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

Delian Asparouhov is a Partner at Founders Fund and Co-Founder and President of Varda Space Industries, which is building the world's first space factories. At Founders Fund Delian has led deals in the likes of Ramp ($7BN) and Sword Health ($3BN) among others. Before joining Founders Fund, he was a Principal at Khosla Ventures, Head of Growth at Teespring, and Founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale. In Today's Episode with Delian Asparouhov We Discuss: 1. Venture Capital: Winners, Losers and Everyone Else: Who are the Top 3 venture firms in the world today according to Delian? Why does Delian believe that Benchmark are not the firm they were? Who will be the winners in venture in the next 10 years? Who will be the losers in venture in the next 10 years? 2. Inside Founders Fund: What No One Sees: What are the most important and impactful elements of Founders Fund that no one knows about? What does Delian believe that the Founders Fund partnership will strongly disagree with him on? Why does Founders Fund believe the path of most resistance is the best way to make decisions? What single topic has Delian publicly disagreed with Peter Thiel on most? How did it go? 3. What Every Young VC Needs to Know: What are Delian's single biggest tips to young VCs looking to scale the VC ladder today? What are the five core pillars of venture according to Delian? What should young VCs focus on? Why does Delian disagree with Founders Fund partners that "the best founders do not need the help of their VCs?" Does Delian agree with Vinod Khosla that "90% of VCs do detract value?" What are the biggest ways that Delian believes VCs can and do detract value? 4. Europe Will Be Third World, Parenting and Marriage: Why does Delian believe that Western Europe will become like the third world? What are Delian's single biggest tips on finding a life partner? What have been the biggest changes to Delian since becoming a father? What question does no one ask Delian that someone should ask him?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  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, you know, two days after his mother had passed away and convinced him to sign papers that he, you know, sort of shouldn't have. I wish that, you know, Bill Gurley's, you know, firing of Travis, you know, was, you know, sort of 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, you know, sort of the marginal distribution costs are zero. Perhaps what people need to realize is also that the marginal returns are zero as well because there is no moat.

• 0:43Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, wow, listening to that intro, I am like, this show is not one that lacks bangers. I mean, my word, I cannot wait for this one with the most controversial VC on Twitter on 20VC today, Delian Asparov. Now, Delian is a partner at Founders Fund and co-founder and president of Varda Space Industries, which is building the world's first space factories. At Founders Fund, Delian has led deals in the likes of Ramp, most recently valued at $7 billion plus, and Sword Health at $3 billion plus, among others. Before joining Founders Fund, Delian was a principal at Coastal Ventures. But before we dive in, when a promising startup files for an IPO or a venture capital firm loses its marquee partner, being the first to know gives you an advantage and time to plan your strategic response.

• 1:28Harry Stebbings?

  Chances are, the information reported it first. The information is the trusted source for that important first look at actionable news across technology and finance, driving decisions with breaking stories, proprietary data tools, and a spotlight on industry trends. With a subscription, you will join an elite community that includes leaders from the top VC firms, CEOs from Fortune 500 companies, and esteemed banking and investment professionals. In addition to must-read journalism in your inbox every day, you'll engage with fellow leaders in their active discussions or in person at exclusive events. Learn more and access a special offer for 20VC's listeners at

• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:54Harry Stebbings?

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• 3:34Harry Stebbings?

  So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public, head over to Cooley.com and also CooleyGo.com, Cooley's award-winning free legal resource for entrepreneurs.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:50Harry Stebbings?

  Delian, dude, I've been so looking forward to this one. I've been a fan of the tweets for a long time. Obviously, we met at Founder's Fund many years ago, but thank you so much for doing this, man.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Of course, yeah. Thanks so much for, you know, having me. Been looking forward to the conversation as well.

• 4:02Harry Stebbings?

  Now, listen, I always like to start with like a really soft, easy one. I think we're shaped by our past. When you reflect back on yours, what was the most maybe challenging element of your past and growing up that shaped you and how you think today most, do you think?

• 4:18Speaker 00

  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 of years as a teenager, I had like internships or math camps, etc., 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 maybe a month, month and a half. And I remember interacting with my cousin who's basically

• 4:59Speaker 00

  like my same age, very similar personalities, backgrounds, like so many of you, 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 in Bulgaria. And I had this realization after like spending a couple of weeks with him where I was like, oh, all these things that like 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 has these quirky personality traits. It's like I'm just Bulgarian. Like I just, I 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 sort of bashed

• 5:42Speaker 00

  for it. And so sort of having that like mixed identity always made me feel like I didn't really properly have a home.

• 5:48Harry Stebbings?

  Do you consider yourself a Bulgarian or an American today if you had to choose between the two?

• 5:53Speaker 00

  You know, I think it sort of 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 sort of heart of hearts, at the end of the day, just like this is the greatest country on earth. People should learn from this country. This is a change. 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, etc., they're all just like completely sort of falling into societal collapse, all for slightly different reasons, but it comes down to a complete lack of nationalism. Going into basically like, you know, sort of socialist states, constant, you know, sort of regulation versus if you look at sort of the Bulgaria, Romania, Poland sort of corridor.

• 6:36Speaker 00

  All of those countries still believe in capitalism because they, you know, still feel the, you know, dreads of the fall of the Soviet, you know, sort of union. They all believe in like engineering and mathematics is the, you know, sort of way to develop society. And so if you look at the GDP growth of 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, you know, sort of country. Eastern Europe is going to be, you know, sort of rivaling a lot of the first world, you know, sort of countries.

• 7:04Harry Stebbings?

  Larry Summers said on the show that Japan is a nursing home, China is a jail, and Europe is a museum. Would you agree with him?

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Yes, other than the caveat of, I think Eastern Europe is maybe, you know, sort of the only hope where, you know, if you look at Bulgaria in particular, one of the now largest nanosatellite integrators, EnduroSat, is this company that basically builds like, I 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 of 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, like, you know, communist regimes of Western Europe to try and basically, you know, work in a country that still believes in, you know, sort of capitalism. And so I very

• 7:53Speaker 00

  much feel like I'm in the like Ayn Rand, you know, where is John Galt, you know, sort of version of the world when I walk there where it's like, these are the brightest and best people and they're clearly, you know, sort of escaping the museums of Western Europe. Will they want to stay in the EU? How is that going to work over the next, you know, sort of decade? I think what will probably happen is like, you see some of these countries actually start to leave the EU as Western Europe becomes more and more of a drag rather than a producer.

• 8:14Harry Stebbings?

  The show's become more and more successful because instead of being a sick Atlantic child, I've actually stood up for what I believe in. I, I agree with you partly and I disagree with you. You cannot take away the culture, the heritage and the hospitality of Europe. My dear American friends love nothing more than to come to London, to come to Paris, to come to Milan. We do culture, we do heritage like no one else in the world. My objection to you would be that is something you can't take away and Americans love to spend money here. That's a great thing. We can build fucking huge economies on top of that. Does that not go against your statement of kind of Europe being, or Western Europe being a third world country?

• 8:51Speaker 00

  The moment that Europe decided to shut down and deny its aristocracy is when it started to decline. I believe in the great man theory and the great family theories.

• 9:02Harry Stebbings?

  What is the great man theory and the great family theories and how does that?

• 9:06Speaker 00

  It's 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 great men and in some ways, one could argue that perhaps one of the last few great men of Europe was Napoleon and since then it's been a 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 a multitude of generations. And the best way to maintain that effort towards a 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

• 9:48Speaker 00

  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, while you also enable the next generation up and comers that disrupt the wealth systems, the elites, et cetera. A 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 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 the Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, et cetera analogy is not going to be the Musks,

• 10:30Speaker 00

  the Zuckerberg's, the Bezos's, that almost certainly will be the case over the course of the next 100 years, where these 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 the aristocratic elite, in some ways from a broad political level, but not from a societal wealth level. So if you look at the best companies in Europe, LVMH is the epitome of aristocracy and is the biggest in some ways company. In Europe, and yet Europe hates, you know, sort of aristocracy at a like, you know, sort of political level versus at least in the United States.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  We will admit that we are okay with having, you know, an aristocracy. We don't try to pass a like, you know, 90%, you know, inheritance tax.

• 11:16Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, as I see, my mother always told me, you know, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. I look to your wonderful nation and I see a country with a terrible, woeful healthcare system. I see incredible levels of homelessness, which are just devastating. I see gun crime that's out of control, where people don't want to send their kids to school. And going to a mall is dangerous. I see an infrastructure which is just ripe for civil unrest with this election and with latest political things that we've seen. I'm kind of going respectfully, who the fuck are you to judge us?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  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, you know, roughly estimate 180 days. We've been launching roughly every, call it 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 Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers. In some ways, you can't get one without the other. If you want an Elon Musk type figure that can do sort of crazy things.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  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, you know, in some ways, maybe you don't have the Elon Musks without the drug addicts and maybe they're both drug addicts.

• 12:47Harry Stebbings?

  No comment. In case I ever want to get either of them on the show, I'm saying nothing. I love a show where you can just freewheel. Listen, I do want to revert to some form of schedule. You mentioned in terms of feeling Bulgarian, feeling American, like getting into the Silicon Valley scene. One of the most pivotal moments was, I think, probably meeting Keith, one of the most important people in your early career and your career. I spoke to him before the show and he said, dude, you've got to ask, like, how did we meet and just get that story first?

• 13:14Speaker 00

  In summer 2012, I ended up being an intern at Square. I was actually, you know, 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 hiccup. And so like late July 2012, the company basically didn't experience a natural 10% to 15% growth month over 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. Basically, they would sell these little square card readers and people would go into a coffee shop.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  And one out of every 100 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 years of its life. And then all of a sudden, July hits and the company doesn't grow. And there was sort of this like existential dread and panic at the company where it's 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 sort of laying eggs? And Keith at the time was COO and he did this 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 sort of lowly software engineer that had grown up around a family of economists, statisticians, I saw it as just like statistical wizardry being applied to business.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  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'd nowhere in the world of like business movies, do you ever see like statistics applied to business? And so he runs through his cohort analysis, you know, in front of the whole company. And basically the net of the analysis is look, actually every 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 where it's such a large book of business that our new July cohort...

• 15:24Speaker 00

  Cohort could not mitigate basically the sort of decrease of growth from the former July ones. And so he basically showed statistically that he could predict that even though we had basically no growth in July, that we were going to experience 20 plus percent growth in August, because all of the cohorts were going to come back and we're going to add a new one. And lo and behold, in August, the early data showed that we were growing basically like crazy. And I just remember this moment being in like the crowd of like the whatever 140 people that were there. I was like, wow, I had no idea math was involved in running businesses. Like I thought math was only used to like build products, solve problems, et cetera. And I remember just thinking, I was like, whatever I do later in life, I don't want to be doing this like, you know, software engineering coding thing. It's like, fine, I'm a, you know, pretty solid engineer, but it's not what I see myself doing for the next year, 20, 40 years of my career.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  I want to do what that guy's doing and I need to figure out, you know, basically how to get to know him. And so we didn't, you know, sort of speak or anything while I was at Square. But then about, you know, sort of seven or eight months later, I pinged him because I was about to sort of, move out to Silicon Valley full time, dropping out of MIT. And I'd just been sort of awarded the, you know, sort of, or was in the process of applying for the T L fellowship. And I pinged him and I was like, you know, hey, gonna be moving out, you know, you're now VC. I would love to just like, you know, grab lunch once a month, you know, you may remember me as an intern basically at Square. And I sent him this cold email and he replied within, you know, I think on the order of like five or six hours and hopped on the phone with me the next day, which I just assumed was, you know, sort of his standard response rate. You know, that was how he liked to, you know, sort of manage his inbox and, you know, calendar.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  But you know, sort of five or six years later, once I had gotten to know him, I did ask him, I was like, you know, you do not normally respond to cold emails from like a random intern and hop on the phone the next day. You know, sort of, why were you willing to do that with me? And he was like, well, I was the COO of Square, you know, while you were there that summer. And Square is a very finicky culture. It's a bunch of designers that all like their, you know, desks being prim and proper. And if the like smoothies in the morning have too much banana content, I get like five emails, you know, sort of about it. And yet you would arrive into the office every single day, wearing like short shorts and a tank top. You would like climb on the A C ducts, you would be loud, you'd be quite disruptive to the office. But I never got a single complaint from anybody on your team, anybody that sat next to you. And so just my conclusion was this guy must be a really good engineer for everybody to be willing to tolerate his ridiculous.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Those behaviors, so I should, you know, figure out what this guy, you know, sort of is up to. But yeah, we started grabbing lunch, you know, once a month in Silicon Valley and, you know, had me join his, you know, soccer team. And that's how we really got to know one another.

• 17:45Harry Stebbings?

  It's so funny you said about the smoothie there. I always remember him telling me about the smoothie test where you start with obviously a very simple task. And then you expand and expand the complexity of it kind of over time to, to get harder and see someone's capabilities. I do have to ask you, speaking of kind of lessons from Keith there, kind of a quick fire on Keith, but so many people had so many questions. When you think about three different components, operating, what to look for in founders and what to look for in companies. First, what did Keith teach you about operating most significantly?

• 18:13Speaker 00

  A ton of lessons there, but when I think about the one that has been sort of the most strategic, you know, sort of impact, let's say on my life in particular, in terms of how basically, you know, sort of Varda came together was sort of what I, what he calls is like sort of Hollywood, you know, sort of analogy of, you know, sort of building companies. Where, you know, if you look at the best studios, they don't, you know, sort of A B test their way into, you know, sort of 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, you know, sort of who should be the, you know, sort of major, you know, cast for each one. And so when they're making the Mission Impossible films, they don't go and interview 30 people and they debate, should they have Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise? It's like, no, it's, it's an action movie. It's going to be Tom Cruise and he's going to do these basically crazy stunts.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  And then they might put out a sort of short preview, but they go and spend a hundred million, 200 million and go fully produce the film. And then put it out, you know, in the public, sort of fully produced versus in some ways, the 2010s, you know, sort of false or, you know, uh, antithesis of this mentality. Was the whole sort of lean startup approach of like A B test your way towards you sort of your grand vision. And in some ways, this was how he, you know, sort of built, you know, the early days of Open Door was he thought through what were going to be this 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, you know, sort of Mission Impossible. And so as I was thinking about sort of the thesis around, you know, sort of Varda, I took the same approach where I was like, okay, what are the sort of fundamental core risks of this type of business?

• 19:37Speaker 00

  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 you know sort of customer feedback etc. Like people asked me like, you know, did you get L O I etc. I was like, no, we just like had a strong vision for the future of the world. Went and built the team and raised the money to go do it and then went and did it. In some ways now, obviously have many customers, but you know, didn't rely on, you know, sort of the quote unquote customer feedback in the early days of putting together that.

• 20:03Harry Stebbings?

  It's just so interesting because it goes against everything that everyone has ever taught and everything that we're taught as investors, which is, you know, customer feedback, close proximity to customers, really listening, qualification processes. It just flies in the face of that, does it not?

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I think it works in the world of like small SaaS businesses where you're trying to make a marginal improvement on a small, you know, industry. If you're doing workflow software for plumbers, I'm sure that is a like reasonable approach. I don't think that Elon Musk went around in, you know, interviewing consumers about whether or not they wanted electric vehicles when he decided to go build Tesla. Or, you know, asked NASA whether they want, you know, sort of cheaper and better rockets when he went to go build SpaceX. And so it works for 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. Janssen Huang did not ask people whether they, you know, sort of wanted parallel compute, you know, sort of GPUs. They just had strong visions of what they thought the future of technology looked like and went and, you know, sort of built that.

• 20:56Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned some of those incredible kind of category defining founders. What did Keith teach you about the founders that you want to get behind and invest in?

• 21:04Speaker 00

  Probably this sort of singular, you know, sort of lesson is what he calls sort of the the spark where, you know, 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 Janssen 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, you know, sort of excel in the 99th, you know, sort of percentile on. That may not always necessarily have to be, you know, specifically, you know, 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 Founder's Fund to, you know, sort of back a particular founder. Because they happen to be like world class in some super esoteric, you know, sort of field, whether that's like the cognition AI founders that, you know, crushed it at I O I.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  To, you know, people that did really well in, you know, sort of college athletics. To Ryan Peterson, you know, sort of running his, you know, sort of freight forwarding, you know, sort of company from whenever he was like, you know, whatever, 18 years old. And looking for and identifying that spark and seeing how does that spark translate to the thing that they're, you know, sort of working on. You know, very obviously sort of being their, you know, sort of life's work.

• 22:10Harry Stebbings?

  I agree, I get like literally very uncomfortable and they're like, for my next thing, I'm gonna do this. And I'm like, oh, like for me, I, I, there's only one thing I'm doing is 20 VC. I started when I was 18, I will die doing 20 VC and I'll be very happy if that's the case, if they keep me here long enough. But I also find, one, immigrant founders outperform, and then two, the time with which you do your first entrepreneurial endeavor generally correlates to success. No one comes out of MIT and is like, hmm, I'll start a business for the first time. You always did something first, started phone repairs, whatever it is when you were a teenager. So I totally agree with you there. Dude, when you were at Coaster with Keith, you were a junior VC, if you don't mind me saying it. What are you, and you crushed, like the track we mentioned before is phenomenal.

• 22:54Harry Stebbings?

  What are your single biggest lessons on how to succeed in the world of junior VC?

• 22:59Speaker 00

  You know, if I, if I were to sort of boil down, I think what the success ultimately, you know, came down to, it was just a willingness to do things that the GPs weren't willing to do and using that as the sort of differentiating, you know, sort of trait. In particular, the Sword Health example is, you know, an obvious one where the idea of this type of digitized AI, musculos, you know, skeletal, you know, sort of therapy was one that had been debated, you know, sort of internally within the walls of KV. But once, you know, sort of Virgilio, the CEO of Sword, you know, sort of reached out to me and, you know, said, yeah, I'd love to, you know, sort of 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

• 23:44Speaker 00

  things on their plate. I mean, I feel this very much so, you know, sort of today, my ability to, we can talk about the, you know, Brian related questions on how does, you know, Varda make me a worse VC. One of the examples is like, I'm not willing to do the things that I was willing to do back in the Sword Health, you know, sort of diligence process, which was go incredibly deep on like the, you know, sort of science and tech of the company. But then also, within a week of like a cold email, I hopped on a flight, you know, and took a red eye out to Portugal to go through a very extensive exhaustive, you know, sort of diligence with the company. And then also, you sort of managed to convince the KV partnership that the following week, we should have them basically present to the whole firm. No matter how compelling, you know, sort of the opportunity is, the GP of Ventures, Vinod, Samir, David, Y and Keith Sven. No matter how compelling, there's just no way that they're hopping on a one week turnaround to a, you know,

• 24:29Speaker 00

  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, you know, on opportunities in a way that the GPs are not, you know, I always say.

• 24:40Harry Stebbings?

  Can I interrupt you and be awful? I don't know the others, but I love Vinod and I love Keith. But like, do the best not? Example, I sent Tom Tung as a deal on a Thursday. He flew to London on a Friday. He won the deal on a Saturday. He beat out everyone in London. The guys at IVP fly to Romania to do UiPath. They, they fly to, you know, Germany to do Deepel. Do the best not get on planes?

• 25:03Speaker 00

  They do, but again, there's, you know, some level of turnaround of like, you know, Keith's scheduled example is booked like a full, like three, four weeks in advance. The idea that like, it's going to be a week long turnaround is impossible. For his like 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 like, you know, 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 a management team in person. I've run through the list of a hundred questions that Vinod 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 to the United States, pay for their flights to basically, you know, sort of come, you know, sort of pitch the, you know, sort of partnerships. So it's not to say that the like elite GPs don't go and do it. But again, it's just a different, you know, sort of turnaround time, et cetera.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  The analogy that I like to, or like the one line mantra is just extraordinary careers. When you're a junior investor, do not get built sitting behind a desk in an office and, you know, behind the laptop. You have to be willing to go meet with founders in person, figure out how to, you know, sort of understand their businesses and how to convince them to even spend time with you. When you're not, you know, one of the big general partners.

• 26:06Harry Stebbings?

  I'm sure you have a lot of people ask you for advice on entering venture. I have a lot of people ask me and they're like, should I try and do as many deals as possible? Should I try and do few? What's your advice on do many, do few?

• 26:16Speaker 00

  I think in your first year VC, you do want to just open your aperture and build your sort of like data set on, you know, sort of founders where, you know, again, that first year, I think I was effectively willing to meet almost any, you know, sort of founder that was willing to, you know, sort of meet with me and vice versa. Once you, you sort of met, call it on the order of a thousand. Thousands founders and especially if in that, you know, sort of thousand and 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, you know, sort of what does greatness, you know, sort of look like. I think you should be very judicious on waiting to pull the trigger until you feel like you have identified the taste, you know, for what that greatness looks like.

• 26:51Harry Stebbings?

  I thought it was fascinating when I spoke to Keith and he said, actually, relevance is my biggest challenge, actually, and making sure that we stay at the forefront of the best founders. I appreciated his honesty, but I also thought it was fascinating. I'd also think for Paul Peter's sake, there is a little bit of a difference in age between Peter and Vennod, as wonderful as Vennod is. I didn't want to lump them in necessarily the same bucket. I do have to ask you, what are the biggest fuckups you see young VCs make today in career planning and venture?

• 27:15Speaker 00

  Ultimately, you need to recognize that, you know, venture is the most, you know, sort of commoditized, let's say, you know, industry within, you know, sort of tech. You have no moat other than your brand. The product that you deliver at the end of the day is, you know, US dollars, just like anybody else can deliver, you know, sort of that fundamental product. People don't focus enough on, you know, sort of differentiation. They come in and they try to do all aspects of VC generically well and focus on a multitude of sectors generically well. You know, I think it was Sarah Tavel, yeah, Benchmark may not, you know, sort of love me for various comments that I make, but I do like Sarah's, you know, sort of framework and I use it all the time, which is. There's sort of, you know, four or five aspects to, you know, for VC and late staging and career. You do kind of need to be world class at at least like three of those, but early on you need to focus on one.

• 27:59Speaker 00

  And, you know, so the five that she breaks down is one, you basically need a, you know, sort of top of funnel, you know, way to basically source, whether that's more marketing or sales driven. You then need to, you know, sort of develop a nose for what are the deals that you yourself like and want to champion. You then need to, you know, develop a skill set for championing those, you know, 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, you know, your capital relative to anybody else's. And then post-investment, you need to help that founder basically manage the business and, you know, exit. Trying to be great at all five is a completely, you know, sort of impossible, you know, sort of task. Obviously there are people within founders fund that explicitly choose to.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Not work on the fifth one sort of whatsoever, right? You know, Brian and Trey's sort of strategy is we believe the best founders sort of need no help and we are not going to try to differentiate on sort of helping founders. I 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 early 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,

• 29:22Speaker 00

  you're just not going to be top of mind when people are thinking about co-investors and that's the ultimate 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 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 a try to attempt a deal, Max Rhodes, the CEO of Fair, will be willing to hop on the phone and say, look, Dalian was obviously not the person that sourced or led our deal, but ultimately was very valuable to the company in like X, Y, Z ways, you should take his capital. And so when you look at, I believe it was Truework, it was literally the founder reference of Max that ultimately helped me get that deal across the line, which obviously then made me better at part four of the job.

• 30:07Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned getting deals across the line internally there. Can I ask you, have you had a deal where you wanted desperately to get it over the line and it didn't go over the line?

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, my biggest miss investment 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 100 million post. And we had previously actually done a smaller check into Sword, basically as soon as I joined Founder's Fund from KV. I really wanted to, I really believed in the company and wanted to double down. And I was still pretty new to FF and I don't think I just set up the argument for why we should do it correctly or built enough basically internal consensus. Ways before you know sort of going to Peter at FF, you know, I think counterintuitively,

• 30:55Speaker 00

  I think your best way to get a deal across the line at FF is actually to probably go to the most junior person at FF and have them start to build, you know, sort of consensus amongst a, you know, sort of wider group. Like if you look at FF, I feel like a lot of the deals percolate from below. And as you know, sort of there builds a set of people, it doesn't have to be the entire firm, but let's say a subset of like two or three people that are really high conviction. And then even if it's a later stage check that requires basically Peter's approval, it's with that, you know, sort of broader conviction that it's, you know, sort of brought to the GP of the firm. Those tend to be actually how a lot of our later stage, you know, sort of deals, you know, sort of get across the line. So I think there I critique myself for being so high conviction myself that I just, just tried to go sort of straight to Peter,

• 31:36Speaker 00

  you know, sort of rather than working within, you know, sort of the broader set of the firm and including people that actually had been part of the consensus in earlier checks that we had done at Sword at Founder's Fund. But yeah, that one, you know, is a, you know, sort of painful one, given that that would be, you know, sort of $10 million, that would be a $300 million position, you know, today. And I definitely lose sleep over that. And so I think about that a lot, you know, today where one way that we like to, you know, sort of say it internally is you should always go for the path of most resistance when, you know, trying to work on a deal at FF. Work and make sure to loop people in from the investment team that are going to be the most critical of the company, given that one, if you're able to get those people to conviction, then bringing it to the sort of, you know, sort of GP shows that you've really, you know, sort of do on your homework internally versus I think that 10 on 100 million dollar post one, I just, I didn't do my homework.

• 32:20Harry Stebbings?

  What is the biggest flaw of the FF investment decision-making process today, do you think?

• 32:25Speaker 00

  Let's see, I mean, you're sort of relative to, you know, sort of other, let's say tier one elite firms of the past five years in some ways.

• 32:31Harry Stebbings?

  Can I just put some names around this, Dalian? It's really unfair of me, but tier one elite firms, which three do you most respect?

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Sequoia, Andreessen, probably more historical benchmark than modern benchmark, but I still think there's lessons to be had, you know, sort of there. And, you know, if I were to look over the past sort of five years, generally the Founder's Fund decision-making has led to generally superior adjourns and also less gaffes in various ways, whether it's the, you know, sort of FTX type, you know, sort of fraud debacles, whether it's the holding publics beyond when you should on behalf of your LPs.

• 33:07Harry Stebbings?

  Is there any, is there any change about it then?

• 33:10Speaker 00

  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 either sort of Brian, Singerman, Trey Stevens, Napoleon, you know, sort of Ta. All three of them began as either interns or relatively junior investors at Founders Fund 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, you know, sort of Trey's. Right now, technically, you know, sort of full time at Founders Fund, there is only one person that is under the age of 27.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  That is probably not a, you know, sort of sufficient class of, you know, sort of future up and coming investors that would, you know, sort of be those future general partners in 10, 15, sort of 20 years. That would, I would say probably the biggest change would be double down on what we've done best in the past and do it again.

• 34:09Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned Brian many times there. I love Brian, met him on the show a couple of times, wonderful dude. Spoke to him beforehand. He said, you have to ask him, what makes Founders Fund so special with the addendum that very few people do not know or consider? So not the like contrarian mind, yeah, we like big plans and big ideas. Everyone knows that. What that not many people see makes them so special?

• 34:31Speaker 00

  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, you know, certain network connections grows by n squared. And so the fact that, you know, I probably won't do the, you know, sort of counting perfectly, but I think there's, you know, call it 11, 12 of us on the investment team today on the order of n squared, 130 basically permutations of, you know, sort of connections. That's actually, you know, sort of relatively, you know, sort of possible to maintain quite strongly. Once you actually go to even, you know, sort of 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, makes is that the firm is

• 35:15Speaker 00

  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 was the most point person and who gets to claim the most. Basically, you know, sort of 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 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.

• 35:58Speaker 00

  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 you know, basically, you know, very personally close structure. One sort of anecdote that I'd use 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, you know, basically go through and that his like speech that he gives is both like who has joined, you know, the firm since then. But also what children have been born into the sort of like founders fund, you know, sort of family since the last time, you know, we all got together. And in some ways, maybe that anecdote is reflective of that, you know, sort of collaborative familial culture.

• 36:37Harry Stebbings?

  There's also winning the deal once they submit the term sheet. Have you lost a deal, Dalian?

• 36:42Speaker 00

  It's funny, this actually like recently, you know, sort of 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, you know, sort of mentioned him. Not directly, but you know, 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 Dalian's term sheet. So it's a very flattering thing to hear.

• 37:03Harry Stebbings?

  What was the company and what did you take from it?

• 37:05Speaker 00

  It 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, you know, sort of fly. Et cetera, just in the timeframe that he wanted to ultimately, you know, sort of come to a decision.

• 37:34Harry Stebbings?

  That's interesting. Is that because you were older and you weren't willing to get on a plane so quickly?

• 37:39Speaker 00

  So I think there was just like, I didn't, you know, get to it, you know, um, in terms of top of funnel quickly enough relative to the round dynamics. But yeah, it was, 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. Now I've been on the other side of the table, you know, sort of many times and investor entitledness can really rub you the wrong way. Nobody's entitled to their pro rata.

• 38:08Harry Stebbings?

  That's interesting because it is a legal right.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Yes, but um, things in Silicon Valley don't always operate according to legality. They do sometimes operate according to a little bit of the character, reputation, you know, sort of et cetera. 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 Sacks.

• 38:27Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think this is good for our ecosystem where it makes us seem like rich brats who need to get on with the real world? Get on with our jobs, managing money for some of the biggest institutions in the world who we're lucky to manage money for.

• 38:38Speaker 00

  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 Sacks 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, you know, sort of self-select into it where, yeah, I think one of the questions that you sort of threw in the agenda was, you know, has your divisiveness on Twitter? You know, 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, you know, sort of philosophy. But there's also a set of founders that have self-selected into proactively wanting to, you know, sort of work with me.

• 39:19Speaker 00

  Eric and Kareem of Ramp, you know, maybe being a perfect example of this, of really wanting to, you know, opt into the immigrant, you know, anti-woke, et cetera. Mentality and have that be a, you know, sort of core part of the sort of early culture. And so I wish that, you know, Bill Gurley's, you know, firing of Travis, you know, was, you know, sort of talked about more publicly about how morally depraved that entire basically situation was. So that people can choose to opt into, is that, you know, a firm that you want to work with? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I think that stuff should be, you know, 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.

• 39:57Harry Stebbings?

  How do you think about a challenging situation? You mentioned Bill and Uber there. I'm not directly addressing that. I'm just saying, when the fiduciary responsibility that you have to your investors, which is to return the most amount of money possible, is no longer aligned to the best interests of the founder. A great example of this is when you want to sell your position. You may need the liquidity then, your LPs may want the liquidity then. But as a lead investor, that looks bad for the founder and for the company. There is now a misalignment between the two. What wins?

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Part of why I really enjoy working at Founders Fund is because of the sort of fundamental, you know, sort of mantra of the firm and why it started. And, you know, sort of 2004, the idea of sort of founder-friendly VCs and not firing founders was, you know, extremely contrarian. Obviously, it's become somewhat consensus, not entirely. There are, you know, firms, your ones that I mentioned, Benchmark, A16Z, Sequoia, et cetera, all have examples of sort of founder oustings, you know, in the past, you know, sort of decade. And so in some ways, it continues to actually be at least somewhat, you know, sort of contrarian.

• 40:52Harry Stebbings?

  Do you agree? Do you really, it's why I'm so interested. Do you really agree with that? That is like saying, I will enter into a marriage and we will never get divorced. That's moronic. Of course you should have the option to get divorced. You, you should never have the divine right to be an investor at Founders Fund. If you don't perform, you know, you won't, you won't be there.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Yes, but I think if you just, you know, if you look at the fundamental job of venture capitalists, it should provide basically, you know, sort of high beta strategy. And if you look at the highest, you know, sort of 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, you know, perhaps the, you know, sort of company could provide some liquidity if you get rid of the founder. I think, you know, in some ways, obviously, you know, sort of Benchmark LPs made a lot of money by, you know, sort of 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 if, you know,

• 41:50Speaker 00

  Travis is 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, you know, sort of returns that matter, you know, for VC.

• 42:01Harry Stebbings?

  Totally. I'm 100% with you. I hate it when founders I meet say, say, oh, I'm a zero to one person. I'm like, great, I'm an out person. I get that's not what we're here for. But like, do you agree with what I'm saying? Like, no one has a divine right to that position. As an investor, you also have an obligation to the employees within a company. And if someone is not doing the work, lazy, lying, they don't have a divine right to the position to be there.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Travis committed no crime and they, you know, sort of ousted him despite the fact that, you know, they actually didn't necessarily, you know, have the legal control to do so. They just cornered him in a hotel room, you know, two days after his mother had passed away and convinced him to sign papers that he, you know, sort of shouldn't have. And so.

• 42:38Harry Stebbings?

  I'm just intrigued. If you weren't good enough as the founder of Vada, say in three years' time, whatever, you didn't scale into it. Do you not think Founders Fund or Coastler should be able to remove you?

• 42:49Speaker 00

  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 went to all 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, you know, sort of generate those types of, you know, true, true end tail.

• 43:08Harry Stebbings?

  Do you not think Satya Nadella disproves that?

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Um.

• 43:11Harry Stebbings?

  Very bold risks, writing a billion dollar check to OpenAI, completely transforming a business that Steve Ballmer had let plateau.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  And, you know, yet Zuck releases, you know, whatever Lama, you know, three or four, you know, and releases it completely free and 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, you know, sort of AI platform. And it's because he's willing to take risks and invest into a level of H100s that, you know, Satya was not willing to do because Satya had to ultimately, you know, serve the, you know, sort of public markets. Versus Zuckerberg still has pentultimate control over everything that sort of Facebook does. And so. It's not to say that professional CEOs can't take it, you know, sort of some amount of the way. And obviously Satya has, you know, delivered phenomenal returns to investors. But I still think at the end of the day, those end tail outcomes aren't possible without founder-led companies.

• 43:59Harry Stebbings?

  This is very. Positioning from you, okay, because you look like a great guy and I look like an evil old VC. To be clear, I completely agree with the founder led companies being the most important and valuable for anyone thinking that I'm a dick listening. So I totally understand and agree. I do have to ask, like, that is a very strong statement from Founders Fund on the like founder led companies and always, always sticking with founders. When you think about something that you believe, I like this question from Twitter, what do you believe that the Founders Fund partnership will heavily disagree with you on?

• 44:31Speaker 00

  I want to, because this is, you sort of brought up a point, you know, 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 sort of logic 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, you know, 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.

• 45:03Harry Stebbings?

  Before we dive into what you believe that Founders Fund disagree with you on, like Peter is such a large presence, important person. When he's in a room, how do you prevent the weight of his words being the only words that matter?

• 45:16Speaker 00

  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, you're in your first year there, it's probably more difficult. But once you're, you know, sort of five years in, at that point, you've spent so, so much time with him that star power or, you know, sort of weight of words, et cetera. You sort of goes away when you get to know the individual behind the sort of star. And so, you know, if anything, he values sort of people that are willing to actually sort of disagree and stand up to him. So much so that I think it incentivizes his behavior internally where people proactively want to disagree with him more than others. And so actually, if anything, the like reverse effect, you know, sort of happens. I remember I just like, there was this particular, you know, sort of moment right after Keith's departure.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  And I was obviously, you know, sort of feeling somewhat very emotionally raw. We were having this sort of team meeting where there's this like discussion about, you know, sort of candidates and who we wanted to bring onto the team. And there's this person that Peter was particularly excited by. I remember I just like. Practically jumped in and I don't want to go into the details part because it'll probably reveal who the person is and it's a little confidential. But anyways, I just practically just jumped in and I was like, Peter, I think that is probably the worst candidate idea that anybody has like, you know, sort of brought up to the firm in like the last six months. And I feel about this so strongly that we just discussed this, you know, sort of framework of path of most resistance. We should have XYZ GP meet this person as a part of the interview process. And Peter goes, well, why should that person meet? This person would be sort of a venture, you know, sort of candidate. This GP may not be the right person to, you know, sort of assess. And I was like, because I know that this GP will hate this person and that will

• 46:42Speaker 00

  absolutely guarantee that we do not, you know, sort of hire this person. So anyways, point big, I think, you know, even on a tactical day to day level, I actually don't think, you know, sort of this happens. If anything, the, you know, sort of reverse effect actually sometimes happens.

• 46:53Harry Stebbings?

  Tell me, what do you believe that the majority of the partnership will disagree with you on?

• 46:57Speaker 00

  I think it's that, you know, sort of fifth part of the venture job. Trey and Brian are more than welcome to take their approach of, you know, sort of write a check to a founder, but then largely, you know, sort of 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, you know, sort of around the table. And so I do spend, you know, 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, you know, sort of engage in those, you know, sort of board meetings.

• 47:26Harry Stebbings?

  Vinod Kosa says, I can't remember the exact number. So if Vinod's listening, don't kill me or sue me if I get it wrong. Eighteen to ninety percent, I'm just giving a range, of VCs actually detract value. Do you agree with that?

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I look at the set of, you know, sort of co-investments, you know, board meetings, you know, boardrooms that I've had to be a part of. I think that's an accurate, you know, sort of percentage, I think.

• 47:48Harry Stebbings?

  People chat shit about venture investors like detracting value. How? How do they?

• 47:53Speaker 00

  I 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, you know, 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 you feel like is defining your next three, four, or 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, um, you know, hamster wheel. But it starts to approximate to that where you like, you start to be really, really sort of short term. You know, sort of thinking focused and impose that anxiety upon the founder.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  Probably the second is people that are just so decayed on operational skillsets, 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've been, you know, in a true operational day to day role. And the last like, you know, sort of three to five years in some ways, your ability to significantly, you know, sort of provide high quality advice really degrades. And the only way to keep it, you know, at a, you know, top level is I think, you know, sort of how Keith does it where he just gets so involved in each of the companies where irrespective in theory, if he had done. If he had not done open door, open store, et cetera. I still think he actually is able to maintain a, you know, sort of significant operational sense because he goes so deep and transition directly from operator. You know, sort of to, to investor.

• 49:18Harry Stebbings?

  Speaking of that kind of operational now, so obviously you run Varda today, there's pros and cons. How does running Varda make you a better investor?

• 49:26Speaker 00

  You know, a multitude, if we go back to that sort of five point, you know, sort of framework. There's a multitude that have been significantly positively impacted due to Varda. The first, just top of funnel, there's just a set of founders that did not know me when I was just the founder son investor. Versus now, because the company is, you know, 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'd like to, you know, go back to the example of, uh, there's this company that I led the, you know, sort of seed round in Senra Systems. The founder practically chose to come meet me in Miami, even though he was based in Los Angeles because of, you know, sort of the Varda connection. And then I was able to run extremely extensive diligence over the following, basically 36 hours after my initial meeting with him.

• 50:06Speaker 00

  Because I was able to call people at Varda that had been his former manager, direct reports, 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, you know, sort of to do to mine into that network. Versus being so practically so close bear to the metal, you just have a much more extensive understanding of, you know, sort of the, uh, the, the, the. People that day to day work in this sort of field. The third is obviously, you know, sort of close rate. You know, I mentioned, obviously, this recent is not to say that I love investing in these like super, you know, sort of hot competitive deals. But since Varda, I have not, you know, sort of lost an opportunity where I've wanted to invest, even in situations where there've been phenomenal partners, general partners on the other side of the table, offering competing, you know, sort of term sheets. And so.

• 50:52Harry Stebbings?

  Have you, have you found a correlation between deal heat and success of company when you look back at your portfolio?

• 50:57Speaker 00

  No, it's not to say that 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 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, you know, 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. Yeah, I think obviously at Founder's Fund, we definitely have a bias towards seeing it as a negative, you know, sort of factor, partially because it does typically end up affecting pricing. But I do think there's a set of like, you know, sort of hyper competent founders.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  I think in some ways at Varda, we take this strategy, which is even in a competitive situation, we don't necessarily, you know, sort of take the highest priced offer that we have. And every Varda round, we've actually not taken the highest priced, you know, sort of offer. We've, you know, done what we thought was in the, you know, sort of appropriate reasonable range that sets the company up for, you know, sort of long term success. And so there are hot rounds where the founders are not, you know, sort of irrational and we do like to invest in those at Founder's Fund.

• 52:02Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned ramps round being a hot one. I remember Keith saying his biggest regret or the thing that keeps him up most at night is not paying 35 for Rippling. You mentioned Parker earlier, when Gary Tannen initialized DID, ramp was an expensive ish seed round. I think it was like 25 or 30, whatever it was. Do you care about price or do you align to Founder's Fund's mentality of if it's going to be a generational defining company, shut up and pay?

• 52:25Speaker 00

  You know, 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, you know, 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, you know, sort of low quality. I think it's in some ways reflective of the quality of the, you know, sort of founder. And so I think, you know, sort of ramp in some ways, it's not particularly unreasonable for a second time exited founder that, you know, made money for investors for a seed round to be at, you know, sort of 30 posts, right? I think that's like not a particularly unreasonable pricing. In some ways, Parker obviously was, you know, a similar, you know, sort of situation. If you're like a first time founder and, you know, demanding 25 posts, I have

• 53:10Speaker 00

  a little bit of a harder time getting excited, even if in theory your vision is super compelling, your team is super compelling. It just shows a willingness to, you know, sort of submit to the market instincts of venture capital rather than having your own, you know, sort of defined viewpoint on where you should, you know, sort of land. And so, yeah, but I think generally, you know, I'm in the latter camp and especially because most of the investing that I do is like below 150 posts. And so, you know, sort of there, pricing is not as significant of a factor relative to growth stage, especially for a multi-stage firm where we can continue to double down and build our position.

• 53:40Harry Stebbings?

  How do you think about how your job has changed with the memetic nature of Silicon Valley now realizing that the future is defense and we have to be in defense?

• 53:48Speaker 00

  My partner, Trey Stevens, was obviously extremely, you know, sort of early to this trend. I'd like to say, you know, in summer 17, when I decided this was what I wanted to focus on, it was, you know, not the, you know, sort of typical path the 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, you know, I had a former colleague, you know, sort of Everett Randall, who's now a partner at KPCB, who would always critique me and say, you know, oh, Dallin just loves these, you know, sort of low margin, CapEx intensive businesses that are like highly, you know, sort of dilutive. And this was in the like 2019, 2020 timeframe where, you know, sort of SaaS still felt like it was the sort of number one thing in the valley. And in some ways, you know, sort of those critiques, you know, have gone away, even though the fundamental nature of the critique is still true, which is that these things are low

• 54:32Speaker 00

  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 you know sort of the marginal distribution costs are zero. Perhaps what people need to realize is also that the marginal returns are zero as well because there is no moat. Cause two stand for kids, especially with today's AI can replicate your, you know, sort of SaaS for plumbers, you know, effectively in a weekend. And so.

• 54:54Harry Stebbings?

  Can I be blunt? Do you not see the glib nature of that being, you know, Service Titan? Literally exactly that SaaS for plumbers cannot be replicated in a weekend with AI. There are intense workflows, deep functionality, a lot of brand credibility, trust, love. It's just not true.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  Product, you know, sort of statement I would probably disagree with where I think the like deep workflows, et cetera. If you're having to invent them for the first time by determining what your customers workflows are. Versus, you know, just replicating off of a, you know, sort of known outcome. I think the ability to replicate that with, again, a team of 10, you know, killer software engineers and AI just feels incredibly sort of quick today. I do think that, you know, sort of distribution point and branding point is real, but then that's what people will 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, you know, sort of invest in, you know, sort of brands that have, you know, sort of great distribution. Clearly returns can be made there. But let's, you know, sort of fundamentally recognize that these are, you know, sort of not true technology companies.

• 55:55Harry Stebbings?

  How does the investor mind need to change with the transition to this very different world of investing that we now face? Like many investors are high margin SaaS investors or consumer investors. This is a fundamentally entirely different asset class. It's not even comparable. How does the investor mind need to change to embrace this? And is the current generation of investors equipped?

• 56:17Speaker 00

  What's funny is like, this is actually what historical Silicon Valley was known for, right? Obviously we, you know, 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, you know, sort of outcome. Of the like mid 2000s to the like, you know, sort of late 2010s. And I think in some ways we're sort of reverting to the mean where, you know, if you look at the most successful investors from. Eighties, nineties, et cetera, they look closer to, you know, sort of a Vino de Costa than a, you know, sort of pure SaaS investor, you know, sort of Jason, you know, sort of Lemkin. And so I think what you will see is the, you know, sort of profile of investors start to change.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  You need these very broad polymaths that can, you know, sort of get up to speed across biotech, material science, aerospace, et cetera, more so than people whose, you know, sort of skillset purely sits in the world of like financial analysis and software, you know, engineering 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 sort of reinventing themselves in this way. I just think the up and coming classes will look very different.

• 57:25Harry Stebbings?

  In 10 years, who will the top three VC firms be?

• 57:28Speaker 00

  The, you know, sort of top three VCs a decade ago kind of look like the top three VCs today. And those will almost certainly basically be the top three VCs, you know, 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, you know, 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.

• 58:10Harry Stebbings?

  Who will be the biggest losers in the next 10 years of venture?

• 58:13Speaker 00

  I think the sort of sector-specific specialized funds are going to, you know, sort of have a very tough time where, you know, if you were a financial services or SaaS focused fund, you for sure, you know, 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, you know, 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, Affirm, et cetera. And so in some ways, the firms that will struggle the most over the next 10 years are the ones that, you know, 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 are there going to be, you know, sort of generational returns to, again, go back to one of Brian's, you know,

• 58:57Speaker 00

  classic isms internally is, you know, the only rule at founders fund is that there are no rules. If we establish any type of arbitrary rule, it almost certainly will basically decrease our, you know, IRR. And so a lot of these like sort of specialist firms, I think, are going to have a really tough time when their sector sort of falls out of favor.

• 59:11Harry Stebbings?

  Do you mind if we talk about your Twitter?

• 59:12Speaker 00

  Sure, go for it.

• 59:14Harry Stebbings?

  One of your tweets got me in particular. And I think you know where I'm going with this. It was where you said you can't take people seriously who are over thirty five and straight and who don't have children or are married. Can you just talk to me about the thinking behind that tweet?

• 59:32Speaker 00

  I just think in the technology industry, great, you know, sort of companies, movements, you know, technologies only get implemented with people that have extreme, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, come from storks. They come from people, you know, sort of ideally, you know, being married and having children. Obviously, unfortunately, there's a lot more being born out of wedlock today than not.

• 1:00:06Harry Stebbings?

  Do you know this is going to piss people off when you do it?

• 1:00:08Speaker 00

  I 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, yeah, moving to San Francisco. And I would, you know, say offensive things at the office that people found distasteful. Or, you know, in my early days of Twitter. And then I think at some point I've recognized, I mean, this is what I'm thinking. And it's what I would say in private conversation. I might as well, you know, sort of be myself and say it out loud. It may sort of frustrate some people, but hopefully it helps some people either think different ways or become more attracted to, you know, sort of working with someone like me. So I'd prefer to just be my honest and true self. And so I sometimes I'm quite surprised that people are so, you know, sort of put off by some of the things that I put out there. They just feel like very obvious thoughts to me.

• 1:00:51Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think people are too soft today?

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  Born and bred, you know, sort of Americans that grow up within, you know, sort of this, you know, economy, culture, climate, et cetera, don't, they take for granted, you know, sort of what, how special the United States is, our economic system, our political system, and don't recognize, you know, 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. You know, I'll maybe use this 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, you know, said, you know, sort of gays for Gaza. And he was like, you might as well be saying that, you know, we're chickens for, you know, sort of KFC. You know, they would eat you alive there. And I think that's like a perfect example of just like

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  the softness of the, you know, sort of next generation, because they don't, they take for granted that you can even be gay in this country.

• 1:01:43Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think we work as hard as we used to?

• 1:01:45Speaker 00

  You know, no. I think if you look at the, obviously, you know, average working hours, you know, sort of today, relative to obviously like, you know, sort of 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, you know, but so is direction. And I think the important thing about, you know, sort of society becoming more and more wealthy is that for the people that choose to work very, very hard, you know, we continue to allow them to be rewarded. We're not Europe where we try to, you know, sort of steal the wealth of the most successful, you know, sort of away from them. And we in some ways, you know, enable them to have even more, you know, sort of 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,

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  the amount of work that I can put in and the preciseness of the direction is far more direct. There were so many things in Rockefeller's life. There 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 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.

• 1:02:58Harry Stebbings?

  And for everyone listening, Delian is wrong. Europe do not tax and take away all of your wealth if you make money. I know I pay the tax. I pay the highest tax bracket. Some countries do take more, but sadly, no.

• 1:03:14Harry Stebbings?

  Anyway, I do have to ask, dude, I was chatting to Sean McGuire before this, and he was like, you got to talk to him about marrying up. I did it. What is your biggest advice on marrying up and finding your life partner?

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  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 incredibly important, or it 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, it was a sort of god awful skier and bless her heart, at least allowed me

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  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. Use the instincts of what you've built and what worked well in sort of prior relationships and try to find the person where you can most be yourself and they just by default love that. In my like early dating life, 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 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 maybe the more volatile or the crazier or the thing that posts the bombastic things on Twitter that I would love you to edit. I think ultimately the sort of thing that

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  made me realize that my wife was the one was where I could just be 100% of myself and she actually loved 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 basically even more.

• 1:05:07Harry Stebbings?

  Italian sex, laughter, honesty and respect. Rank them one through four in importance.

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  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 sex second. I think like being truthful. I think Zuckerberg actually had an interesting quote yesterday in his 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, you know, sort of second. And then it's probably, you know, sort of laughter in that I think life is a difficult thing. The fact that it's so short is a difficult thing. Um, you know, you have to deal with many hardships. And if you don't have laughter,

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  you know, 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, you know, sort of ranking of all of those, it is probably, you know, sort of fourth most important. If you've got, you know, sort of honesty, laughter, honesty, sex and laughter, in some ways, respect probably falls out of that.

• 1:06:08Harry Stebbings?

  You have children and you are a father now. My question to you is, in what ways have you changed most unexpectedly since becoming a father?

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  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 like 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, you know, these professional crises. In some ways, I feel like all that washes away when you have just like this like joyous, you know, you know, sort of child to sort of begin every single day.

• 1:06:58Speaker 00

  And that just erases, I don't know, anything that you could have in terms of, you know, sort of stress, you know, depression, mood dampener.

• 1:07:05Harry Stebbings?

  What is your most radical thought that you have not tweeted yet that you would like to?

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  You know, I've sort of, you know, hinted at this some amount, you know, in, in, in various tweets, but maybe, you know, sort of not said it super explicitly. But I, I do think the sort of biggest geopolitical and moral crisis that humanity will have over the course of the next minimum 100, but you know, sort of maybe it is closer to 150 to 200 years. Is, is sort of fundamentally that, you know, humanity is almost certainly going to be, you know, sort of speciating. Where both with artificial selection pressures from things like, uh, polygenic risk scoring of embryos to eventual, you know, sort of crisping of, you know, sort of embryos where you're changing DNA. To natural selection pressures of, you know, people being on, you know, sort of mood.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Moon Mars and you know, low earth orbit stations will fundamentally, you know, sort of create a new dynamic that we have not had, you know, in the last effectively, you know, sort of 15, sort of 20,000 years where people don't appreciate that we all happen to be sort of homo sapiens, like the only, you know, sort of intelligent conscious beings on the planet happen to be, you know, sort of homo sapiens. Almost certainly, you know, we will have homo Luna, homo Marcia, you know, homo, you know, Cosma and homo Neanderthal and erectus, you know, sort of may come back as people decide to, you know, sort of optimize or, you know, sort of bring back some of those genomes. And if we think we have sort of divisiveness today, where at least everybody on the planet can mate with one another, produce children in the future, that will not be the case.

• 1:08:26Speaker 00

  And I fear for humanity's survival in that, you know, sort of outcome, given, you know, sort of how close we feel to the brink of nuclear war constantly, when we're all at least the same species. And, you know, sort of how much worse that, you know, sort of may be when we feel like we're, you know, not necessarily all the same species.

• 1:08:41Harry Stebbings?

  Dalian, listen, I want to move into a quick fire answer. I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

• 1:08:46Speaker 00

  Sounds great.

• 1:08:47Harry Stebbings?

  Okay. So who is the single best board member you sit on a board with?

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  It would probably have to be Seth Bannon from 50 years. I think he dives, you know, sort of deep into the companies that he's involved in and, you know, sort of ask some, you know, pretty great pointed questions.

• 1:08:59Harry Stebbings?

  Which board member have you not sat on a board with, but would most like to, or which VC would have you not sat on a board with, but would most like to?

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  I've gotten to observe at True Work, Alfred Lin, and, you know, would love to, you know, sort of one day find something where we're actually both the, you know, sort of board members. I imagine though, that given our, you know, sort of not super overlapping interests, that may or may not happen, but that would be one that I would love to experience.

• 1:09:21Harry Stebbings?

  What have you changed your mind on most in the last 12 months?

• 1:09:25Speaker 00

  I have tried to tone down how much on Twitter I sort of attack the individual versus, you know, sort of attack the idea. Obviously I've made, you know, plenty of enemies in Silicon Valley and some of them I'm, you know, comfortable with. Some I've done somewhat, you know, sort of unintentionally, whereas, you know, 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.

• 1:09:48Harry Stebbings?

  Do you give a shit when PG fights back? Do you get worried?

• 1:09:52Speaker 00

  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, you know, sort of think about one another and their preferences than not. And so, yeah, I'm generally pro, I think, you know, him, him, you know, sort of fighting back.

• 1:10:14Harry Stebbings?

  Have you ever been pulled aside in Founder's Fund for your Twitter?

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  Oh, a multitude of times. I mean, I, I've probably had at least, you know, sort of six, you know, single man, you know, sort of one-on-ones where he has to be like, darling, what the fuck?

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, thankfully, those have generally decreased in frequency. You know, I think, you know, especially in the early days, it was like, sorry, I'm such an idiot. I will try to do better in the future. And then I think thankfully, I did generally do better in the future. So thankfully, I think, uh, you know, Brian has not had to do one of those now sit down one-on-ones. And I think two years and a month, so of my five years at Founder's Fund, I think we're at least getting to the point where now I'll be past, uh, you know, 50% of the time Brian having to sit me down versus not.

• 1:10:52Harry Stebbings?

  What character trait are you slightly ashamed of, but also has contributed to your success?

• 1:10:57Speaker 00

  Probably the one that I'm, you know, sort of most ashamed of is I am not somebody who always, um, handles existential sort of stress and threat well in that it really does impact sort of my, you know, sort of quality of sleep, physical, mental health in a, you know, 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, right? 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, you know, 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, you know, sort of fully productive.

• 1:11:42Speaker 00

  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 Brewey, is very much so one of those types where like rallies the team, grinds through, can, you know, operate on four hours of sleep and still be high energy, high functioning, et cetera. Obviously, 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, you know, sort of mitigate that flaw.

• 1:12:10Harry Stebbings?

  Final one for you. What question are you never asked that you should be asked, do you think?

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  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 founder CEO of Varda? And it does basically come down to this, where I actually think that, and this may 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 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 president, chairman role.

• 1:13:02Harry Stebbings?

  Delian, listen, I've absolutely loved having you on. As I said, I've wanted to do this for a while. Thank you so much for putting up with my meandering across different questions. You've been fantastic.

• 1:13:10Speaker 00

  Thanks so much for having me on, Harry. It was really pleasant.

• 1:13:14Harry Stebbings?

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• 1:13:55Harry Stebbings?

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