18VC Podcast - Next Gen Builders

18VC
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A series featuring student entrepreneurs and new grads turning ideas, side into real ventures. https://www.18-vc.com/

  1. 3d ago

    18VC Podcast Ep #15 With Heroza Zhang @ Gorest: "LLMs Will Never Make the Next Elden Ring" – Building the AI-Native Game Engine

    Gorest turns a napkin sketch into a playable, interactive 3D greybox in minutes, with zero AI-generated assets and full copyright ownership. On this episode of 18VC, we sit down with Heroza Zhang, Co-Founder & CEO of Gorest, published novelist, and 5th-place finisher at the World Xiangqi Championship, on why prompts will never replace human taste, and how a Cornell capstone became a company. Highlights & Key Insights: The insight from interviewing game devs: creators hate AI doing what they're good at – but happily hand over "the general rest" Why Gorest started with greyboxing, the one part of game dev nobody loves – and what a "grey fox" in Zootopia has to do with it The 20-year analogy she uses on skeptics: C++ existed, but everyone still needed Unity. Foundation models exist, but you still need a new engine How a high-school hackathon in 2020 (as an accidental "team leader") introduced her to VC before she could code Are we all just NPCs? The philosophy of simulating the whole world that drives her founder journey Timestamps: (00:00) Cold open & highlight reel (01:16) Meet Heroza & Gorest (02:03) "I want to understand everything" (05:42) Games as interactive worlds (08:56) The Cornell capstone that started it all (12:45) Novelist, chess master, engineer: which built Gorest? (16:51) The high-school hackathon that revealed VC (23:17) Gorest in one sentence: your AAA kingdom, from your mind (24:15) Why prosumers first (26:11) Greyboxing explained (via Zootopia) (29:20) Why not just a Unity plugin? (32:03) Sketch in, playable level out (35:12) No AI-generated assets — the copyright line (35:27) Where AI stops and human taste begins (40:11) Business model: B2B, subscriptions, the Unity playbook (41:14) Defensibility vs. foundation models (48:16) Competitors, Cursor-for-Blender & the blue sea Subscribe for the earliest signal on the founders worth watching. — Connect with Heroza Zhang — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/herozaw/ X: https://x.com/HerozaZhan73432 Ins: https://www.instagram.com/heroza_white/ — Gorest — Website: https://gorest.ai/ X: https://x.com/Gorest_AI Ins: https://www.instagram.com/gorest.ai/ — Connect with 18VC — 18VC Website: https://www.18-vc.com/ 18VC Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6b3YoAMLjZLziwqHWy3EXb 18VC Podcast on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@18vcpodcast?si=l69vI6hHwLgIvw4N 18VC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18venturecapital/ 18VC LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eighteenvc/ 18VC X: https://x.com/Official18VC

  2. Jul 16

    18VC Podcast Ep #14 With Clarence Keith @ Nalana: What If You Could Speak 3D Into Existence?

    Toy Story took five years to make. Clarence Keith thinks the modeling, rigging, and animating behind work like that should take a fraction of the time – so he's building Nalana, an AI-native 3D design software he pitches as "Cursor for Blender." On this episode of 18VC, we sat down with Clarence Keith, a Blender veteran, former Honda project designer, teacher of 100+ students, and USC Iovine and Young Academy transfer. We unpacked how a lifetime of making masks, shoes, and music videos led to a speech-to-3D platform that industrial designers are already piloting. Highlights & Key Insights: The moment he realized LLMs are great at Python, Blender has a Python console – and nobody had connected the dots for 3D Why he refuses to build a plugin, and how owning the platform becomes a data moat that's "profitable and defensible" Speech-to-3D: why talking, gesturing, and sketching is how creation will work The "be the 2%" mindset: how he transferred twice (Emory → USC → IYA) without ever looking at acceptance rates What a vacuum teaches you about go-to-market "Designing the wait": the UX lesson from watching pilot users ask "is it working?" five seconds after a prompt Timestamps: (00:00) Meet Clarence & Nalana (00:33) Masks, shoes & music videos (02:57) The spark: LLMs meet Blender (06:10) Why beginners quit 3D (07:52) The speech-to-3D vision (09:44) Transferring twice & being the 2% (16:58) Defining success his own way (19:17) "Cursor for Blender" – why not a plugin (23:37) First market: industrial designers (32:08) Winning over skeptical artists (35:06) Inside the magic + the data moat (45:05) V1 lessons: designing the wait (54:03) IYA resources & the GOATs (1:04:30) "Job's not finished" (1:06:34) The long-term vision (1:09:29) Staying steady + final advice Subscribe for the earliest signal on the founders worth watching. — Connect with Clarence Keith — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarencekeith/ X: https://x.com/clarencejek Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ck.mdvs/ — Nalana — Website: https://www.nalana.io/ Waitlist: https://www.nalana.io/#access X: https://x.com/nalanaio — Connect with 18VC — 18VC Website: https://www.18-vc.com/ 18VC Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6b3YoAMLjZLziwqHWy3EXb 18VC Podcast on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@18vcpodcast?si=l69vI6hHwLgIvw4N 18VC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18venturecapital/ 18VC LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eighteenvc/ 18VC X: https://x.com/Official18VC

  3. Jul 10

    18VC Podcast Ep #13 With Manuel David @ Paradigm Outreach: The College Dropout Building the Future of Sales Cycle

    Most cold emails get a 1% reply rate and eat three hours of your day. Manuel David dropped out of Arizona State, moved to a San Francisco he'd never set foot in, and built Paradigm, an AI that runs the entire outbound cycle, from finding the lead to booking the meeting on your calendar. On this episode of 18VC, we sit down with Manuel David, founder & CEO of Paradigm Outreach, on why the whole outbound system is broken (not your copy), the infrastructure moat that nobody wants to build, and why he wants the next foundation model to be as powerful as possible. Highlights & Key Insights: Why Paradigm deliberately rejects ~70% of signups at the door – and why he likes it that way The contrarian take that "sounding like AI" was never the real problem – it's who you target "Bring the best model out – all it does is make my product better": his answer to the moat question every AI founder dreads The Apollo → Instantly → HubSpot slog he collapsed into one conversation with an agent named Parry Why he started as an email-infrastructure company and how that became the hardest moat to copy The line he refuses to cross: the AI will never take the meeting for you The word he'd use to describe himself that has nothing to do with what he's building Timestamps: (00:00) Highlight reel (00:38) Intro (01:27) Meet Manuel & Paradigm (02:27) From an ASU dorm room to founder (04:35) Why he dropped out (07:23) Is college outdated? (07:52) The cold email problem (1% reply rates) (09:44) Is the whole outbound system broken? (11:28) Volume vs. reaching the right person (16:00) The "offer guru" that rejects 70% of signups (18:16) Multi-agent orchestration & the feedback loop (19:16) Selling the result vs. the tool (24:52) Apollo + Instantly vs. one platform (27:58) Deterministic, AI, and where humans stay (29:11) Why "sounding AI" isn't the real problem (32:53) Blueprints & opinionated software (37:07) How Paradigm differs from Boardy (39:11) Finding the right lead across 100+ APIs (40:19) Dogfooding, and the pivot to a distribution engine (41:48) The moat when the next model drops (47:19) A world where everyone has an AI SDR (50:55) The 6–12 month vision (52:46) Faith, and betting on himself (54:48) His biggest mistake as a founder (56:24) Advice for student founders Subscribe for the earliest signal on the founders worth watching. — Connect with Manuel David — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuel-david-3b6245328/ X: https://x.com/Manny2techy?s=20 — Paradigm Outreach — Website: https://paradigmoutreach.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/paradigm-outreach/ X: https://x.com/useparadigm — Connect with 18VC — 18VC Website: https://www.18-vc.com/ 18VC Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6b3YoAMLjZLziwqHWy3EXb 18VC Podcast on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@18vcpodcast?si=l69vI6hHwLgIvw4N 18VC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18venturecapital/ 18VC LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eighteenvc/ 18VC X: https://x.com/Official18VC

  4. Jul 4

    18VC Podcast Ep #12 With Andy Liu @ Lullaby: Her Boyfriend Beat Calm, Headspace & Melatonin

    Most apps fight to keep you scrolling. Andy built Lullaby to do the opposite – get you off your phone and fall asleep. It started at 2 AM, after a consulting deadline, when her boyfriend made up a bedtime story and it worked better than any meditation app she'd tried. On this episode of 18VC, we sit down with Andy, founder of Lullaby, an AI sleep companion that talks you toward sleep and then gets out of the way, on why she's NOT building a generic AI companion, how "sleep intelligence" is her moat against ChatGPT, and why she'd rather you delete her app. Highlights & Key Insights: The 2 AM origin story: a boyfriend's bedtime story out-performed Calm, Headspace, melatonin, and magnesium Why her North Star is the opposite of every companion app – take you "from scrolling your phone to turning off your phone" The Reddit post that validated the idea, and the top comment that said it all: "Protect that man at all cost" Why she started the company on gut, not market research, and why speed of iteration is the real moat The ICP she's chasing: "overstimulated achievers" who can sleep but can't turn their brain off Her answer to the killer investor question: if ChatGPT and Claude Voice sound human, what's left? "Sleep intelligence." The privacy design: short-term memory feeds a classifier, so the app never stores every sentence you say The surprising interview finding – the content that helps you sleep is usually rooted in childhood familiarity Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (02:15) Cold open (02:37) From Chongqing to NYU to consulting (04:22) The pressure — and the sleep spiral (07:39) 2 AM: the bedtime story that worked (14:45) Why Lullaby isn't an AI companion (18:53) "Protect that man" — validating on Reddit (20:23) Starting on gut, not market research (23:11) The ICP: overstimulated achievers (24:52) What Lullaby actually is today (28:00) What "trust" in an AI really means (33:52) The problem they actually solve (37:12) What the user interviews revealed (42:20) "Is it real, or AI?" — the voice (44:02) The moat: sleep intelligence (47:54) Privacy & the memory design (52:21) The future: a sleep layer for Whoop & Oura (55:29) Perfectionism, killed (57:04) Advice for young founders Subscribe for the earliest signal on the founders worth watching. — Connect with Andy — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zilin-liu-39b273222/ X: https://x.com/zinzazilin Ins: https://www.instagram.com/zilin_zinza/ — Lullaby — App / TestFlight: testflight.apple.com/join/4dPtKheW — Connect with 18VC — 18VC Website: https://www.18-vc.com/ 18VC Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6b3YoAMLjZLziwqHWy3EXb 18VC Podcast on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@18vcpodcast?si=l69vI6hHwLgIvw4N 18VC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18venturecapital/ 18VC LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eighteenvc/ 18VC X: https://x.com/Official18VC

  5. Jul 1

    18VC Podcast Ep #11 Conversation with OMNIAPATH and Wov3 Founder Barry Li: He Ran a $1K/Week "Dark Market" at 15 — Now He Teaches Kids to Out-Build AI

    At 15 he was buying instant noodles off Alibaba and reselling them at a 200% margin to starving boarding-school kids – until the principal shut it down. Barry didn't know it yet, but that was his first lesson in supply, demand, and distribution. Five ventures later, he's betting his career on a blunt thesis: in the AI era, either you're well-rounded enough to do anything or deep enough to be irreplaceable, and everyone in the "medium" gets wiped out. On Episode #11 of 18VC, we sit down with Barry, founder of OMNIAPATH (an AI-native entrepreneurship school for young founders) and Wov3, and advisor to Hacker Dojo's first accelerator cohort, on why he teaches teenagers to start companies, why he picked China first, and what 40 partners coming and going taught him about who actually survives. Highlights & Key Insights: The 200%-margin "dark market" he ran out of his dorm — and why getting shut down was his first real business school His rule for who survives AI: be super well-rounded or go absurdly deep — "medium deep" gets replaced Why he killed a profitable $100K college-admissions business the moment he saw ChatGPT 3.5 The "one-person company" bet — and why he thinks solo founders are the default future of work Why he started in China, not the US — and the one word he keeps repeating: distribution What working one-on-one with 300+ students and 40 partners taught him about reading founders before they quit Timestamps: (00:00) Cold open (00:05) Meet Barry (01:07) The kid who challenged everyone (05:51) Family education & the "tree" (13:20) The $1K/week high-school hustle (17:04) Why he builds for students (19:06) OMNIAPATH & the ChatGPT wake-up (24:35) The one-person-company future (28:58) Two ways to survive AI (31:35) The six pillars (40:20) Answering the "anxiety" critique (44:22) Why China first (48:08) Hacker Dojo & the demo day (51:25) Reading founders who stay (55:12) Advice for first-time founders Subscribe for the earliest signal on the founders worth watching.— Connect with Barry —LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryliofficial/— OMNIAPATH & Wov3 —OMNIAPATH Website: https://www.omniapath.com/Wov3: https://www.wov3.com/Hacker Dojo: https://hackerdojo.org/— Connect with 18VC —18VC Website: https://www.18-vc.com/ 18VC Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6b3YoAMLjZLziwqHWy3EXb 18VC Podcast on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@18vcpodcast?si=l69vI6hHwLgIvw4N 18VC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18venturecapital/ 18VC LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eighteenvc/ 18VC X: https://x.com/Official18VC

  6. Jun 28

    18VC Podcast Ep # 10 With TheVentures CIO Ethan Cho: Founders, Foreign Markets, and Going Global from Korea

    TheVentures gets up to 3,000 pitches a year and reads them with an AI agent named Vicky before a human ever steps in. Ethan Cho, their CIO, explains what survives the filter — and why he'd rather hear a grammatically broken sentence from your own mouth than a flawless one written by AI. On this episode of 18VC, we sit down with Ethan Cho — CIO of TheVentures, one of Korea's earliest accelerators-turned-VCs — on building an AI-native fund, why "good companies" beat "good stocks," and the brutal, practical signals he uses to separate real founders from tourists. Highlights & Key Insights: The open-door policy that pulls in 40 applications a week — and how Vicky, their in-house AI agent, became the "first line of defense" Why a perfect, AI-polished deck can hurt you: how seasoned investors "disarm you from that clean sentence" in the Q&A The 3-question framework behind every check: "Why this? Why now? Why you?" Why he gives unfilled military service a "yellow flag" — and why it's "too easy of a reason to say no" The one thing AI can never mass-produce — and why it should shape what students build next Timestamps: (00:00) Highlight reel & intro (00:51) Welcome & meet Ethan / TheVentures (02:06) What excites him about VC (04:11) Good companies vs. good stocks (06:06) Founder intelligence & living abroad (08:28) Why he joined TheVentures (11:30) 3,000 applications & Vicky the AI agent (15:23) The "Korean-only" myth & the 20-min Q&A (19:22) Defining Korea: from Hyundai to Chipotle (21:40) Southeast Asia vs. the US (25:41) The silver economy & the B2G bet (34:29) Raising in Korea: IPO exits & government money (38:31) Raising your first fund: thesis & attention (41:28) The thesis & spotting real founders (45:08) "Ideological fraud" & AI-written pitches (50:21) Military service, diplomas & solo founders (53:45) Co-founders will fight — pick wisely (55:28) Pitch mistakes & the art of saying no (1:01:37) Exits, secondaries & geopolitics (1:06:47) Closing advice: what AI can never copy — Connect with Ethan Cho — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-yj-cho/ Substack: https://substack.com/@theventures — TheVentures — Website:https://theventures.vc/ — Connect with 18VC — 18VC Website: https://www.18-vc.com/ 18VC Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6b3YoAMLjZLziwqHWy3EXb 18VC Podcast on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@18vcpodcast?si=l69vI6hHwLgIvw4N 18VC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18venturecapital/ 18VC LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eighteenvc/ 18VC X: https://x.com/Official18VC

  7. Jun 20

    18VC Podcast Ep # 9 With Model OS Founder Fernando Jia: The Doom of the “Rent Model” Era

    From an investor's seat at Y Combinator China (Miracle Plus), Fernando watched AI startups get absorbed by the very models they were built on. Now he's building Model OS so they can own their intelligence instead of renting it. On Episode 9 of 18VC, we sit down with Fernando, founder & CEO of Model OS (Intelligence Cubed) — the "survival infrastructure" that turns AI apps from prompt wrappers into companies that own their own models, evals, routing, and feedback loop. Highlights & Key Insights: Why he calls most AI apps "prompt wrappers" — and the 3 forces quietly driving a wrapper "extinction event" The exact day Model OS was born: Jan 20, 2025, when DeepSeek trained a frontier-level model for $6M while OpenAI spent tens of billions "Turnitin on chain" — how watermarking model weights pays the original creator a cut every time someone fine-tunes their model When a founder actually needs fine-tuning vs. just RAG — and the foundation-model mistake almost everyone makes first His contrarian advice to young founders itching to drop out (graduate faster instead) Timestamps: (00:00) Cold open (teaser) (00:42) Welcome & intro (02:09) From IB & YC China to founder (02:42) Why build infra, not another wrapper (05:46) What investing taught him (10:01) The DeepSeek moment (12:11) Why founders couldn't fine-tune before (14:14) The "wrapper extinction event" (19:00) Inside the product (22:51) The CMU compute moat (25:47) Watermarking models on-chain (30:42) RAG vs. full fine-tuning (34:53) The 3-layer router (37:34) Competitors & 2.5M users (41:01) How Model OS makes money (45:44) What data is worth fine-tuning on (49:02) Building a research-heavy team (51:50) "Change maker" (52:39) Milestones: IPOs & the AI bubble (54:48) Don't drop out — do this instead (59:31) Wrap Subscribe for the earliest signal on the founders worth watching. — Connect with Fernando — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernando-j/ — Model OS (Intelligence Cubed) — Website: https://modelos.technology/ — Connect with 18VC — 18VC Website: https://www.18-vc.com/ 18VC Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6b3YoAMLjZLziwqHWy3EXb 18VC Podcast on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@18vcpodcast?si=l69vI6hHwLgIvw4N 18VC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18venturecapital/ 18VC LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eighteenvc/ 18VC X: https://x.com/Official18VC

  8. Jun 16

    18VC Podcast Ep # 8 From a War Zone to Venture Capital — The "Chaos Native Strategist" Tigran Ghukasyan

    He grew up in Artsakh — an unrecognized state he calls a real-world Neverland — fought in the 2020 war, then pulled off a "physically impossible" transfer to the US without losing a single semester. Now Tigran Ghukasyan is building CyNet at USC — and fresh off an exchange semester in Tokyo with Plug and Play Japan, he makes the case for why this could be the age of Japan. On Episode 8 of 18VC, we sit down with Tigran Ghukasyan — founder of CyNet at USC, co-founder at Spheroid, with experience across Plug and Play US, Armenia, and Japan — on failed first startups, pivoting a metaverse company into an XR-native engine, and why the bottleneck of AI is now physical. Highlights & Key Insights: Why his first startup — repatriating stranded cars through embassies during COVID — failed in every possible way, and what it taught him about the death of middleman arbitrage The funding trap that kills startups and the board-of-directors trap that kills corporate ideas — and why VC is the only environment that escapes both The genetics of risk: ~30% of Americans are built to take risks. In Japan, it's less than 2% How Spheroid pivoted from metaverse to the first XR-native engine — by building momentum with developers instead of pitching decision-makers US is relentless, Europe chases government funding, Japan has kaizen but no commercialization — and why that's about to flip in Japan's favor CyNet's thesis: most accelerators disrespect founders' time and build walls; demolish them and bet on "the power of handshake" His answer to the AI "permanent underclass" debate, and why humans will live in between AI skills The post-war decision everyone called impossible — and the encircled-commander mindset he wants every uncertain founder to steal Timestamps: (00:00) Highlight reel (00:47) Cold open & meet Tigran (02:13) "Chaos native strategist" (04:57) Growing up in Artsakh, a real-world Neverland (10:29) A first startup that failed in every way (14:05) Startups, corporates & why VC (18:07) The founder–investor loop (20:34) Culture & the genetics of risk-taking (23:20) Spheroid: pivoting metaverse into an XR engine (31:32) Plug and Play: US vs Europe vs Japan (36:36) Quantum & the age of Japan (39:40) Touching the elephant: a vision of the future (44:52) CyNet & the power of handshake (51:31) AI, status & the place of humans (57:34) The "impossible" transfer to the US (1:00:01) Own the chaos: advice for founders Subscribe for the earliest signal on the founders worth watching. — Connect with Tigran Ghukasyan — LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ghukasyan/ — CyNet — Website: https://courtyardnetworks.com/ — Connect with 18VC — 18VC Website: https://www.18-vc.com/ 18VC Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6b3YoAMLjZLziwqHWy3EXb 18VC Podcast on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@18vcpodcast?si=l69vI6hHwLgIvw4N 18VC LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eighteenvc/ 18VC Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/18venturecapital/ 18VC X: https://x.com/Official18VC

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A series featuring student entrepreneurs and new grads turning ideas, side into real ventures. https://www.18-vc.com/

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