Amid Helsinki’s snowy landscape, Founders Fund’s Delian Asparouhov shares insights on Europe’s tech future – Refresh Miami

By Riley Kaminer

HELSINKI – Donning successive caps emblazoned with “Make Founders Fund Great Again” and “Make Europe Great Again,” #MiamiTech accelerationist VC Delian Asparouhov graced the stage of Slush, one of Europe’s largest tech conferences. During the event – which took place in Helsinki, Finland – Asparouhov interviewed Virgílio “V” Bento, the founder and CEO of New York and Portugal-based Sword Health; and Dylan Field, the co-founder and CEO of Figma.

“If things were actually going much better on the continent, this conference would be in July, Mykonos, and we would be partying,” asserted Asparouhov. “But instead, we must sit here in the darkness.” (The snow from the event’s first day had already turned into slush, underscoring the aptness of the event’s name in a city where there is no sun past 3:30pm.)

Asparouhov did not hold back in his criticism of the European tech scene in comparison to its American counterpart. “Everybody here [in Europe] just seems deeply, deeply confused. And what better way to be emblematic of that confusion than [Sword Health], which, in theory, is a European startup, but 99% of your gross profit dollars are based in the United States.”

He added: “Why are the Nordic countries – Finland, Sweden, and Norway – seemingly reverting to socialism, despite the fact that they should have been scarred by their history with the Soviet Union?” 

Asparouhov noted that investing in a European founder can be a gamble if you don’t know their political ideology from the offset. “I accidentally invested in a socialist European founder. Well, turns out it doesn’t work out if you’re trying to be a venture capitalist.”

One thing that did work out well: dropping out of MIT and becoming a Thiel Fellow. It’s something he and Field share in common, with Field having dropped out of Brown before becoming a Thiel Fellow. Asparouhov shared that the Thiel Fellowship provided a community and a sense of grounding, purpose, and ambition in his early days in tech.

“At that time, Zuckerberg was the only one who went from drop-out to founding a successful startup,” said Asparouhov. “But it was still a relatively contrarian approach back then.”

Regulation was top of mind for Asparouhov, particularly in light of a recent saga where European and British lawmakers banned what would have been Figma’s $20 billion acquisition by Adobe.

Field noted other recent government interventions into proposed M&A deals that ended similarly including iRobot and Spirit. “It’s just a really sad story, especially for Spirit,” Field asserted of the Dania Beach company’s attempted merger. “But for Spirit, the goal of regulation was to increase competition. And in this case, they went through an acquisition process, and on the back end of it, they literally went bankrupt. So if you measure the results, it didn’t increase competition – it decreased competition because the company is gone. Rest in peace, Spirit Airlines.”

Photo at top of post: Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund, left, with Virgílio “V” Bento, founder of Sword Health, at the Slush conference in Helsinki.

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I am a Miami-based technology researcher and writer with a passion for sharing stories about the South Florida tech ecosystem. I particularly enjoy learning about GovTech startups, cutting-edge applications of artificial intelligence, and innovators that leverage technology to transform society for the better. Always open for pitches via Twitter @rileywk or www.RileyKaminer.com.

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