of those five things, I'm actually going to focus on that fifth one first. So rather than even trying to, you know, sort of source and understand my taste, et cetera, I'm actually going to make myself extremely useful to Keith's pre-existing portfolio of founders so that when one day I need to have try to attempt a deal, Max Rhodes, the CEO fair, will be willing to hop on the phone and say, look, Dellian was obviously not the person that sourced or led our deal, but ultimately was very valuable to the company in like XYZ ways, you should take his capital. And so when you look at, I believe it was true work, it was literally the like, you know, sort of found a reference of max that ultimately.”
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 deals that you yourself like and want to champion, you then need to develop a skill set for championing those investments that you like within the firm. So basically like the internal basically selling, you then need to also do the external selling of convincing basically the founders that they should take your capital relative to anybody else's. And then post-investment, you need to help that founder basically manage the business and exit. Trying to be great at all five is completely impossible task. Obviously there are people within Founders Fund that explicitly choose to not work on the fifth one whatsoever, right? You know, Brian and Trey's, you know, sort of strategy is we believe the best founders sort of need no help and we are not going to try to differentiate on helping founders. Thankfully, love to work at a place where we can agree to disagree on investment strategies and I enjoy differentiating myself on the fifth and I think it helps with other sort of categories. But I think junior VCs make the mistake of let me try to do all of these and across a multitude of sectors versus I think I just, you know,”
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
“Ultimately, you need to recognize that venture is the most commoditized, let's say, industry within tech. You have no moat other than your brand. The product that you deliver at the end of the day is US dollars just like anybody else can deliver that fundamental product. People don't focus enough on differentiation. They come in and they try to do all aspects of VC generically well and focus on a multitude of sectors generically well. I think it was Sarah Tavel, benchmark may not love me for various comments that I make, but I do like Sarah's sort of framework and I use it all the time, which is there's sort of four or five aspects to VC and late staging your career. You do kind of need to be world class at least like three of those. But early on, you need to focus on one. And so the five that she breaks down is one, you basically need a sort of top of funnel way to basically source whether that's more marketing or sales driven. You then need to sort of develop a nose for what”
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 in your first year of VC, you do want to just open your aperture and build your sort of data set on founders where, again, that first year, I think I was effectively willing to meet almost any founder that was willing to meet with me and vice versa. Once you've met Call it on the order of a thousand founders, and especially if in that thousand you are fortunate enough to have a data set of founders that look like Parker Conrad, Eric Kleiman, Alex Wang, et cetera, you start to have an understanding of what does greatness look like. I think you should be very judicious on waiting to pull the trigger until you feel like you have identified the taste for what that greatness 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
“To go meet with founders in person, figure out how to understand their businesses and how to convince them to even spend time with you when you're not one of the big general partners.”
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
“They do, but again, there's some level of turnaround of Keith schedules an example, is booked a full three, four weeks in advance. The idea that it's going to be a week-long turnaround is impossible for his activation energy, it has to be the junior investors have gone and done some level of diligence, built conviction. And for sure, it's to say he will do it at some point. But I was just willing to do it faster, quicker turnaround, and dive much, much deeper than what they would be capable of doing. But that was the value that I provided to the table where I came back within two weeks and said, hey, I've gone and visited the management team in person. I've run through the list of a hundred questions that a node basically wanted me to make sure that I did while I was in Portugal. And I feel high conviction that we should invite these founders of the United States to pay for their flights to basically come pitch the partnership. So it's not to say that the elite GPs don't go and do it, but again, it's just a different, you know, sort of turnaround time. The analogy that I like to, or like the one-line mantra is just extraordinary careers when you're a junior adventurer do not get built sitting behind a desk in an office and behind a laptop. You have to be wounded.”
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
“That I was willing to do back in the Sword Health diligence process, which was going incredibly deep on the science and tech of the company. But then also within a week of a cold email, I hopped on a flight and took a red eye out to Portugal to go through a very extensive, exhaustive diligence with the company. And then also managed to convince the KV partnership that the following week we should have them basically present to the whole firm. No matter how compelling the opportunity is, the GP of Coastal Ventures, Vinaud, Samir, David Wyden, Keith, Sven, no matter how compelling, there's just no way that they're hopping on a one-week turnaround to a red eye to Europe to go meet a random founder. And you have to be willing to do those types of things as a junior VC and gamble on this sort of top of funnel aperture on opportunities in a way that the GPs are not. I always 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
“If I were to sort of boil down what the success ultimately came down to, it was just a willingness to do things that the GPs weren't willing to do and using that as this sort of differentiating trait. In particular, the sword health example is an obvious one where the idea of this type of digitized AI, muscular skeletal sort of therapy was one that had been debated internally within the walls of KV. But once Virgilio, the CEO of Sword, sort of reached out to me and said, yeah, I'd love to chat with you. I was just immediately willing to dive incredibly deep into the company, both reading their scientific papers, which no other investor was willing to do because, again, most more senior VCs have boards. They have a ton of things on their plate. I mean, I feel this very much so today, my ability to, we can talk about the Brian related questions on how does VARTA make me a worse VC. One of the examples is like, I'm not willing to do the thing.”
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
“Years old and looking for and identifying that spark and seeing how that spark translates to the thing that they're sort of working on very obviously sort of being their life's work.”
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 sort of singular lesson is what he calls sort of the spark where there is no one archetype of great founder, right? If you look at Zuckerberg, if you look at Steve Jobs, if you look at Elon Musk, if you look at Jensen Huang, completely different personalities, personal stories, the way they like to run their companies, right? But I think what they all have is this just unique thing that they sort of excel in the 99th sort of percentile on that may not always necessarily have to be specifically related to the company that they're working on. Like the way this sometimes shows up practically is a lot of times we'll end up getting really excited at Founders Fund to sort of back a particular founder because they happen to be like world class in some super esoteric field, whether that's like the cognition AI founders that crushed it at IOI to people that did really well in college athletics to Ryan Peterson, sort of running his freight forwarding company from whenever he was like, you know, whatever 18.”
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, I think it works in the world of small SaaS businesses where you're trying to make a marginal improvement on a small industry if you're doing workflow software for plumbers. I'm sure that is a reasonable approach. I don't think that Elon Musk went around interviewing consumers about whether or not they wanted electric vehicles when he decided to go build Tesla or ask NASA whether they want sort of cheaper and better rockets when he went to go build SpaceX. And so it works for sure a subset of companies. But if you look at the top 10 companies on the Nasdaq, Steve Jobs did not ask people for their feedback when building the iPhone. Jensen Huang did not ask people whether they sort of wanted parallel compute GPUs. They just had strong visions of what they thought the future of technology looked like and went and sort of built 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
“Antithesis of this mentality was the whole sort of lean startup of approach of like A, B, test your way towards your grand vision. And in some ways, this was how he sort of built the early days of OpenDor was he thought through what were going to be the sort of major risks, how should the company be built? And then in some ways went out and hunted down the individual co-founders that were the sort of the best suited for the role. They were the Tom Cruise for the mission impossible. And so as I was thinking about sort of the thesis around Arta, I took the same approach where I was like, okay, what are the sort of fundamental core risks of this type of business? And in some ways found the ideal casting and went through basically castings effectively to find what those ideal co-founders were. And then we just went and raised the money and built the thing. And it wasn't like we waited on sort of customer feedback, et cetera. Like people ask me, like, you know, did you get LOI, et cetera? I was like, no, we just had a strong vision for the future of the world, went and built a team and raised the money to go do it. And then went and did it in some ways now obviously have many customers, but didn't rely on sort of the quote unquote customer feedback in the early days of.”
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
“Ton of lessons there, but when I think about the one that has been sort of the most strategic impact, let's say, on my life, in particular in terms of how basically Varda came together was sort of what he calls his Hollywood sort of analogy of building companies where if you look at the best studios, they don't sort of A-B test their way into building a film. The script writers write a script and they have a story that they really strongly believe in. And once they've written that story, they think through sort of who should be the major cast for each one. And so when they're making the mission impossible films, they don't go and interview 30 people and do they debate? Should they have Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise? It's like, no, it's an action movie. It's going to be Tom Cruise and he's going to do these basically crazy stunts. And then they might put out a sort of short preview, but they go and spend $100 million and $200 million and go fully produce the film and then put it out in the public sort of fully produced versus in some ways the 2010s sort of falser.”
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
“Year for the past few years, we've always seen a dip of our cohorts in terms of activity in July because we operate in local SMBs. And local SMBs in the United States, a lot of them go on vacation, et cetera, during July. And so there is just lower volume. And historically, our new cohorts were large enough to mitigate the effects of the historical ones. But now we're at such a large book of business that our new July cohort could not mitigate basically the decrease of growth from the former July ones. And so he basically showed.”
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
“Years of its life. And then all of a sudden, in July hits, and the company doesn't grow. And there was sort of this existential dread and panic at the company where I was like, oh, God, we in some ways have not been in control of our growth. What if it is suddenly the magic, you know, sort of the golden goose has stopped, you know, sort of laying eggs? And Keith, at the time was COO and he did this sort of phenomenal all-hands presentation. I want to say it was like, you know, August 5th, 8th, you know, sort of 2012, where at the time to me, as a, you know, sort of lowly software engineer that had grown up around a family of economics, statisticians, I saw it as just like statistical wizardry being applied to business. Now obviously being a bit more sophisticated, it was a cohort analysis. But still, if you've never seen anything like that and you think about the world of business as this thing where it's like backroom deals, it's mad men and they're like, you know, sort of marketing stunts, et cetera, you nowhere in the world of like business movies do you ever see like statistics applied to business? And so he runs through this cohort analysis in front of the whole company and basically the net of the analysis is look actually every”
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 summer of 2012, I ended up being an intern at Square. I was actually now 18 at the time. And at the time, Keith was the COO of Square, and the company was just on this explosive growth trajectory. I think when I interviewed the company was like at 100 person headcount, when I joined 120 by the end of the summer, it was like over 300. However, it was also one of the first times that the company had a bit of a sort of hiccup. And so like late July 2012, the company basically didn't experience a natural 10 to 15% growth month over a month. And up until then, the company without really spending much on marketing, much on distribution had been growing effectively through this like feedback loop that I think a multitude of people have talked about online. But basically they would sell these little square card readers and people would go into a coffee shop and one out of every hundred people that went to the coffee shop happened to be another local business owner, saw the physical reader and then would sign up basically online. And so you had this basically natural viral loop where the company never basically had to spend on marketing for the first five plus.”
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, at the same time, in the first six months of 2024, Europe did not launch a single orbital rocket. You guys did not send a single kilogram of matter from the surface of the Earth into space. The United States, I would probably roughly estimate 180 days. We've been launching roughly every call, day and a half on average. We've probably done 130 launches in the first six months of 2024. And the American system what it enables is both ends of the risk curve. We both have the downside sort of part of the risk curve where you have the homeless, the gun violence, et cetera. But we will also enable the opposite end of the risk curve, the musks, the vanderbelts, the Rockefellers. In some ways, you can't get one without the other. If you want an Elon Musk type figure, they can do sort of crazy things. You also have to be somewhat allowing of the other side of the crazy, which is, you know, sort of the drug addicts on the, you know, sort of streets of San Francisco. And perhaps we should get a bit better at that and not only clean it up when Xi Jinping comes and visits, but in some ways maybe you don't have Elon Musk with 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
“Like the epitome of aristocracy and is the biggest in some ways company in Europe. And yet Europe hates aristocracy at a sort of political level versus at least in the United States, we will admit that we are okay with having an aristocracy. We don't try to pass a 90% inheritance tax.”
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
“While you also enable the next generation up and comers that disrupt the wealth systems, the elite, et cetera, part of, I think, a lot of our societal divisiveness right now in the United States, mostly has to do with the elite transfer of power from the sort of Davos elite that in some ways began in the 1920s to now the technological elite. But you'll almost certainly see similar trends there. If you don't think that Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, et cetera, analogy is not going to be the musks, the Zuckerbergs, the Bezos is that almost certainly will be the case over the course of the next 100 years where these sort of family lines are going to have a significant impact on the shaping of our future in the United States. But I think Europe has completely discarded that and is so vehemently against that aristocratic elite in some ways from a broad political level, but not from like a societal wealth level, right? So if you look at like the best companies in Europe, LVMH is”
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 sort of the opposite of the Chinese philosophies of the individual does not matter. All that matters is the society, the state, and the collective. The history of Europe is sort of great men. And in some ways, one could argue that perhaps one of the last few great men of Europe was Napoleon since then it's been sort of strict decline post-Napoleonic wars. And family theory in some ways is a subsidiary of that, which is that the great cathedrals, great monuments, great movements only get built over sort of a multitude of generations. And the best way to maintain that effort towards multi-generational effort comes from the fundamental bloodlines. I think in some ways, I would actually argue that I think the United States now has a sort of stronger multi-generational aristocracy than Europe has. And I think that's a contributor to some of the success we have. I think what the United States does really well is you still have the Vanderbilt Rockefeller, et cetera, families creating culture, creating institutions.”
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 moment that Europe decided to shut down and deny its aristocracy is when it started to sort of decline. I believe in sort of the great man theory and the great family theories and”
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, other than the caveat of, I think Eastern Europe is maybe sort of the only hope where if you look at Bulgaria in particular, one of the now largest nanosatellite integrators, EnduroSat, is this company that basically builds think like sub 30 kilogram type satellites is based in Sofia. They have now built out this like 15-story skyscraper that has as nice a facilities as we have here. You can just feel the energy when you walk in. And by the way, the people that are working there, it's like a fourth or maybe a half of the team is like Italian, French, German, English that have escaped the like, you know, sort of socialist communist regimes of Western Europe to try and basically work in a country that still believes in capitalism. And so I very much feel like I'm in the like Ayn Rand, whereas John Galt, you know, sort of version of the world when I walk there where it's like, these are the brightest.”
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
“Eastern Europe relative to Western. Eastern is completely rocking, has way more interesting startups, is on a much more interesting trajectory. And so I think if you extrapolate this progress out for another decade, Western Europe is going to look like a third world sort of country. Eastern Europe is going to be rivaling a lot of the first world countries.”
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, I think it should have flipped where post college falling in love with Silicon Valley, getting into the technology sphere, recognizing that a lot of the people that were super successful in Silicon Valley sort of had backgrounds like mine. I think in my, you know, sort of heart of hearts at the end of the day, it's just like, this is the greatest country on earth. People should learn from this country. This is a tangent. But I actually think Bulgaria also has an opportunity to be like one of the best European nations where when you look at United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, et cetera, they're all just completely sort of falling into societal collapse, all for slightly different reasons, but it comes down to a complete lack of nationalism falling into basically like socialist states, constant regulation versus if you look at sort of the Bulgaria, Romania, Poland sort of corridor, all of those countries still believe in capitalism because still feel that dreads of the fall of the Soviet Union, they all believe in engineering and mathematics as the way to develop society. And so if you look at the GDP growth of”
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
“With him, where I was like, Oh, all these things that made it very difficult for me to both date in the States, interact in the States, things that people would get mad at me about. It's not that I'm like some special, unique snowflake that like, you know, has these quirky personality traits. It's like I'm just Bulgarian. Like I just look at my cousin and I just, I do the things that he does. And in Bulgaria, those are like totally acceptable and normal. And when you do those same things in the States, it's like totally sort of weird and you get bashed for it. And so sort of having that like mixed identity always made me feel like I didn't really properly have a home.”
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 never felt like a true American when I was in the United States because of the Bulgarian heritage and when I would go to Bulgaria I would never feel truly Bulgarian because of the sort of time I spent in America. I remember one of the moments that I felt like I really realized this was in some ways the fundamental cause of some of the challenges I had in both countries was I went back to Bulgaria I used to go basically every summer as a kid until I was about like 13 or so and then for the next couple years as a teenager I had like internships or you know math camps et cetera just like things that kept me in the States and then I went back when I was I want to say like 19 years old for you know maybe a month month and a half and I remember interacting with my cousin who's basically like you know sort of my same age very similar personalities backgrounds like so many we both like computer science etc in some ways if you like squint it's just kind of like what I would have looked like if I grew up basically you know sort of in Bulgaria and I had this realization if you're like spending you know a couple 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
“Western Europe is going to look like a third world. I think the United States now has a sort of stronger multi generational aristocracy than Europe has. Extraordinary careers when you're a junior inventor do not get built sitting behind a desk in an office. Travis committed no crime. 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. I wish that Bill Gurley's firing of Travis was talked about more publicly about how morally depraved that entire basically situation was Service Titan is actually closer to LVMH than it is to Tesla. The one liner that I sometimes like to use is people love software because the marginal distribution costs are zero. But perhaps what people need to realize is also that the marginal returns are zero as well because there is no moat.”
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