Delian Asparouhov
Partner, Founders Fund. On 3 shows, 12 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutiveoperator@zebulgar ↗LinkedIn ↗delian.io ↗
Delian Asparouhov is a Partner at Founders Fund and the Co-Founder and President of Varda Space Industries. He also co-founded the Hill & Valley Forum and previously worked as a Principal at Khosla Ventures.
3shows
12appearances
153statements
39resolved
16supported
12contradicted
41%fully supported
150said about them ↓ Everything Delian Asparouhov said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Biden administration delayed Starliner rescue to deny Elon Musk a political win
“The Biden administration clearly turned that down because they didn't want to give SpaceX a political, an Elon, a political win against Boeing in the midst of the, you know, campaign was campaigning for Trump.”
Asparouhov: Biden Admin Rejected Early SpaceX Return Due to Musk's Politics
“What's incredibly clear is SpaceX offered to bring the astronauts back sooner And because it was in the middle of the election cycle, and because Musk was campaigning for Trump, the Biden administration turned down that offer.”
Asparouhov: Benchmark cornered Travis Kalanick in a hotel room after mother's death
“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 passe…”
Asparouhov: Western Europe will eventually look like a third-world region
“Western Europe is going to look like a third world.”
Asparouhov: Western Europe is in societal collapse from socialism and regulation
“When you look at United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, et cetera, they're all just like completely, you know, sort of falling into societal collapse all for, you know, sort of slightly different reasons, but it comes down to a complete lack of, you know, sor…”
Asparouhov: Bill Gurley's firing of Travis Kalanick was morally depraved
“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.”
Asparouhov: ServiceTitan is closer to LVMH than Tesla
“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…”
Asparouhov calls progressive San Francisco liberals among the most racist people
“Progressive SF liberals are actually some of the most racist people that I've ever met, you know, on the planet.”
Asparouhov: Nvidia exported $20B in chips to Singapore resold to China
“The, you know, articles that came out yesterday talking about you know, NVIDIA basically getting, you know, sort of slapped on the wrist because they were like, we're exporting. I forget what the number was, but like, twenty billion dollars per year of chips t…”
Asparouhov: NASA should reallocate SLS budget to commercial rocket companies
“The commercial industry has better, cheaper,
You know, more effective rockets than, you know, anything that NASA is building and has at this point, we should probably reallocate that budget to just those commercial companies or to other NASA priorities rather…”
Asparouhov: Medicare efficiency offers far more savings than cutting DEI programs
“Entitlements are the vast majority of the federal government's budget, and so, you know, if you want to go look at efficiencies, you're gonna have way more juice to squeeze, like, you know, improving Medicare than, like, you know, you can cut out all the DEI p…”
Asparouhov: Mediocre Anduril copycats will fail to shift military procurement budgets
“Look, like even Elon isn't able to convince the Air Force that we shouldn't have human rated fighter jets. Like, you think your fucking thing that's like a mediocre copycat of Anderle is somehow going to convince them that they should spend like, you know, mon…”
Asparouhov: OpenAI Sherlocked dozens of AI image startups into total irrelevance
“There's like a whole fucking set of like a hundred like AI image generation companies that all just got, you know, fucking Sherlock by open AI and are going to be totally irrelevant because like they've got the biggest brand and know they have the best technol…”
Forty-seven of the top fifty defense startups will fail within fifteen years
“A significant number of the logos that are talked about today and the, you know, sort of top 50 in this field. You know, 47 of those are going to be companies that are completely irrelevant. Yeah. 15 years from today.”
Only Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX have delivered defense tech at scale
“Other than those three, there isn't really, like, a, like, unicorn VC-backed company that, like, has actually delivered things at scale for the Warfighter that doesn't really exist.”
NASA Originally Planned to Award Commercial Crew Exclusively to Boeing
“When commercial crew was originally getting started, the original plan by NASA was to only, you know, do it as a sole source of war, just a Boeing. SpaceX was seen as a bunch of, you know, cowboys who has that had no chance of actually being able to be trusted…”
Wilmore and Williams Confirmed They Were Denied Earlier ISS Return
“Butch and Sunni, like, basically confirmed these facts. Like, they basically made it clear, hey, we could have been brought back earlier, and we were, like, denied the opportunity to be brought back earlier.”
Asparouhov: VCs Are Blindly Funding Defense Tech Expecting Another Anduril
“I'm a, you know, obviously mega bull on like the team at Andrewl. Cause like they have the like bench, the capability, the, you know, set of different products, suite, different programs going, like they will navigate this, but like, I don't know if there's go…”
Asparouhov: DOGE's aggressive 'chainsaw' approach is reasonable given 2-year window
“I feel like they're taking, you know, sort of a chainsaw, which is not unreasonable when you need a scalpel because it's just like the scalpel may take too long and the, you know, admin only has two years before like Congress potentially flips. And so it's pro…”
Asparouhov: Eastern European nations will start leaving the EU
“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.”
Asparouhov: Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos will form multi-generational US dynasties
“If you don't think that like the, you know, sort of Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, et cetera, analogy is not going to be the Musks, the Zuckerbergs, the, you know, sort of Bezos is that almost certainly, you know, sort of will be, you know, the case over the course …”
Asparouhov: US extreme tech upside requires accepting extreme social downside
“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 V…”
Asparouhov: Founders Fund outperformed Sequoia, a16z, and Benchmark with fewer debacles
“If I were to look over the past sort of five years, I think generally the Founders Fund decision making has led to Generally superior returns and also less gaffes in various ways, whether it's the, you know, sort of FTX type, you know, sort of fraud debacles, …”
Asparouhov: Uber would be a $1T company if Travis Kalanick remained CEO
“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 one trillion dollar company over the course of the 20 twen…”
The other half of the tape: Delian Asparouhov's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 144 times in 69 episodes across the shows. 6 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most John Coogan 41Harry Stebbings 30Keith Rabois 11Jordi Hays 11Shaun Maguire 9Molly O'Shea 8Christian Garrett 5Samir Vasavada 3
Statements about Delian Asparouhov, by other people (6)
Randle: Founders Fund's 'never fire founders' policy is rooted in laziness
“I think it's actually a convenience for Delian and some of the Founders Fund folks to absolve themselves of that weight and that responsibility just by being like, oh, it's not part of our, it's not part of our thing. But I think, you know, it's almost out of …”
Tan: There will be very few successful defense tech companies
“I don't think, I agree more with Dellian comments about that there's not going to be many successful defense companies.”
Franceschetti: Keith Rabois and Delian Asparouhov did not realize Eight Sleep co-founders were married
“To the point where I think Delian and Keith, when they invested for the first year, they, I, I'm not sure that they were not even, they didn't even know we were married. Obviously, you disclose it when you do a round, so it has been disclosed in every round, b…”
Randle: Delian Asparouhov Sourced the Seed Investment for Ramp
“Dude, you sourced the seed of ramp.”
Coogan: Varda hired more people in two weeks than first eight months
“I think they, I think Delian said they hired more people in the last like two weeks than they did in the first eight months of the company.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
TBPN 79
20VC 45
Sourcery 20
2026 14 mentions in 10 episodes 1 per episode
- Meta Acquires Manus, Nvidia's $20B Groq deal, Doordash's Reddit Firestorm l Diet TBPN
- Labour, Engineering, Social Media, GrokBots, Cybercabs: 7 Predictions for How AI Changes the World
- Turning Peter Thiel's $100K into $10M Angel Portfolio & Why VCs Can Be Sharks | Josh Browder · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Leopold Stays in the Game, Big Tech Earnings, OpenAI Slashes GPT-5.6 Prices | Diet TBPN
- Senra Systems' $65M Series B: Fixing Aerospace & Defense's Biggest Bottleneck · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Rocket Lab Enters SpaceX Arena, Meta’s Prediction Market, America’s Tech Wishlist | Diet TBPN
- China Blocks Meta’s $2B Manus Deal, Meta Bets on Space-Based Solar | Diet TBPN
- SpaceX Financials, Does AI Increase Unemployment or Leisure, Chimp Civil War | Diet TBPN
- 2 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 66 mentions in 26 episodes 3 per episode
- Benchmark's GP, Everett Randle on Why Mega Funds Will Not Produce Good Returns · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Can This Man Save Los Angeles? (Rick Caruso)
- SpaceX, Stripe, Ramp, Anduril: Navigating Liquidity in Private Markets · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Sequoia Capital Partner Shaun Maguire Live on TBPN
- Connor Love (Lightspeed) on Everything You Need to Know About Defense Startups
- "Don't listen to anyone" - Shaun Maguire talks Elon, Robots, Space, and the Mars Mission.
- "Work at an outstanding organization first" - Keith Rabois Advice on Starting Companies
- Keith Rabois: Lessons from PayPal Mafia, $OPEN, & Investing · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- 18 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 57 mentions in 30 episodes 2 per episode
- Low T levels at Y-Combinator (ep9)
- Surviving a VC Holiday Party (ep22)
- Keith Rabois & Eric Glyman: The Tools, Tips, Secrets and Process That Drive Efficiency | E1148 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Matt Grimm, Co-Founder @Anduril: How a Trump Administration Changes the Defence Industry | E1224 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- The Secret Billionaire Party (ep6)
- Samir Vasavada: The Real Story of Vise: The Regrets, Mistakes and Mis-Hires | E1171 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- CHRISTIANITY: Why it's making a comeback (ep23)
- Billionaires XMAS list (ep21)
- 22 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 4 mentions in 1 episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Delian's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TBPNLEDGER | Partner, Founders Fund | 9 | 69 | 46% 12/26 | full record on TBPN → |
| SOURCERYLEDGER | Partner, Founders Fund | 2 | 43 | 25% 2/8 | full record on Sourcery → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Partner, Founders Fund | 1 | 41 | 40% 2/5 | full record on 20VC → |