Mar 15, 2024 · 52m · sourcery
Varda's Landing, Peter Thiel, & the Future of El Segundo, Delian Asparouhov, Founders Fund · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
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In this episode of Sourcery, host Molly O'Shea interviews Founders Fund Partner and Varda Space Industries Co-Founder Delian Asparouhov about Varda's historic space manufacturing milestones, evolving venture capital philosophies, and deep tech ecosystem dynamics. Asparouhov shares insights on building orbital hardware, operator experience in VC, regional startup hubs, and personal reflections on fatherhood.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Molly holds 19.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Molly as informed peer 2.0 Guest teaching 3.8 Guest disagreement 2.5 Molly pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is Molly, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 39:00 Blunt dismissal of SF liberal culture
Delian launches into a fierce polemic against San Francisco's progressive culture, branding it censorious, monocultural, and intellectually intolerant.
Hardest push from Molly ▶ 18:48 Clarifying pharma R&D budget assumptionsMolly pushes Delian on whether pharma's massive research budgets are the real underlying driver for Varda's focus, prompting Delian to reframe the economics.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 21:25 Centrifuge gravity sensitivity logicDelian educates the listener and host on why past orbital research was flawed and explains how spinning centrifuges on Earth allows extrapolation into microgravity effects.
Molly holds their own ▶ 24:58 Predicting the orbital TSMC semiconductor fabMolly anticipates Delian's orbital foundry roadmap and jokes that she was already planning to ask about a Varda-TSMC orbital fabrication partnership.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Molly as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Molly pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Podcast Preview & Show Title Sequence | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Introductory segment consisting of show preview, podcast intro, and congratulatory banter where Delian outlines hitting his 30-year-old life goals. | |
| Origin and Historic Landing of Varda Space Industries | 1 | 5 | 2 | 0 | Delian provides an extensive monologue explaining the historical context of microgravity research, how NASA prioritized human-rated missions, and how Varda adapted the 1960s Corona capsule design. | |
| Cost Differentiation and Autonomous Tech Trees | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Molly asks a direct quantitative question on launch and landing cost differentials. Delian lays out the napkin math showing a 10x to 1000x cost advantage over human-rated platforms. | |
| Full-Stack Integration and Market Competition | 2 | 3 | 3 | 0 | Delian dismisses narrow competitors in space manufacturing, noting how hard full-stack integration across aerospace, pharma, and regulatory affairs is, and jokes about holding grudges against early detractors. | |
| Small Molecule Formulation and Business Model Strategy | 3 | 5 | 2 | 1 | Delian explains why small molecules beat semiconductors and fiber optics in space economics, then clarifies Molly's premise by noting pharma R&D still demands commercializable ROI rather than indefinite budgets. | |
| Hypergravity Centrifuge Research and Orbital TSMC Vision | 2 | 6 | 2 | 0 | Delian walks through Varda's centrifuge research mimicking gravity sensitivity on Earth and lays out a long-term roadmap for orbital contract manufacturing. | |
| Deep Tech Learning Curves and Operator vs. Investor Backgrounds | 3 | 5 | 2 | 0 | Molly raises the investor vs. operator background debate in venture. Delian argues using Midas List historical data that modern top-tier venture increasingly requires deep operating experience. | |
| Comparing Venture Culture: Khosla Ventures vs. Founders Fund | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Delian breaks down cultural and structural differences between Khosla Ventures' structured 8-hour partner meetings and Founders Fund's decentralized decision-making model. | |
| Geography, Independent Thought, and the SF vs. Miami Ecosystem | 1 | 3 | 7 | 0 | Delian offers a sharp, aggressive critique of San Francisco culture, labeling progressive tech liberals as hypocritical, intolerant of radical thought, and censorious compared to Miami. | |
| The El Segundo Tech Scene and 'Gundo' Subculture | 2 | 4 | 4 | 0 | Delian critiques the 'Gundo bro' culture for repelling non-male engineering talent and notes that venture opportunity in early-stage aerospace may be cyclically mistimed relative to other industrial sectors. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Thiel told Founders Fund to halt investing for six months during COVID
“COVID hits, you know, Peter at Founders Fund basically tells us, you know, go on a six month vacation. We're not going to be deploying any capital.”
Asparouhov: Varda landed the first commercial reentry capsule on US soil
“I, I'm proud to say that, you know, we started the company that basically landed the first ever commercial reentry capsule, you know, on a U S soil. With also a new regulatory regime used at part four 50 with the FAA.”
Asparouhov: Varda per-mission cost will drop to $3.5M–$4M by mission six
“By our, you know, sort of fifth or sixth mission, we expect our per mission cost to be, you know, sort of three and a half, four million dollars.”
Asparouhov: Varda competes with terrestrial alternatives, not human-rated space platforms
“The real competition for Varda is not you know, these human rated platforms. They're so far off in economics. The real competition is like, can you actually do this in a way that, you know, integrates into people's terrestrial users, supply chains and terrestr…”
Asparouhov: Top 20 biopharma companies cannot handle space or hardware complexities
“Top 20 biopharma don't know how to think about hardware or space. Right. And we completely abstract, you know, sort of all of those details.”
Asparouhov: Emailed capsule photos to 15 early critics upon Varda's US landing
“When we landed our capsule most of the team was focused on, you know, sort of celebrating, they were going out and having a good time. I instead was focused on emailing, you know, like, you know, 15 earliest haters that said we would never land a re-entry caps…”
Asparouhov: Active pharmaceutical ingredients are Earth's highest-value materials by mass
“First, if you look at it, the active ingredients in pharmaceuticals are fundamentally the highest value, you know, sort of objects by unit mass on the planet Earth.”
Asparouhov: All Varda contracts include revenue upside sharing on compounds
“In all the VARDA contracts we have to date, we not only you know, do some amount of payment for the actual user flight discovery of the new, you know, sort of pharmaceutical product, but then we also get to participate, you know, in a risk sharing model where …”
Asparouhov is skeptical of non-pharma microgravity manufacturing startups
“There have been a couple of companies come up, starting to try to tackle non-pharmaceutical product areas in, you know, microgravity manufacturing. And to me, I just find it quite confusing because they always phrase it as like, well, Varda is going to go to t…”
Asparouhov: Varda will focus on pharma before becoming orbital contract manufacturer
“I, you know, sort of tell investors, look, we are going to be a pharma company. And then over time, as we build up our platform, I'm happy to be a contract manufacturer. I don't expect in the future that we are also going to want to be A semiconductor company …”
Asparouhov: Half of top-10 Midas List VCs are forgotten a decade later
“If you look at, you know, people that land on the, like the top 10 of the Midas list, you know, every year you'll find that about a decade later, like half of that top 10, nobody thinks about it anymore. Like there are people that have just like totally, you k…”
Asparouhov: Founders Fund actively discourages startup incubations
“Where, if that's to say we encourage incubations or anything, if anything, we, like, actively discourage them, because, you know, typically you should just stick to investing.”
Asparouhov: Post-2012 top Midas List VCs heavily skew toward operators
“And if you look at, you know, sort of top hundred on the Midas list, for VCs, they started their careers sort of pre-thousand-twelve called versus post-thousand-twelve. Pre-thousand-twelve, there was definitely a large number of investors that were pure sort o…”
Asparouhov: Khosla is the only equity owner in OpenAI besides Microsoft
“Mattershund being the largest, you know, sort of investor
You know, in SpaceX, Coastal Ventures being the largest investor in Rocket Lab, and then in some ways more recently, you know, the only equity owner in OpenAI other than Microsoft.”
Asparouhov: Khosla filters for tech moats; Founders Fund filters for contrarianism
“KV generally the first question was you know, what is the technological differentiation that this you know, company has versus, you know, a founder's fund you know, typically the very first question that we ask is, you know, sort of why are we going to appreci…”
Asparouhov: Khosla excels at investor training; Founders Fund enables autonomous execution
“KV is a really great place to, you know, sort of learn you know, venture in that you just get so much, you know, sort of exposure to the team because of those eight hour line partner meetings, there's very rigorous discussions, a memo writing culture, usually …”
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.”
'Gundo bro' culture is off-putting to women and limits talent pools
“I find some of the, like, you know, sort of you know, gundo bros or gundo boys, you know, culture you know, a bit off-putting to, you know, people that are not of the male gender, and it's something that I've, you know, heard validated, you know, sort of acros…”
Aerospace venture opportunity window may be closed for five to seven years
“There's a world now where we don't necessarily invest in aerospace for another, you know, sort of 10 years. And so, you know, sometimes, you know, some of these movements, I think, you know, can sometimes be a bit mistimed where, you know, I think the, you kno…”
Asparouhov: Focus on robotics and minerals over aerospace and defense
“We should be focusing on other aspects of, you know, rare earth, you know, minerals production you know, industrial automation, you know, robotics, much more so than I would say actually aerospace defense. There's probably not that many more interesting compan…”