Delphi — Dara Ladjevardian interview
"Other co-investors provided no value or never even responded to my emails. MVP made me realize you can actually be thoughtful about who you let on your cap table — and it makes a real difference."
In their own words.
Tell us about yourself and Delphi.
My name is Dara, originally from Houston, Texas. I studied physics and CS at Georgetown and have been working in AI for the past six years. We started Delphi last December. Delphi is a digital cloning platform that captures how you think and makes your knowledge and insights available to others in a personalized way, so you can scale yourself beyond the constraints of time and being in one place at one time.
Who has invested?
We've raised one round so far — $2.7 million led by Founders Fund, with participation from XFund, MVP Ventures, Lux Capital, and angels like Balaji Srinivasan and a couple of others.
How has MVP helped early on?
Early on, what was amazing is I had this weekly meeting with Cecilia, who was just always super helpful. The first six months of a company are kind of chaotic, and she helped us a lot with our early hiring efforts — introducing us to recruiting firms and to our first engineering hire, Spencer, who got introduced through her. She really helped me get a better understanding of how to set up a good recruiting funnel and how to think about working with recruiting agencies. She also introduced us to potential coaches and customers Delphi might support.
Can you give a specific intro example?
Grayson introduced me to someone who works closely in politics. I know politicians are good people we were interested in pursuing, so I've been in contact with that person ever since, and I think it's going to lead to some fruitful introductions. That's been super helpful. Cecilia also introduced me to a couple of people in the coaching space and in the CEO exec-management space. That helped me learn whether that should be our first niche — and we decided experts and coaches probably make more sense.
How would you describe the relationship overall?
MVP is like having a friend who's invested in you. Cecilia is like a mom in a way — always asking, "how can I help?" That's nice because some investors are a lot more like "you provide an update and that's the extent of the relationship." MVP really feels like they're there for you if you want to ask something.
How does that compare to other co-investors?
They said they would be the most valuable small-check investor — and I'd agree they've been successful. This is my first time fundraising so I didn't know a lot going in, but a lot of our other co-investors have provided no value or never even responded to my emails. There's a large distribution between MVP and the one who invests and then never responds. It made me realize you can actually just be very thoughtful about who you allow on your cap table — it makes a difference whether they're going to be there for you or not.