Delian Asparouhov: Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | E1183

(instrumental music) Western Europe is gonna look like a third world. 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 two days after his mother had passed away and convinced him to sign papers that he shouldn't have. I wish that, you know, Bill Gurley's, you know, firing of Travis was, you know, sort of talked about more publicly, about how morally depraved that entire basically situation was. ServiceTitan 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.

Ready to go? (instrumental music) Dalian, 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 Founders Fund many years ago, but thank you so much for doing this, man.

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

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 in growing up that shaped you and how you think today most, do you think?

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, you know, sort of time I spent in America. I remember one of the moments that I felt like I really realized, you know, sort of that 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, I used to go basically every summer as a kid until I was about like 13 or so, and then for, uh, the next couple years as a teenager I had like internships or, you know, math camps, et cetera, just like things that kept me in the States. And then I went back, uh, when I was, I wanna say like 19 years old, uh, for, you know, maybe a month, month and a half. And I remember, uh, interacting with my cousin who's, uh, basically like, you know, sort of my same age. Um, our dads are basically the same age. We, like, you know, grew up around each other all the time and, and have like very similar personalities, backgrounds, like so many. We both like computer science, et cetera. In some ways if you like squint, it's just kind of like what I would have looked like if I grew up basically, you know, sort of in Bulgaria. And I had this realization after like spending, you know, a couple 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, you know, has these quirky personality traits. It's like I'm, I'm just Bulgarian. Like I just, I look at my cousin and I just, I, 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, you know, totally, you know, sort of weird and you get, you know, sort of bashed for it. And so, yeah, I feel like in some ways having this sort of like split identity, I mean, it's not obviously, you know, anywhere near some of the personal stuff that you've shared obviously on, you know, sort of Twitter, um, et cetera. I feel very grateful to have had a, you know, healthy, happy, et cetera, you know, sort of family in the grand scheme of things. But yeah, that sort of flows through to like how your parents parent you, how you communicate in the home, um, you know, how you date, how you think about work, et cetera. And sort of having that like mixed identity always made me feel like I didn't really properly, you know, sort of have a, have a home.