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When Delian Asparouhov was just a boy, his parents moved from Bulgaria to the U.S. in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. The experience, Asparouhov said Wednesday on stage at Inman Connect Las Vegas, made him a believer in capitalism and the importance of commercial enterprise.
Growing up in the U.S., Asparouhov — who today is a partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund — also became a fan of science fiction and aerospace — so much so that, when he reached adulthood, he began looking for ways to work in the industry. Asparouhov specifically wanted to find ways to make money in space, but, he recalled to the packed Connect ballroom, the technology just didn’t exist to make commerce viable miles above the earth’s surface.
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Then something changed. Asparouhov said that in 2018 and 2019, Elon Musk’s Space X began deploying reusable rockets. He compared the development to the advent of the railroad, which once enabled industrialists like the Rockefellers to ship oil with new efficiency.
“Today, in 2024, these types of rockets launch and land every 36 hours,” Asparouhov said of Space X’s technology. “Somebody clearly built the railroads to space; somebody just had to figure out what the oil was going to be.”
Delian Asparouhov on stage at Inman Connect Wednesday. Credit: AJ Canaria Creative Services
Over the ensuing years, Asparouhov focused on ways to harness that new technology and identify the “oil” to be won by working in space. He eventually hit upon pharmaceutical manufacturing. The idea, he explained, is that without gravity, drug companies can do much more precise chemistry, to the point that at least one popular drug could be converted from an IV drip to an at-home syringe system.
The idea could be revolutionary, but it also sounds ludicrous. Manufacturing drugs in space?
But, it turns out, Asparouhov has apparently already done it. While on stage, he showed the audience pictures of an object that looked like a Starlink satellite. However, he added, it was in fact a capsule that created drugs while in orbit and returned this last February.
“The worst environment they saw,” he joked about the drugs’ incredible journey, “was the UPS truck in Houston.”
Though Asparouhov’s efforts to create an orbital drug manufacturing business are unrelated to real estate, he has invested in real estate startups and said that similar principles apply across industries. The point of his presentation, in other words, was that new technologies have the ability to revolutionize industries.
In space, that new technology was reusable rockets. A century ago, it was the railroads. And today, Asparouhov argued, it could be artificial intelligence.
“It’s as fundamental as the steam engine,” Asparouhov argued.
He consequently urged real estate professionals to lean into and understand new technology, and to be prepared for the changes it might bring.
“There will be fewer agents in 10 years than there are today,” he said, “but almost certainly those agents will be able to handle more client volume.”
