Delian Asparouhov on holiday term sheets, defense manufacturing unicorns, and the K-shaped LP market

marketplaces, and now with AI agents. Delian

Delian Asperu the co-founder of Varda the partner at Founders Fund. Hit him with a flashbang. [laughter] Got him.

We got to hit him with a smoke grenade, too. Ask him to do an intro as the smoke clears. Throwing smoke.

Throwing smoke. [laughter]

And look who is it. It's Deli. As the smoke clears, we have the partner from Founders Fund on the stream. It really takes a second to clear. Okay. Okay. We're clear. We're clear. Delian, good to have you here. Hope you're doing well. Thanks for hopping on the show. How are you doing? How's your week going? You're ripping checks. You're in business. Money's flowing.

Is it Yeah. Is the bare market Is the bare market over? I mean, end and you know, last year you you kind of uh you felt like things were getting a little crazy. Maybe you you didn't you you didn't find any opportunities you love. Then you started the year with a bang.

Mhm.

Started the year with a bang. I feel like, you know, I I I think I'm just like um addicted to investing over the holidays. I realized over the past like nine years that I've been in venture, I think seven of those years I've signed a term sheet within 48 hours of Christmas Day. Um and I don't know if that like speaks to the fact that like I just like I'm addicted to work or something about like Santa Claus makes me want to like send out some presents or something like that. But yeah, it definitely feels like a busy season. I was catching up with another investor and he was like, "Same thing here." Like one of the you best deals we did was basically over Christmas.

Is the deal flow from like serendipity at the holiday parties or is it just networking from the internet? Like where are you meeting founders these days?

I admit that like I think a part of it is um if if you were trying to preempt around no better time than to do it over the holidays cuz like nobody's cher chatting at the office. There's no like hallway conversations etc. you can have these just like very quiet conversations. Founders like it because they don't have to deal with like, you know, a bunch of noise. You like it because you feel like you can do this like one-on-one negotiation and basically just set the deadline of like, you know, I've now done this a couple years in a row where it's like, yeah, signed by New Year's otherwise like deals off basically. And it feels harder to enforce that type of deadline like during the like, you know, school year basically. And so, um, I think that's part of why, you know, on both sides I like it. It's like as a founder, you can kind of test the waters and if it gets shot down, whatever. Nobody heard about it. Everybody's gone for the holidays. you come back into the office, your employees don't know, your board doesn't know, no VCs know, and if it does go, then like, you know, great.

I think I think it's convenient as a as a founder, the holidays can be so annoying because like it becomes like kind of poor form to just be like, you know, slamming people, your team with emails around Christmas Eve, Christmas,

slamming the VCs with

and uh yeah, so I I think it's a win-win. just obviously anytime you're talking terms it becomes wildly distracting cuz you're like this is maybe the most important thing

uh for my business right now but if you can use that stretch of like 7 days where you're not really supposed to be like you know uh

you're not operating but you're allowed to negotiate terms. By the way, I did want to point out I did make sure that I wore my uh TVPN quarter zip today. So this is how I have a you have a horse on that. Is that a little horse there? We got another [laughter] horse there. Let me get it. Oh, other way. Other way into the sunshine.

It's coming on. It's coming on the screen.

Wow. [laughter]

You guys have a hole so you guys can

Oh, yeah. Yeah. 2026 is a good year for us. We're uh talk to us about the biodal strategy, early stage, growth stage. Um is is this is this actually pushing you out on the barbell? Was series A your sweet spot and now it's seed and series C? Is this going to be a permanent thing? How are you thinking through that? Yeah, I think if you look at some of the best like um deep tech hardware industrial you know sort of companies over the past like 15 years they have a very interesting like PPS you know sort of growth curve where effectively you have like typically a seed round that happens and I'm just going to give like you know somewhat fake numbers here but you know indicative of like you know a buck per share basically the like early incubation days

you [clears throat] then have like series A that'll be like four or five times higher basically like five bucks a share and then a lot of times what you'll see is years of super dimminimous basically PPS growth until you sort of get to the other side of like the R&D production hell, etc. And then all of a sudden, you just have huge step function changes like over and over and over again. And this is true on everything from like the early days of like Nvidia, Tesla, like you know, Apple all the way down to like some of the more, you know, sort of recent, you know, sort of more, you know, deep tech industrial, you know, sort of startups.

And so what to do as like an investor basically? Well, you know, you can, you know, I think do the seed rounds where I do think they're, you know, attractive versus reward. You get some amount of IR just like through series A, etc. And then what you effectively want to do is do that last round where it's flat and then allow it to basically you know basically grow you know from there.

And I think what I've like started to realize is like that is the style of company that I like to do. It has a very different PPS curve relative to like SAS AI etc which are honestly just like much more like you know clear smooth sort of like you know typically obviously exponential curves if it's like a you know sort of great company right like if you look at ramp for example there was just clear step ups all throughout. obviously had the like, you know, they did a great job of like, you know, marking themselves down in like the 23, you know, 2022 basically, you know, sort of crash and I think that was proven to them and then basically smoothly upwards basically since then.

Um, and so the the the the way that's played out is like, you know, now over the past couple years, I've much more consistently done basically like super early stage PDF and a founder basically like, you know, early early, you know, industrial deep tech companies. And then I sort of sit there and b my time and wait until what I think is like that basically last round right before the inflection point and then basically you know sort of do do that round. And I've now done that you know over the past year I did basically three like later stage basically rounds like you know series B series C and then like you know basically series C that I just you know closed terms on over the holidays. Um and all of them were companies that I've either been tracking basically since seed or literally been an investor since seed. And we talk about one of those you know part of what we were talking about earlier today was you know talking about one of those very particular companies. Um, but yeah, I think I'm starting to realize that I like that women more than I like doing the like, you know, sort of messy middle um, in some ways. And so, yeah, want to double down on that and, you know, whatever Tuesday night was cool where I literally felt that happen where I signed two term sheets that were indicative of both ends of the barbell for me.

What was the amount of work in DD that you did on the series C company significantly higher? Um, like how did you actually split the time up? because this is framed as uh you know 50/50 of Delian's time but uh I imagine that there's just more data to pull in more research to do more customers to talk

but at the same time you know the company so much better.

Sure. Sure. Yeah. So what was it like process-wise?

Yeah. I mean I'm not somebody I don't think I would ever be able to do like a raw series where it's like I've met the company for the first time have the time to go do the diligence etc from scratch cuz it's just like dude I've got a [ __ ] company that I got to run like I can't do that. The thing that I can do though is like get involved early or if it's something I'm like deeply passionate about even if I'm not involved like track the company super regularly such that I'm kind of doing all that pre-diligence basically like ahead of time. So like let's talk about one of the you know some companies that I think exemplifies this strategy where we just announced a $ 1.6 6 billion post round led by Tro Price basically last week that I got maybe um you know

we're going to have the show we'll go ring it twice for the hey

exactly exactly I think it's Dallas you know fifth unicorn or something like that from like you know they see under 25 post all the way through to the

Yeah feel good about it Chris said I was texting him earlier he's like you're allowed to to your own horn I want to do BC brags you know hit me up

um

yeah we give us the update on on on hatred.

Yeah, that's one where like look I got involved in the you know basically like company formation basically like you know seed round where it was Chris and like maybe one or two you know sort of people

and so what did diligence on that one look like? Well it was effectively like you know four and a half years of working with Chris very closely going to every single board meeting watching the company like adapt over time and in like you know Q1 last year in 25 it was clear there was just like this inflection point that I felt like I could appreciate but not everyone else was really appreciating yet. The first was they basically, you know, for those that don't know, HRE basically builds these like automated CNC basically, you know, facilities. They basically cut metal on behalf of, you know, aerospace and defense companies. So, you know, think a lot of the biggest logos in the Founders Fund portfolio. I won't list, you know, sort of all of them since I'm not sure which ones are allowed to be public, but, you know, ones that, you know, build rockets, make drones, you can guess which ones those are.

Um, and they cut metal on behalf of those companies. For a long time they were interested in the like R&D production grind like trying to figure out basically like how to make the economics of the business work you know switching from like what were originally quick turn small prototype contracts into like production multi-year you know basically large contracts and in Q1 last year there were two things that happened that just like made it very clear to me that it hit like my spidey instincts of like oh this is like the point that I'm supposed to come in and do the series seed like my whole job was to have done the seed and then wait for this exact moment. The two things that happened were one they just got through production hell basically like the economics started making sense they were producing you know it's going to be way more volume and then the second thing was you know um we talked about this a lot but the defense industry is obviously going through a huge shakeup and there's a whole set of you know neopimes that are coming out that are going to get anointed and Hrien was clearly in this transition point from what was previously just purely like a backend sort of supplier of you know sort of parts and a vendor into uh somebody that was becoming more of like a strategic you know neop prime there's going to be co- betting alongside others but as a neoprime that is focused specifically on production right so if we think about groups like you know analic shield AI um you know name your favorite basically you know you know you know mock industries name all your favorite you know neopsimes they all roughly follow the same model which is like they are product developers fundamentally right like they go and like design net new products they may do a decent amount of production and assembly of themselves but they still are reliant on like out of you know sort of house you know sort of vendors for a vast majority of their like you know subcomponents. Yeah,

Adrian fundamentally is a very different type of neoprime, right? They are neopre that is explicitly focused on production. They do not produce basically like end products themselves. They only amplify others's end products. But that is a significant bottleneck that the you know defense you know department or you know war department is looking to go unlock and is leaning on a Hrien for a wide variety of you know programs both directly you know as Hrien as a contractor as well as like co- biders alongside other neoprimes. And so I think when I think about like you know the way that Adrian was interpreted Q1 Q2 last year people were squinting at they're like man these economics have only turned in the last quarter. Um you know isn't this just a backend vendor that doesn't have a ton of upside. From my like insider perspective having watched it for 5 years I'm like dude this is the type of business where once the economics turn a corner they don't unturn a corner. You know what I mean? It only gets easier from here. We finally got to [ __ ] positive. we're going to 20% margin, 40% margin, 60% margin, and it's like, you know, accumulating advantages, but like materials get easier, the factories get easier, and the states want to send the stuff. It's just like, you know, you're rocking and rolling. But like when people look at like a SAS business, they don't appreciate that like Yeah. in like hardware, especially when you're producing something that is like kind of a commodity. There's sort of like semi-infinite demand. There's like not semi-infinite demand for data bricks, you know what I mean? Like, you know, just doesn't the scale of the market is not nearly as large. Um, and Ollie would put your truth [laughter] in on that.

Thanks a difference.

Hey, sorry. We're obviously investors.

Hey, also Tro is Tro Price is smart enough to be in both data bricks and [laughter] you know, to be clear, big data bricks fan, but at the end of the day, the amount we spend on metal is more than I probably really know what data bricks does, but [laughter] like whatever they do, the amount that we spend on metal is more than whatever we spend on data. Well, well, I mean, reflect on the on the AI boom, the slop versus steel debate. It felt like uh AI went through this sort of reset on the narrative towards the back half of last year.

Do you have room in your office for a victory lap or are you kind of [laughter]

um but but it feels like it feels like we're back to back to normal. I mean, there's there's multiple 10 billion deals announced already this year. Nvidia is acquiring stuff for 20 billion, something like that. Uh it it feels like the pace is is just continuing unabated. There's no real reset there. Um how how did you process like the bubble in venture that discourse? Where where do you feel like we are now? Where do you think uh about the new like fundraising landscape the K-shaped dynamic between the large funds smaller funds? Like what's your what's your current outlook on the venture capital market broadly? Yeah, I mean it's interesting where like um you know I won't name names but there's like various venture firms that you know have had like uh funds that they have like half funded done really great deals out of and some of these like you know top tier names have significant markups even on those investments and still aren't able to like fully close out the fund. So it's like as an LP you're able to like you know basically get in immediately know that you're like you know LP position is going to be marked up and a part of it is that you're comparing it that versus like there's so many of these mega you know sort of labs mega rounds where there are so many SPVS that are available that as an LP you're actually trading that against well I can just go get the direct position no fees or much more dimminimous fees through like an SPV from like a lesser manager and so you are seeing like you know um if you look at like you know I think there's this like you know a graph recently that was just showing like you total um uh venture dollars raised by venture firms significantly like it's still linearly basically down since 2122 and that was you know shown I think it was like on Carter or something like that they were showing basically that data

but I would bet if you looked at like total LP dollars deployed into like tech venture you know direct you know sort of investments fund investments etc it is almost certainly significantly up since 2021 it's just like

Mubata at some point can access some of these mega rounds just as easily as they can access like directly into, you know, basically like some of the funds that they used to have to, you know, invest into. And so you're getting this odd dynamic where, you know, I think we talked about this, you even last week a bit, but like a lot of people are doing these like fearless, careless SPVS that are basically like branding exercises for them.

Um, so yeah, I think it's like it's a harder time than ever to be an emerging manager. Like you there's somebody that like I forget who did this analysis, but it's like it's taking, you know, there's fewer emerging managers taking longer to close. And then it's harder than ever to even as you go and you're like a multi-stage mega fund to still go raise the like equivalent of like the Andre $15 billion you know sort of total you know you know growth fund it is non-trivial for people to do that because the things you're going to go invest into in these late stage assets are now you know readily accessible directly via the you know LPS through all these all all these alternate you know sort of vehicles and so

and it's not it's not like a huge secret what what companies are like the real winners. You don't need to pay

fees. It's not like there's like 100 logos. It's like there's like seven logos that matter significant number of dollars. So as an LP like you know why do I care about paying you know these fees versus like I know I'm getting into the exact same logo anyways but through this other vehicle.

So you have sort of like the private Mag 7 that everyone's excited about and LPS are getting direct access to. Is there any effect of the fact that the public 7 are doing so well? I was I was kind of laughing to myself like if I want exposure broadly to self-driving cars and I buy Google and humanoids and I buy Tesla and like there's a number and AI so you buy Google again and and it's like you can get a pretty broad portfolio of like sci-fi bets just by owning the mag 7 and maybe those get disrupted maybe you got to pick up other big companies but it's not like they're completely asleep at the wheel. Is there is there a uh like a a little bit of a magnetism from the MAG 7 that might be pulling liquidity towards just public tech companies these days?

A bit but I would say also for most of these LPS they have like um you know and especially the endowments they have like pretty clear ratios that they want to maintain across basically like public private etc. And so in some ways through the public market you know sort of accelerating they have you know if you remember in like 2020 during the crash there was like the reverse thing basically were like you know basically all of a sudden the private books basically weren't you know getting marked down nearly enough they're starting to represent like 20% of an endowment book and they're like we literally have to freeze all private investing. Now you're in some way seeing like you know the reverse where you know people in some ways counter swung so hard where now some of these groups that want to maintain like a you know 7% ratio on private are all a sudden down to like three and a half and are trying to figure out basically where to deploy. But that's where they're coming with these like you know sort of huge text to the table but they're seeing that there's like a multitude of options and they want a relatively like you know sort of limited set of names and why not just go basically like you know more and more direct into those names and as a founder at some point you're like well like I like these venture guys on hill road but at some point when I'm a public company these are going to be the guys that hold my stock when I'm public and so I don't mind prioritizing them you know sort of basically directly and having them on board. So in some ways, you know, to tie this all the way back to Adrian, it's like, yeah, this past round, Adrian had a multitude of different, you know, offers from, you know, more traditional Silicon Valley venture firms, but it's like, why wouldn't you take a Tro Price where Tro Price is going to be the person that likely just, you know, underwrites part of your IPO, holds it when you're public, you know, scales with you while you're, you know, sort of public. And so you're seeing obviously, you know, you know, um, those types of firms come in much earlier into venture and then founders by default, you know, sort of prioritizing those. You had obviously had the like wave in like 2021 where a bunch of the VC firms tried to become raas and enter into like the troll price you know sort of lane that all mostly obviously turned out to be like a disaster where it was just like these guys are not you know sort of public equities you know experts and do not understand what it means to you know manage that you know sort of book appropriately. So I feel like most people have pulled back from that. Um so I do think you know it's a shifting landscape where I just don't think that um the current state of liquidity preferences that are given to you know like if you invest into a company at 500 billion in the public markets you do not get a liquidity preference right you know as an investor I think it's less and less likely that some of these super late stage private companies keep giving that type of liquidity preference to investors and then I think also the like fee structure on these venture firms is almost certainly going to compress for some of these like super you sort of late stage you know types of rounds and funds. Mhm.

Do you think uh we'll see any spaxs this year?

Well,

specific specifically for for companies uh in our in our world, obviously there's spaxs like constantly,

treasury companies and stuff going out, but but ventureback spaxs.

Yeah, I definitely um you know have uh had now you know a variety of companies that I'm involved with have had spack sponsors like pretty aggressively approach and like knock on the door. I think like there are certain companies where it makes sense. If you are a type of company where it's like look, I just need 500 billion or 500 million on the balance sheet. [laughter] Billion would be great. I'm sure love 500 billion on the balance sheet. Um

uh but yeah, you know, and your super deep tech long cycle thing. Yes. Makes sense. I think there's just enough scar tissues from the 21 time period where it's like there's a very small handful of companies that like survived through that spat crazier, right? Like there's that one um robotics company that works with Walmart pretty significantly. It's like one of the few that has actually like, you know, sort of traded significantly up, but like the vast majority.

MP materials. MP materials.

Was MP materials a spack though? Uh,

was it Chimoth Spack? I thought

I thought it was a Chimoth. Yeah,

you're right. It was a That was like I think almost like a part like it used to be public, went private, restructured, and then like basically

Fortress Fortress Value.

Fortress Value.

I'm just I'm just excited. I'm just excited to see what American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp

Symbotic was the one that I was thinking of, by the way. I'm pretty sure. Um, it's one of the few spacks from like 2021. Let's look at

Here's one. Here's a spa cand candidate. What about that uh that uh space moon that was getting around?

Moon Hotel.

I mean, at $400,000 a night, it's pretty simple. Just do the math.

Simple economics.

It's simp. It's just It's just a It's just a math problem.

I like that they're working on that. Give them a couple decades. Let them cook. Jordy, let the YC founder cook.

Uh, Gabe in the chat. It was a pipe.

Pipe. Okay. Yeah. So,

was a pipe pipe into that one.

Yeah. Symbotic is probably the best example of like basically spacked at um, you know, a looks like $8 billion valuation. Now a $42 billion company basically like incredible obviously like outcome, but that's like of the basket of like the backs that we're in 2021. It's like, you know, one of like, you know, 15 that basically ended up like that. The vast down

and so I think for most companies that makes sense.

Yeah. It feels like you get to do a big fund raise, you get a bunch of cash on the balance sheet and then almost certainly you're going to have a stock chart that just looks like this that follows you around and gets screenshotted in your face for the next like, you know, five years. And then you look at some of these specs and it's like, oh yeah, they're up 40% this year. And it's like, but they were 10 times bigger when they went out. And and so you have this weird dynamic. uh even if it puts cash on the balance sheet, it seems like it's a lot of lot of weird dynamic very different culturally to be running a public company dealing with the the stock is is symbotic and just a super underrated company. It's like a Fordsized business.

Wow.

I mean, yeah, it's large. I think it's pretty underappreciated. It's basically like I would describe it as like the best warehouse robotics thing since KA, but it's like you know publicly traded independent company. My understanding is like pretty darn significant like you know roll out into all of Walmart. Definitely not discussed enough. I don't remember like the venture investors, you know, that were, you know, you know, you know, around the table, but it's like based in Massachusetts. That's a part of why it doesn't get like, you know, a ton of ton of interesting heat, but yeah, I definitely think it's like pretty under the radar.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Have a great rest of your day. We'll see you soon.

Good to see the boys. Let's keep

tactical nuke incoming.

Tactical nuke. Oh, no. [laughter]

I was just me doing barbells for my barbell strategy. So, I'm going to just keep doing my barbell.

Keep repping it out. Keep wrapping the barbell, boys.

Goodbye. [laughter]

You had to nuke him. The truth nuke. Reream. That's a truth nuke. One live stream, 30 plus destinations. If you want to multiream, go to reream.com.

Uh, going from the truth nuke to the reream.

Speaking of robotics, next up we have Deepo from Skilled AI.

Got to give a shout out to Luke Metro. Luke Metro joined a company. was pretty under the radar. Left Anderl to join Skilled.

There wasn't a lot of chatter about Skilled publicly at the time.

And of course, uh Luke is a goated picker and it's been marked up uh

significantly

uh many many many times since he joined. So,

but until the CEO arrives here in the