From Gaming to AI Revolution: Navigating Tech Innovation | Nathan Lands | Glasp Talk #35
This is the thirty-fifth session of Glasp Talk!
Glasp Talk delves deep into intimate interviews with luminaries from various fields, unraveling their genuine emotions, experiences, and the stories behind them.
Today's guest is Nathan Lands, a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, and visionary in the tech industry. Nathan is the co-host of The Next Wave Podcast with Matt Wolfe and HubSpot and the founder of Lore.com, a techno-optimist AI newsletter read by over 20,000 innovators, offering insights and forecasts on the transformative potential of AI. With a rich background in startups, including ventures like Gamify and Binded (acquired by Pixsy), Nathan has consistently been at the forefront of innovation, advocating for the transformative potential of AI and technology.
In this interview, Nathan shares his entrepreneurial journey, spanning gaming, Hollywood, AI, and beyond. He reveals how Lore.com evolved from an ambitious crypto movie studio project to a leading AI-focused newsletter. Nathan provides thought-provoking insights on AI advancements, such as reasoning models and ASI timelines, and explores the ethical considerations of building AI-powered products.
Nathan also discusses his perspective on startup culture in Japan, the evolving role of venture capital, and his unique approach to parenting in an AI-driven world. Additionally, he sheds light on the behind-the-scenes story of The Next Wave Podcast and its mission to guide people through the exciting yet challenging transitions brought by AI.
This session is packed with inspiration, actionable advice for entrepreneurs, and a glimpse into the future of AI and technology. Don't miss it!
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Glasp
Transcripts
Glasp: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Glasp Talk. Today, we are very excited to have Nathan Lands with us. So, Nathan is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, and visionary in the tech industry. So, he's a co-host of the Next Wave podcast with Matt Wolfe and HubSpot, where they dig into the exciting world of AI and emerging technologies.
Nathan: Yeah, thanks for that introduction. Hopefully, I don't disappoint. That was an amazing introduction.
Glasp: Oh, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So, yeah, first of all, we really love your newsletter, and also, I love the name. Lore is inspired by the accumulated knowledge and wisdom passed down through generations, and we really resonate with the name. But could you tell us a little bit more about what is Lore, and why did you start?
Nathan: Yeah, well, the name is kind of a long story. I always loved the word Lore. I mean, my background really started more in the game industry side of things. So, I made money playing video games when I was a kid, and then later, I had a startup called GameStreamer, where we raised about $10 million and had a huge booth at E3 when I was like 19. So, and from there, I just, you know, I hung out with a lot of people in the game industry. And so, it was always just love the name.
And then, it's kind of crazy how it happened. I got the name Lore.com because I was partnered with Barry Osborne, the producer of Lord of the Rings and Matrix, and we were trying to build a crypto-funded movie studio, which was totally unexpected to me. Like, I was involved in crypto pretty early on, and a mutual friend, I probably won't name him, but he's a pretty big investor in crypto. He connected us, and we spent about a year and a half trying to create a movie studio together.
So, like, we went up to like, I got to hang out on Disney movie sets out in New Zealand. And, you know, we had tons of meetings out in Hollywood. And I got pretty excited because, like, for me, you know, The Matrix and Lord of the Rings, those are two of my favorite movies ever. And so, I was like, hey, Lore would be a great name for like a new movie studio. And so, I bought the domain personally.
Then COVID-19 happened. And when COVID happened, all filming just like slowed down for like over a year. And so, I held on to the name. And, you know, then AI started getting really exciting, you know, and I was using GitHub Copilot and started getting really excited, like seeing what GitHub Copilot could do. And decided like, well, I've got the name, I'm just going to start writing about stuff I'm currently doing with AI. And I'll just do a newsletter. I probably won't keep it on Lore.com. But that's kind of like how it happened. I didn't really have any plan of using Lore.com for a newsletter. And that's kind of how it happened.
Glasp: Wow. Yeah. Interesting story. And yeah, thanks for sharing the backstory. And, you know, and with Lore.com, you focus on, you know, techno-optimism, right? And I read in your, you know, newsletters, but, you know, can you share some, you know, of the most exciting advancements in AI nowadays? And let's say you shared, you know, Snow version 4 is coming out, and also like AGI by 2025, you know, so much interesting stuff. And also, you know, recently you did this, you know, building up in 45 minutes, you know, using console AI. Really interesting things are happening in AI. What are the most exciting things?
Nathan: Yeah, I mean, I'm like, I've noticed a huge vibe shift in the last, like, even a week or two in AI and technology. And, you know, this is probably kind of controversial, but a lot of it's actually driven by the fact that Donald Trump just won the election, right? Like in Silicon Valley, there's been a thing for like the last 10 years where there's pretty much only been, if you were on one side of politics, you could speak. And if you were on the other side, you couldn't say anything at all.
So, and for people on the other side, it's felt very oppressive for the last, you know, a decade now. And also, a lot of the politics on the left had started to be, started to be kind of like anti-tech, right? And so, I'm really excited that we have some, you know, for as long as I can remember, people have wanted like smart people to be in the White House. They're like, why don't we have the smartest people from Silicon Valley in the White House? Why are they all, they're just doing their own tech stuff and the government's just wasting all of our money.
Now that we have Elon Musk, like, you know, arguably one of the most incredible people that's ever existed in, at least in the modern day, in the White House, as well as the vice president, who was a venture capitalist, like this is, this has never happened before. Right. And so a lot of people are, you know, really excited about what that's going to mean to have a government that's actually, you know, trying to, on one side, trying to cut out waste, you know, cause like with like Doge, the new agency that Elon Musk is going to be running, the Department of Government Efficiency, they're trying to cut down US spending by like $2 trillion. Right. And the idea is not just to cut the spending. It's also, then I'm sure some of that will be reinvested into innovation and technology and things to make America better, you know, to compete with China.
Cause really that's, what's going on is like, we're in a, we're in a new, you know, we're almost like in a new arms race right now. Right. And with AI, right? It's kind of like the reason that America has led for the last 20 years, or even the last hundred years is all because of like being ahead in technology. So in the future, if America is not ahead in technology, it will not be an American century, right? It'll be a Chinese century and their politics and their views on things like, you know, freedom of speech and things like that, that will become the norm.
Nathan: And so it's exciting that we have, you know, somebody in the presidency that's pushing for America to win at AI and realize how important that is. So I'm excited in terms of AI itself, and I'm highly optimistic. Like I've talked about this with Matt on our podcast, The Next Wave, recently a lot of people haven't properly updated their mental models yet about where AI is at.
Like a lot of people are thinking, "Oh, it just, only got a little bit better in the last year." And they're not realizing that, you know, with, with models like 01 from OpenAI, that is not just an LLM, but there's a reasoning model as well, where it's actually thinking at inference time that that changes everything. Now it's not all, it's not only about getting more data, right? You also can throw more compute at the models now and they will continue to improve even without more data.
And so now the only constraint is energy. And, and then now you've got, you know, Donald Trump in the office and he's talking about ramping up energy production. So it's, I, I'm, I'm highly optimistic. Cause like most people don't realize that it's, it's now the main restriction on the main thing, holding back AI progress would be energy. And we have a president who is more energy. So that's, I'm, I'm, I'm highly optimistic on, on what's going to come.
Glasp: Yeah, and I was so impressed by, you know, Elon Musk really made, you know, Doge the government efficiency department.
Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. It was all based on a joke, you know, like even Dogecoin itself was a joke originally, right? I hung out with Jackson Palmer, the founder when he first started, or like, I had like a few months after he started, he came out to San Francisco and I was actually sharing an office in Adobe's office there. Like there was a little coworking space that I was part of. And then Jackson joined Adobe and was working there.
So we hung out and had a beer, and it was funny to hear, that all started as a joke. And then now somehow that's become such a big cultural thing that somebody suggested on X, "Hey, you guys should name this Doge." And then now that's the, it's an actual thing. There's like, it's a real government agency and everything. It's, it's, it's wild.
Glasp: Yeah, let's see. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and, but, so how about, you know, like the ASI, you know, the summer convention that the ASI is coming in a thousand days or within a thousand days. And, you know, as you mentioned, these new models, you know, it's getting better. It's better. It's great. And then what are your thoughts on AGI and ASI?
Nathan: Yeah, I mean, actually I had this conversation with Matt today. I don't know if our episode has been released yet, but we were kind of going back and forth on this. And, you know, it seems like AGI, like let's say AGI is like AI being as smart as a human. And let's say maybe that's within the next one year to three years, right? That's kind of like a lot of people's estimates now. If that's true, well, then if you say ASI is like, okay, AI that's smarter than any human.
Well, that doesn't seem that hard to achieve if that is the definition, right? It's like, okay, if you increase the AI's IQ by like 10 points every year, it's going to get smarter than any human pretty quickly, whether we're talking about three years to 10 years, I would, I would say probably three to five. And so it's, you know, it's, I don't think humans really know, like, I could tell you my own thoughts of what that's going to mean.
But I think it's hard for humans to fully process all, you know, there's too many possible different outcomes that could come from that, right? But in general, I'm excited. I think that so many things are going to be happening at the same time. We're going to be having AGI and robotics and all these things happening at the same time. The world's going to look dramatically different in 10 years.
I actually spent a lot of time thinking about that. How do I raise my son? I've got an 11-year-old son here in Japan, born in San Francisco. I think about how to raise him and how to position him the best for that new future. He's 11. By the time he's 18, the world is going to look so different, right?
Glasp: Yeah, interesting. I think related to AI, AI makes creation easier. People can make code, people can make images, techies, everything. I think you are running a company Binded about the copyright. I was curious about the copyright on AI. Will copyright exist? If making creation is easy, what's the reason for having a copyright?
Nathan: I'll disclose. I did a copyright startup for two years and I still don't fully understand copyright. Copyright is very complicated. When we started Binded, we did not plan to be involved in copyright. It was way more about what's the provenance, and who created the image. We use that whole meme of "I made this" and then you hand it off and it's like, "No, I made this." It's like, "What? You just took my thing." A lot of it was more about the attribution.
I spoke in Washington DC about the future of copyright with some of the folks from Creative Commons and always liked the Creative Commons people and thought their approach was interesting, but also incredibly complicated. I'm not entirely sure. I don't think the current copyright rules make sense in the age of AI, but you still have to figure out attribution of some sort and compensation of some sort. I'm not sure what that looks like.
I don't think anyone knows what that looks like because even with these AI models, some people are saying, "Well, they should be sharing all the money with the people that they train the data on." I don't know. It's like all the art students, they go to museums to learn and get inspired by art. That's what the models are doing. If you become a famous artist because you went to art school and then you went to museums, what? Do you need to pay all the people for all the art you saw in the museum? Do you need to go back and pay them all? This is all very complicated and uncharted territory.
I do feel like when somebody directly copies an artist, there definitely should be attribution there. I'm like, "Oh, I want Banksy's style" or whatever or whoever. There definitely should be some kind of compensation there because it's so direct. I don't know. I think copyright, maybe this is something that'll get rewritten with the new administration. Maybe Doge will go out and change the copyright system because when I went there, I tried to talk to them about ways that we could modernize copyright and they were like, "It's just not going to happen."
I went to their office and it looked like out of a movie of the 1950s or something with a bunch of people. All the equipment was old, and everything just seemed old, and everything seemed slow. It was just like, "Oh my God, yeah, there's no way you're going to go in there and get them to just dramatically change things. There's no way."
Glasp: I see. Yeah. Makes sense. And then also, as a founder, especially founders based in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, I assume mostly like a techno-optimist. But to them, what considerations should we have, keep in mind, when we're building AI-based products? It’s related to copyright maybe, but more in a broader way, ethical considerations. Do you have some advice or tips?
Nathan: Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the question. Can you try it?
Glasp: Oh, yeah. What kind of ethical considerations should entrepreneurs keep in mind?
Nathan: Got it. Got it. Yeah. It’s hard to know. Silicon Valley used to be always associated with pirates. I used to go on a cruise with my friends every year with a bunch of Silicon Valley CEOs, and we called it the Pirate Cruise. And we dressed up as pirates. It was a theme. And I do think there's that element of being mischievous and on the edge of the gray areas of breaking rules.
If you think about startups like Uber, there was no law around being able to start something like Uber. And, for a long time, people were like, "Oh, Uber is illegal. There is no way they're going to be shut down. This is not a real startup." It's like, well, I don't know. They had a legal opinion that they could do it. And it was probably a gray area. So they knew that they could fight it in court.
And then they got so big that they were able to fight it and win. Some people, like probably a year ago, were hearing the same stuff in AI. You were hearing, "Oh, OpenAI and Cloud and all this. Oh, this is just—it’s a fad. And also, it's all illegal. Everything they're doing with the models is training the models is illegal."
Glasp: So it's all going to be shut down. That was a common thing among people who were anti-AI a year ago, was all this is going to be gone. It's all illegal. And it's kind of wild. For me, it's like, obviously, open AI and all these companies partnering with Microsoft throwing vast amounts of money at AI. There's no way they would do any of these things unless they privately already had legal opinions telling them that they could win these fights if it went to court. Of course, they did. They already knew that it was probably all a gray area. So I don't know. I think with the models, I think you should be pushing it as fast as you can. That's my personal opinion. We'll find the problems when they arise. When the problems arise, that's when maybe you need regulation and other things. But personally, this is like a golden age of tech. In the history books of humanity, this is going to be one of the main moments. It's like if you were talking to God, if you believe in God, you're talking to God. He pulls up the book of humanity. This is going to be one of the biggest chapters in all of humanity ever. It's never going to happen again. So if you're in it, go all in, is my opinion. Go all in. Don't break any laws, but don't be scared about, oh, how are the models trained or whatever. I think figure that stuff out later if it becomes a real problem.
Nathan: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. Hard question, but yeah. Thank you.
Glasp: And also, you are running the podcast, right? The Next Wave podcast with Matt. And I'm curious, how did it happen? And how did you guys start it? Because that started like six, or seven months ago, right?
Nathan: Yeah. Yeah. So I've never told this story before. So you guys are going to kind of get the exclusive on this. Actually, people have been asking me to do podcasts, and a lot of them were all on the East Coast in America. And so I was like, oh, I'm in Japan now, and timing just doesn't work out. So you guys are getting to have me on here first and talk about it. So it's kind of a wild story. So I created a thread on Twitter probably a year and a half ago now that talks about who are the top people in AI to follow. And when I created that thread, a bunch of people got followed by Jeff Bezos because of it. So Matt Wolf was followed by Jeff Bezos. Also, Greg Eisenberg, who was our first guest on the podcast, was followed by Jeff because of it. And then we hung out in Kyoto after that. And after that, I think Matt had already seen some of my tweets and stuff and kind of knew about me and about my newsletter. Because even though my newsletter is not huge, we've got about 23,000 subscribers right now. But we were a pretty early one. I think we started right after Ben's Bite started. So he knew about me. And I'm not sure if he's ever disclosed this or not. I don't think it's anything controversial to tell this. But he's got a pretty prominent Discord with a lot of amazing AI influencers and stuff in the Discord. And so basically, he invited me into that chat room. I was like, holy crap, you've got every single AI YouTuber and TikTok person and Instagram person. They're all in here. And I invited a bunch of my Silicon Valley friends in, especially a bunch of people like YC people and stuff like that. And he's like, holy crap, you know this person, you know that person. And so that's kind of how the relationship started. I just really respected his YouTube channel. I was watching it a lot. He was shocked by all the people that I knew once he started seeing me invite people to the chat room. And we kind of kept talking from there. We had a few phone calls. And we really hit it off.
Glasp: Oh, that's really cool.
Nathan: And so then we had explored doing a podcast with two other friends. I'm not sure if they're going to get angry at me for saying this. But one of them is Rowan Chung, who does the Rundown newsletter. The other one is Bill Awal, who's doing the TED-AI podcast. So originally, the four of us were going to do almost like the all-in podcast, like four buddies talking. We were kind of going to do the all-in podcast for AI kind of thing, the four of us. But the Rundown has just been blowing up. He's been so successful with his newsletter. I think he's like over 600K subscribers now or something like that. He's a young guy. So he's really focused on that. And so he was not able to do it. And then Bill Awal started talking, I think, to the TED guys. And so he was kind of thinking about doing his own thing. And then Matt kind of hit me up and, you know, a month or two later, I had already decided, like, oh, this is not going to happen, you know. And Matt was like, hey, why don’t we do it? I'm like, me? I've never even done YouTube before. Like, I don’t know. I’ve never done a podcast. I’ve never done any of this. But he’s like, no, I think you could do it. And I talked to a few other people who told me similar things. There was this woman who was pretty popular in AI called Rachel Swan. She used to do a bunch of AI TikTok stuff. I talked to her, and she’s like, you have to be doing video, Nathan. You got to do a video. I’m like, okay.
Glasp: But, you know, it’s interesting because Matt has his own YouTube channel. And you guys started a new one. So how do you separate the topics? If it’s all about AI, do you post it to your Next Wave podcast? And if it’s not related to AI, does he publish it to his own channel?
Nathan: No, I mean, you know, because his channel is mainly AI as well. I would say Matt’s the most, like, I think if you look, if there’s any AI news that comes out, like in terms of an individual creator, he typically comes up number one on YouTube for any new AI news that came out. So he’s really kind of cornered like the AI news niche on YouTube, right? He does other stuff too. He does some tutorials and things like that or like commentary. But, you know, we just found like in terms of commentary, commenting on, you know, what’s going on, that he had a lot more fun doing it with me than just talking to himself. And so typically, like we’re still figuring out like the focus like we’ve nailed a few different formats on the podcast that are working really well. We found that people really like it when we share use cases, like Matt shared how he used AI for his YouTube channel and also for his directory, Future Tools, right? And I shared how I used AI to go viral on Twitter and things like this. Right. So people really like those real-world use cases. So we’re kind of exploring doing more of those and having guests on who do those kinds of episodes.
Glasp: That’s really awesome. Thank you for sharing the details.
Nathan: As you mentioned, we did the episode with Riley Brown last week, and we’ve known Riley for a while. He was in our Discord. Like most of the people we’ve been bringing on, that’s kind of like the secret there. Most of them were in our Discord. So we already had all the guests lined up before we ever started, which really, really, really helped. It was kind of like the secret weapon of the show, really. But Riley came on and we used Cursor and some other things to create an app in about 45 minutes together. And it was fun. We just, you know, did it together, brainstormed it, you know, on the show. And people really love that one. I think that video is currently our most popular. It came out a day ago and it’s got about 9,000 views or something like that. So it’s doing quite well. But yeah, so mainly AI news stuff, you know, is on Matt’s channel and everything else, whether it’s like interviewing people or more practical use cases or anything like that, is on our channel. But we do do some new stuff as well. Like if there’s anything huge, you know, like GPT-5 comes out, you know, Matt will probably do it on his YouTube channel. Then we’ll probably tell people, hey, if you want to hear any more discussion about it, you know, tune into the Next Wave podcast and I’ll be talking with – you’ll be talking with Nathan Lance, blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. And so that’s kind of how we do it. We do a lot of cross-promotion, like our newsletters. That was the kind of thing HubSpot was surprised by. HubSpot did all this stuff to help promote the show, which has helped. But, you know, quite frankly, like our newsletters and my presence on X and his presence on YouTube is really what’s like driving the growth of the show.
Glasp: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m personally interested in your use case of AI and how you use it. You mentioned you use AI for Twitter, I mean X, to generate content. And how about, you know, like a writing process? You write a newsletter, maybe you bookmark content. And yeah, how does the process work and how do you use AI?
Nathan: Yeah, and I probably should check out Glasp again. It’s been a long time, so I haven’t, you know, haven’t – I’d love to see like how it works now because I remember I wrote about it like a year and a half ago in my newsletter and I think you guys reached out and said thank you or something like that. But right now, my process is I would say it’s kind of – I think there should be more AI involved, probably. It’s probably too primitive to be quite honest with you. A lot of it is all on X. I find stuff on X that I think is interesting. I bookmark it. The bookmark system on X is horrendous. I hate it. And I wish I had some kind of better system because it just drives me nuts like how bad it is. But that’s currently what I do is like I have a folder that says podcast. I have a folder that says X. You know, I have a folder that says YouTube. I have a folder that says newsletter. That’s what I do. And then X would be like anything I want to write a thread about, like maybe like I do – sometimes I do curation threads or things like that or if it’s something I want to comment on, I will bookmark it. I used to use Notion. I just found that every time I got into Notion, I ended up spending more time designing the Notion than actually using it. It’s the kind of thing where like you like want the Notion to be perfect. And it’s like you spend all this time in it and you’re not – you like wasted that time. Right.
Glasp: Right. Yeah.
Nathan: So that’s currently how I do it. In terms of using AI on X, I’ve experimented with using, you know, AI like ChatGPT and stuff like that to help create thread hooks. And it does OK. I would say it does – it’s better – it’s like an editor or like it’s like a second opinion, you know. Like, because like on X, the main way you go viral is just like on YouTube having a good thumbnail and a title. On X, it’s all about the hook. Right. You can have some horrible content underneath and then a great hook and quite frankly, you’ll still go viral. And so I’ll typically try to have like a – have like a custom GPT and also have something on Claude, like a project where it’s like I tell it here are the kind of tweet hooks that I love and here are the kinds that I hate. And don’t use too many emojis. Don’t, you know, don’t use all the hashtags and all that. Just give it basic guidance. And I use it as an editor to give me a second opinion. And I’d like to copy and paste different parts of a thread into it. Like, hey, what do you think about this one? And does the whole logic flow properly? Does it logically make sense, the order, the way I’ve ordered things? And so I use a lot for like an editor like that. It’s helped a lot. I’ve had a lot of tweets go like mega viral that I used to edit. I had one that got like 47 million views about a month ago talking about how I went from Japan back to America with my wife on honeymoon and just like some of the problems I saw in America and like how I was kind of shocked by it. And I used AI to help me edit the entire thing.
Glasp: I think I may have seen it.
Nathan: Yeah, but you probably did. Like most people saw it. It’s like the entire impressions were 100 million impressions.
Glasp: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think so.
Nathan: Yeah.
Glasp: And how do you use, you know, ChatGPT and Anthropic Claude? Do you have separate use cases, or? Yeah, I’m curious about, you know, how you balance between them.
Nathan: Yeah, it’s kind of funny. I think Matt started using Claude more, like, after I showed him how great projects were, and now he’s like all on the Claude train. But I still personally end up going back to ChatGPT, honestly. Like, I just find that like I have a few custom GPTs I already use. I have one that I use for, you know, I go to the gym quite often. I use one for like tracking my gym stuff and my calories and protein. I have another custom GPT for my newsletter. Another one for Twitter. Like I have all these different things that I use on ChatGPT that just kind of like has gotten me where I’m still in the habit of using it. And plus, now I use the AI voice a lot. The advanced voice mode. I use it a lot. I use it like the other day I was – so I’m actually in the process of launching my own YouTube channel as well, or at least experimenting with it. And I used advanced voice mode just to brainstorm out everything. Like I put out a bunch of sticky notes. I’m like, here’s different ideas I want to do for different videos. Let’s brainstorm them and then like rank order them. Which ones would be the best ones? And then let’s also then like brainstorm titles. And so I went through all of this just sitting here with advanced voice mode. And it was – it was pretty good. It’s like it’s kind of amazing how good it’s getting. So I still like ChatGPT because of all the different things it can do.
And also I’ve even started using it now – it’s like I have a kind of – I’ve talked about this in the podcast several times, but I have a kind of weird situation where, you know, I have an 11-year-old son who’s half Japanese. I met my ex-wife in San Francisco. We actually used to have two ramen restaurants in San Francisco that were pretty well known. And I got divorced, but now I’m out in Japan and I’ve got – I’ve got remarried. And my new wife, she only speaks a little bit of English. And my Japanese is pretty bad. Like, it’s not, you know, it’s bad. It’s like I’m basically like a little kid level, you know. Right. And so we use AI for like any like deep conversations. Like we only have like basic – we only have basic conversations in English or Japanese or usually kind of mixing both. Right. Like, you know, what are we going to eat tonight? Or like, where are we going? Like basic stuff we can communicate without AI. But like any deep conversations, we’ve used AI for all of that and specifically ChatGPT. And so now we start using it for AI voice. I do feel like the Japanese side of it’s not as good as English right now, which kind of is not great. But I’m looking forward to it getting better. But it is kind of awkward, though, because then you get somebody else’s voice in the room, though, which is kind of odd.
Glasp: When did you move to Japan?
Nathan: I moved to Kyoto a little over two years ago. During COVID, early on, I was pretty concerned about COVID, maybe more than a lot of people, actually. And then later, I was less concerned than most people.
Glasp: Oh, really?
Nathan: I had this really weird thing where right when I was thinking it was not as serious as I thought, everyone else was still totally freaking out about it. So it’s kind of like the opposite of most people, where early on, I was worried about it and nobody thought it was a problem, and then once more data came in, I was like, oh, it’s fine, and people were still freaking out.
Glasp: That’s interesting.
Nathan: During that time period, I was pretty unhappy with the school system in San Francisco, quite frankly. Seeing my son doing the online schooling was just horrible. I’m not even going into it. It definitely gets political, but I was very unhappy with what I saw. That’s actually what made me a little bit more political, quite frankly, was that. So I ended up sending my son with my ex-wife to Japan. We thought it was going to be temporary, but then we just decided to stay.
Glasp: You’ve always loved Japan?
Nathan: Yeah, I always loved Japan. When I was a kid, I was a huge gaming nerd, so I used to always try to find the gaming magazines, and I would see pictures of Japanese gaming magazines. I always had all these dreams of going to Japan and stuff, so I’m pretty happy.
Glasp: Did you know Nintendo? I remember Nintendo is in Kyoto, right
Nathan: Yeah, headquartered in Kyoto.
Glasp: By the way, why did you choose Kyoto? Because I remember, in the case of Notion, the founders moved to Kyoto and brainstormed and created Notion.
Nathan: I grew up in a really small town. Most people don’t realize this. I grew up in a 5,000-person town in Alabama, super small. Survived a tornado when I was a kid, trapped and everything. I had a crazy, out-of-a-movie kind of life.
Glasp: Wow.
Nathan: When I went to New York, for me, that was like, oh my God, it’s way too big. I went to San Francisco, and I’m like, oh, some parts of it are big, but some parts feel more relaxed. There are neighborhoods where you can still feel pretty relaxed, even though you’re in a city, before it got a little bit crazier and stuff. Hopefully, that’s changing.
Glasp: So Kyoto feels more balanced?
Nathan: Yeah, for me, I like cities that are not as crazy as like New York or Tokyo. For me, I like visiting New York or Tokyo, but it’s just way too many people. I love that here in Kyoto, I’m in a neighborhood where it’s just super chill.
Glasp: That sounds lovely.
Nathan: There’s a little market here, and there are all the grandmas and grandpas shopping. I walk by, and we all nod at each other. Even though the culture is dramatically different, how I grew up in Alabama was the same thing. Everybody we saw, we’d wave or nod to each other every day. There were these little social norms of interaction, mutual respect.
For me, even though I’m obviously not Japanese, I really enjoy that about the culture because it still feels similar to how I grew up in Alabama. I like visiting Tokyo, but I love living in Kyoto.
Glasp: Is that bonsai in your background?
Nathan: No, but it’s that style, yes. When we first started the podcast, I was in an old Kyoto house. People loved the background.
Glasp: Oh, nice.
Nathan: It was actually one of our first episodes with Greg Eisenberg that really blew up. I think it’s got like 40,000 views or something. The background was all really old Japanese style. Then I moved houses like a month later, and I was like, okay, what am I going to do? Because everybody loves the style. Everyone was telling me how great it is, and now I’m moving.
Glasp: Oh no.
Nathan: I’m in a brand-new house now, but I’ve tried as much as possible to make it look similar, like old-style Japanese. Actually, this room is very simple. I did as much as possible to make it look nicer than it is.
Glasp: It looks great.
Nathan: Thanks. Also, Reid Hoffman’s YouTube podcast background is Kyoto-style, old Japanese style, you know, covered, right?
Glasp: Yeah, that’s true. So I was curious because some companies choose Japan, Kyoto, or Tokyo as their headquarters, like Notion founders. What do you think attracts people to Japan?
Nathan: It’s complicated to answer that. In the West, I think things have changed so much that people have this yearning for the old days or something like that. There’s some weird cultural thing where Japan still has some of its culture intact. People enjoy seeing that. It’s almost like time traveling in some way. And also, in terms of culture, the politeness, efficiency, and things like that. A lot of people grew up watching anime or playing video games, having some kind of connection to Japanese culture.
Glasp: Like a cultural exchange.
Nathan: Exactly. Just like how Japanese people grew up watching American movies, I grew up playing Japanese video games. So there’s always some kind of cultural connection there.
Glasp: But you’re critical of the startup scene in Japan?
Nathan: Yeah, I’ve been asked about this a lot by investor friends. I think one issue is cultural. In Japan, it’s still looked down upon to fail. There’s more emphasis on safety in Japanese culture, which makes startups less appealing.
Glasp: That’s a challenge.
Nathan: Yeah, but if you’re pulling it off in Japan, that’s great. It’s awesome if you’re doing it.
Glasp: That makes sense. So you’ve had successful exits from startups. What keeps you motivated to keep building new ones?
Nathan: Yeah, well, I mean, my two exits were not large. They were not like life-changing exits. Like, look, I made some decent money, and I invested that money into tech stocks and Bitcoin and Tesla and other stuff like Nvidia. So yeah, sure, I could like not work, for sure.
Glasp: But it’s more than just the money?
Nathan: Exactly. For me, it’s more about the moment that we’re in. Like, I think about how... I mean, definitely when I was younger, sure, I wanted to be like the next Jeff Bezos or the next Steve Jobs. Like a lot of people who move out to San Francisco, that’s the dream. And I did have that dream when I was younger—I wanted to be more successful than I have been, for sure.
Glasp: And now?
Nathan: I still have drive, but maybe if I’d had exits for like a billion dollars, I’d feel differently. But the main thing that drives me now is that we’re in a historic moment. Like, this is one of the largest chapters in human history with the birth of AI. Like, if you imagine asking God to show you the book of humanity—all the chapters of humanity—and right now, the chapter about AI would be one of the largest ever. It doesn’t matter what else we do in the future. This is one of the largest chapters there ever will be.
Glasp: That’s a powerful perspective.
Nathan: Yeah, and thinking of it that way, I feel honored to be alive right now. Of all the possible times I could be alive, I’m here during this period. So, anything I can do to have a positive impact on that is important to me.
Even if I just have a small impact—like, okay, because of something I did, someone created a new company, or someone in government did something slightly differently—that’s worth it to me.
Glasp: That’s inspiring. So how do you decide what to work on?
Nathan: I treat life like a game. Whatever is fun for me at the moment. Most people don’t know this, but as far as I know, I coined the term “gamify.”
Glasp: Really?
Nathan: Yeah, I said it before on X, and people tried to cancel me, saying I made it up. But as far as I know, it’s true. I used to own the name “gamify” and “gamification.” I owned all of this stuff before people were using it.
Glasp: That’s interesting.
Nathan: It was just a natural extension of my background. I made money playing video games when I was a kid. I was one of the top players on the game EverQuest back in the day. I was a top necromancer. And that really changed my perspective because my parents were struggling to get by, and at the same time, I was making money selling virtual swords online for $1,000 a pop when I was 15.
Glasp: Wow, that’s a game-changer.
Nathan: Yeah, it dramatically changed my perspective on things. So I’ve always looked at life as a game—take it seriously, but also try to have fun. Because maybe after we die, there’s heaven, or maybe there’s nothing, or maybe we get reincarnated. Who knows? But while I’m here, I’m trying to have as much fun as possible and hopefully have an impact as well.
Glasp: That’s a great philosophy.
Nathan: Yeah, for me, a good life is exploring different things that interest you. Even the Hollywood thing I did—that didn’t work out. But I spent a year and a half on it, and if you told me when I was 15 that I’d get to hang out with Barry Osborn, become good friends with him, and go on movie sets, I would’ve thought you were crazy. For me, all these experiences add to what I can do. If I do something new, I have unique perspectives that other people don’t have because of the unique combination of experiences and skills I’ve gathered.
Glasp: That’s a great way to look at it.
Nathan: Whereas if someone focused on just one thing, they’d have a more closed view of something. For younger people listening, if you’re super interested in an industry that others don’t think is cool right now, but you think it’s interesting—go do it. Just go do it.
Glasp: That’s great advice.
Nathan: Yeah, if it doesn’t work out, you’ll gain experiences and skills that will help you later in life.
Glasp: Makes sense. Can you talk about your role as a venture partner?
Nathan: Sure. That’s a relatively new thing for me. I’ll be transparent—for a long time, I’ve been interested in investing in startups, but I haven’t had a tremendous amount of liquid capital. Mostly, I’ve invested in tech stocks, public tech stocks, to be honest. I’ve always thought about it because I have a lot of successful angel investor friends and VC friends from my time in Silicon Valley. I’ve thought about getting more involved in venture. I’m still figuring out how involved I want to get.
Whether to go more into podcasting—which I never expected to be doing—or more into venture stuff. I’m trying to figure out where I can have the most fun and the most impact. I’m currently helping as a venture partner for aim.x, which is basically an incubator and a fund in collaboration with different parts of the Saudi government.
It’s not just investing in Saudi; it’s investing globally in AI. For me, it’s the easiest way—I get to mentor one or two startups. I’m mentoring one called Viral, which is doing cool stuff with AI for video analytics. It’s a fun way to see what’s happening in AI and also dip my toe more into the investing side.
Glasp: That sounds exciting. Have you noticed any trends in AI startups?
Nathan: Yeah, investing in AI is quite challenging right now. The opportunities are huge, but things are changing so much that it’s hard to know where to invest. Everyone’s looking for the next big thing—like Cursor, for example. Everyone wanted to invest in Cursor. Now people are asking, “Where’s the next Cursor?” But investing in foundational models seems kind of crazy now. The window for that is gone. So everyone’s trying to figure out where the real opportunities are. Some of them won’t be venture-scale, which is a challenge. I think venture will probably change over time. We’ll likely see more startups that don’t need a lot of capital.
You probably have more and more startups that you could have one to three people operate the companies and not raise a ton of capital. And there's been the whole movement towards multi-preneurship or solopreneurship or whatever, where people like—solopreneurship is like a single-person business. Multi-preneurship is like what my buddy Greg Eisenberg talks about where it's like, okay, maybe you own a few companies with partners and then you're kind of like the owner of all of them kind of thing, but you're not raising venture capital. But people typically just—because it's easier to go viral, they typically pick one side or the other. Like, oh, you have to go venture capital. Venture capital is the best. And all these other people are just like losers doing small little companies or all the other people are like, oh, you've got to do your own company. You can't take any venture capital because then you're just kind of selling out, and it's not worth it, and all this. There's good parts about both, right?
And if you're trying to go after a market where it's kind of winner takes all and you need to get there as fast as possible, you should do venture, right? But there's also probably more middle ground too, where there's a lot of companies where it might make sense to raise venture capital like one time and then never raise it again, right? Like if you can go and raise a million dollars and you never need more money after that because you were able to be so efficient with AI that you could get cashflow positive and not need the money. I think you're going to see more and more companies like that. And so the way that venture funds get structured may have to change in the future because of that. So I think all the VCs, they're not really talking about that publicly a lot, but I think in the next two or three years, you'll see that become a major discussion point—is like, do the VC models have to change in some way?
Glasp: Yeah. That's an interesting part. Yeah. I'm really interested in it.
Nathan: Yeah. VCs are raising a lot of money from LPs, but I don't know where to—I know they're investing many money to start-ups. But yeah, as you mentioned, I think the raised funds then grow by themselves. I think it's a great way. And if so, investors don't know where to invest in, right? Which I mean, VC is still a great thing.
People talk about when VC money gets wasted and stuff like that. It's like, well, I don't know. No matter what, the VC funds go towards progress in improving technology, right? So even for the technology startups that don't work, you're still learning things and the teams are building skills, and then they might go off and do another startup that's super successful. So I've never understood the people who are super, super critical of VC, because I think it's a net positive for society.
Glasp: I think it's a different topic, but I think SaaS is dead is a trendy topic, or was a trendy topic in Silicon Valley. So do you have any thoughts around this?
Nathan: Oh yeah, SaaS is dead.
Glasp: No, no, no, no.
Nathan: But I do think that any very simplistic SaaS that's not super ingrained into companies, that's easy to replace, yeah, those could be in trouble, especially because it's going to get easier. You think about things like vZero from Brazil, or the Ripple AI agent, or all these. Like when these get better, you're going to be able to take screenshots of SaaS apps. If they're very simplistic, you'll be able to take screenshots of SaaS apps and just copy them, clone them. And then let's say you're someone like me who has some distribution. That's a huge unfair advantage. I don't think I'd want to do that because I think it's just so evil, but it is kind of a pirate thing to do, right? Just go out there and copy a SaaS and apply more distribution power to it and then win the market.
Person who realized it like Elon Musk bought Twitter, Excel, he got a really great distribution channel. Yeah, he's been doing it, you know, has been doing it for a long time. You know, who else has been doing it for a long time? Donald Trump. Donald Trump was in movies when I was a kid, you know, he's in like Home Alone 2, you know, and it's like, and he was on the news all the time. He always done some way to be in the news. And that was, that was like how it used to do it back in the day. That was like the old, you know, before Twitter, there was like the TV news, and he was playing the TV news game by saying outrageous things that they had had to talk about. And you get free marketing.
And so, yeah, it is interesting that Elon Musk has like mastered that game and like realized before other people like, yeah, like distribution matters so much. And yeah, it's—I think more, I think more founders are gonna start to realize that.
Glasp: I see. But do you see any like founders or like startups are really good at like distribution? So maybe like collaborating on YouTube, collaborating with like major distributors, big companies, like what are the ways to do it? But any like hacking?
Nathan: Yeah, it's hard, you know. So, you know, on one side, I'm saying the distribution is super important. But on the other side, yeah, you can see like pretty bad examples as well. Like, especially like YouTube influencers who start companies like, like the what was the snackables one or whatever they're calling it, Feastables, you know, and it's got—they got mold on the food or whatever.
So there are definitely bad examples of like people who have no business experience getting involved in businesses that, you know, obviously, I wouldn't suggest that. But I guess I was more commenting on like a longer-term trend that I think we will see. Like Elon Musk is a better example of somebody who actually knows how to do companies, but also realizes that like, hey, you can spend 30 minutes a day tweeting and sharing your thoughts and that—you'll get the distribution just from that.
Glasp: Yeah, thank you. And so yeah, before ending, but you know, I have several questions. But, you know, about one is about future, you know, what's the long-term vision for Lua.com? You know, what you do now? And also the podcast you do? Yeah, I'm curious about what do you see in five years, next five years, 10 years? Because AGI coming soon, ASI, maybe in a few years.
Nathan: How does your Lua.com? You know, I'm still figuring that out. I mean, I'll be honest, like I—I like writing my newsletter, but that's—I don't think that's gonna be my long-term thing. You know, like, I'll probably continue doing newsletter. But I don't know if that will be the main thing for Lua.com long term.
Like I still feel like there's some bigger—there's something bigger I could be doing with Lua.com. And so not just an AI newsletter. So I am still wanting to use Lua for something in my life before I die. I have a few ideas, but I'm not like really willing to talk about them yet. And—and they're just ideas. They're not like, oh, this is what I'm going to do.
So it's definitely up in the air what I do with Lua.com. People try to buy it from me all the time. I'm like, look, the amount of money I would want for it is so ridiculous that you would just—you'd be shocked even talking about it. Like, you know, yeah, I'll talk to you if you're talking about like 30 million, but if it's less than that, I don't even want to talk.
And so—and then most of those conversations just end. And so that's kind of, you know, I have no intention of selling it because like, I'm okay financially. And it's like, for me, it's an amazing name that I would love to own, you know, and I'm even slightly nostalgic about it because of just—I started with Barry Osborne and stuff.
And so in terms of the future with the podcast, you know, I hope that we can become like—so I think what's going to happen, like our podcast is not gigantic, but it's definitely been growing like really fast, like our chart—our chart's like this. I mean, so it's very, very steady growth on YouTube and audio.
I think on YouTube in seven months, I think we're already like top three in the category, I believe, which is pretty good. And I think HubSpot's gonna be investing a lot more into the show. So I'm excited for that. And there are some other things we're working on that I can't really talk about yet.
But, you know, as this transition happens, like, you know, it's like the age of AI with AGI and ASI, I'm hoping, you know, I can do as good of a service to humanity as possible using the podcast to help people—show them like—because it's gonna be a scary time too, right? Like a lot of people are gonna lose their jobs and a lot of things are gonna change and the way you work will have to change.
And so to be a guide for as many people as possible, that's kind of my mission with the podcast. To like, okay, as this transition is happening, like explain to people, here's what's happening and try to explain it to them before it happens a little bit before too, right? So they're not totally shocked and caught off guard.
But as the transition does happen to more like, you know, to ASI, helping show people how they can use AI to make their life better and still contribute to the world and how to deal with it. So that's kind of my mission with the podcast. You know, I think, you know, I don't know if I'm gonna be doing it 10 years from now, but, you know, definitely, you know, three to five years we'll be doing it.
And hopefully during that period, helping as many people as possible. You know, ASI, like what do I think about ASI and like, you know, artificial superintelligence and like where things are going? I don't know. I have like, you know, vague ideas of what it could mean, but I feel like, you know, I am a human and who knows, like maybe I'm, you know, my intellect is obviously my intellect is limited and I can't imagine every possible scenario.
So I do my best to, you know, imagine where things could be heading and try to position myself and my family to be, you know, to be ready for that. I think a lot, you know, I talked to my son about this stuff, which people think is kind of crazy, but I think it's a good thing to be doing. My son's 11. I talk to him about AI stuff all the time and explain to him, like where things are going and he already like thinks about his future and his life and stuff about, you know, what it's going to mean for him.
And I try to show it to him too, because like when I first explained it to him, it was a little bit scary for him, you know, and my parenting style though, is that's better for him to build resilience, to be strong and to actually understand the world you live in versus like hiding. I think it's better.
And so I try to explain things to him and at first he was a little bit scared, but then when I started showing him different things, he got so excited, right? Like, like we, we used Replit's AI agent and built a little website together, like a little League of Legends website thing. And he thought that was so cool. He's like, oh, I got Roblox—or he had a Minecraft—Minecraft and League of Legends.
I mean, like he had that on there, like a little guide website. And he was just blown away. And then brainstorming what to write in, we used a ChatGPT's advanced voice mode. We were sitting and chatting with the AI to help figure out what to make. And that whole process was just like blowing his mind now, you know, and he started talking to me about kind of stuff he could do when he gets older using all of this.
And so I think that's—that's right now when I think about ASI, I literally just think about my son, like how do I prepare him? And that's—that's what I think about, honestly.
Glasp: I see.
Nathan: And that's how I'm currently preparing him is just making sure he understands what's possible and where things are headed and making sure he's excited about it.
Glasp: Oh, yeah, I also think it's a great way to expose your kids to technology and, you know, hands-on and yeah, understand what's going to happen. And yeah, that's a great way.
Nathan: Yeah, he loves it. So I, I highly suggest to other people to do that. And actually, that's one reason I think about doing my own YouTube is I might talk about more of that, about that kind of stuff too, like daily life stuff, like how you can use AI, you know, because that—that's, you know, I think a lot of people are going to be really surprised, like how much things are going to change.
And they're still thinking about like, okay, just the traditional education system. And then they're going to get a normal job in 10 years from now. And I was like, it's like, no, the world's going to be—the world's going to be very different in 10 years. It's not going to look like that anymore.
And so just trying to make sure he's more flexibly minded about these things and understand what's possible. It's super important. Everyone should be doing that for their kids.
Glasp: Yeah, I totally—yeah. Agree with that.
Nathan: Yeah, I think so.
Glasp: And since, you know, our audience are like aspiring founders—
Nathan: For founders, I mean, now is the time to build. Like if there's ever been a good time, like—like, there's been different time periods where it was good to build startups. Like when I first got involved in Silicon Valley, you know, I had read like Sarah Lacy's book talking about like big and all this stuff. And I had my own startup before that. And I was like, okay, cool. I'll go out to Silicon Valley. It sounds so exciting, like reading this, you know, reading her book.
And there were a few periods that were really great for startups. Like there was like when the iPhone came out, that was great. When Facebook became huge, that was great. I had several friends who built, you know, vast fortunes off of those platforms, right? Like I had a friend who made a fortune off of friggin Facebook apps, like stuff that seemed super, super, you know, scammy and stuff like that.
And like people made—now people don't talk about this, but like everybody knows tons of people who made like tens of millions of dollars in these like stupid Facebook apps, right? There's tons of these people.
And so that was cool, but like—and that was a great opportunity financially, but it wasn't that impactful. Now there's going to be an opportunity where it's actually impactful to humanity what you do. And it's going to be incredibly financially lucrative. Like the people who win in AI are going to—you know, the top 10 billionaires or trillionaires, probably the trillionaires, the top 10 trillionaires in 10 to 20 years—they're all going to be people who did something interesting with AI.
And so this is like the best time ever to be doing a startup, especially anything related to AI, because—and be as ambitious as possible, I think too, right? Like be as ambitious as possible, especially if you're raising venture capital.
Yeah. If you have an ambitious idea, raise a shit ton of venture capital and go for it. Like now is the time to do that. And if it doesn’t work out, look, as long as you make a big splash and actually do something interesting and don’t just friggin waste the money, as long as you actually do a good job and do something impactful, if it doesn’t work out, there’ll be other opportunities for you after that.
So yeah, so that’s—that’s why I suggest to people. And also while you’re doing it, don’t spend too much time on X, but at the same time, also make sure you’re being heard as well, like the balance, right? Like make sure you get your work done in the day, but then also after that, share what you do and then share, you know, your—your thoughts on things and make sure you have a voice as well.
Glasp: Oh yeah. I love it. Yeah. Great advice. Thank you. Yeah. So yeah, this is the last question. Okay. Since yeah. Glasp is a platform where people share what they're reading, learning as the legacy. So we're going to ask you this question and so what is the legacy or impact do you want to leave behind for future generations? It’s a big question.
Nathan: Oh, what’s the—what is the legacy I want to leave behind? Oh man. Geez. I mean, if I was being honest, you know, I wish I was like Sam Altman and had created OpenAI. That’s the kind of legacy I would have loved to have, you know, had to be quite honest with you. But as of now, like as long—I don’t—I don’t really feel like I have to personally be remembered. Honestly, I don’t really care too much about that, but I—I want to feel like on my deathbed that—that my—my son is set up in a good way for his future and that humanity is up, you know, for a positive future.
And so anything I can do, you know, in that—that area, that’s what I care about. So that’s—that’s one of the reasons I do the podcast, right? Like I think to help—to help get people more optimistic about technology again and like realizing like, yeah, we can do friggin amazing things.
Like don’t be so pessimistic and negative about everything and focus on, hey, screw this person and screw that person. Like just, we can build awesome stuff together if we’re always not fighting each other. And so that’s kind of—anything I can do to kind of push that message forward, even if that’s like a small piece of my legacy, that’s what I’m focused on.
I’m not sure if I exactly answered your question. That’s like, it’s a hard question. Like what—what legacy do you want to leave? But that’s probably the best I have today.
Glasp: Oh yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful answer. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And thank you for joining us today and sharing your insights and experience everything with us. Thanks so much.
Nathan: Yeah. Thank you. We should do a next-wave podcast sometime.
Glasp: Oh yeah. Happy to. Yeah. Anytime.
