Delian Asparouhov, partner at Founders Fund and co-founder of Varda Space, argues that power-law dynamics will render nearly all current defense tech startups irrelevant.
Opinion
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.”
Opinion
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.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Opinion
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…”
Opinion
'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…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Asparouhov: Western Europe will resemble a second-world region in ten years
“Still you continue to extrapolate that trend for another 10 years. And like Western Europe is going to look like a second world country while Eastern Europe actually just sort of rises to the top.”