Guy Reams (00:17.518)
Alright, well we're here with Nolan Bush now. Really appreciate you for doing this interview with us. My pleasure. You just got done speaking at TechCon as one of our keynote speakers. What did you speak on? Basically, the process of founding companies and kind of the ethos of Silicon Valley. And I've been credited with one of the sort of architects.
of the early days of Silicon Valley that sort of permeated, sort of boiled down to another, the elevation of outcomes over process. I see, yeah. And so if you focus on outcomes, it gets rid of an awful lot of unnecessary stuff. If you focus on processes, you know.
It's not as rewarding. Outcomes give you purpose. Not just that. It's a way of defining things in such a way like you. There's just no place for discrimination on gender or race or ethnicity. It's all about can you perform? And a person of medium capability that works hard.
can often perform much better than somebody that has great capability and is lazy. So outcomes are what you want. Yeah, well if you think about it, starting a company and trying to get to market, that's the great equalizer. Nobody's going to care. They're going to care about your product if it provides value. At the end of the day, that's what's going to matter. Well, I like to ask people sometimes, you know, in cocktail parties, how many of them
What long riders have you done when you were behind deadline? And they said, well, I don't do long riders. And I can think of several that I have. I used to say, the Soviet Union fell because they didn't have trade shows. They said, what? Well, I said, well, you know that.
Guy Reams (02:39.949)
90 % of all technical progress happens 48 hours prior to a trade show. That's so true. The night before. Getting the demo ready. Getting the demo ready. Without a trade show, you don't hope there's solid time, you know, things. I mean, it's a joke, but it's not really, you know, best jokes are where there's an element of truth.
Yes, there is a truth to that. I mean, friends of mine, we did a trade show once and I think it was back in the context days and we did a trade show and we were up all night long the day before trying to get the demo ready and I don't think it ever really worked. When you go to the floor of a trade show, particularly in Las Vegas and you're there an hour and a half, it's chaos everywhere and you say,
We never can be ready. And somehow, when the door is open, everything's perfect.
Yeah, you're right. And if it isn't, well. well. That's great. Well, no, I don't think we need to really introduce you. I mean, anybody who's a tech geek knows who you are. I'd really like to dive in just a little bit on the Atari background, just because not everybody will know. I was a digital immigrant. Like, when I was a child, I was born with no console game in my house. I got a console game at age five or six, and it was Pong. Right. That was the first one.
that we had in our home when I was five. And ever since then, we've had a console game in our house. So that's a, I've often times thought about generations of children based on what console game was popular at the time they were born. That's an interesting thought, but tell us about your life after Atari. That's probably what's most important. Well, I've been sort of a serial entrepreneur.
Guy Reams (04:39.949)
always curious about what the next thing is. I read science fiction and I think science fiction lubricates your brain about a world that can be as opposed to the world that is. Yes. There's kind of a big divergence of science fiction. There's the post -apocalyptic thing which is kind of...
dark and noir and the zombie led and the attack of the Cleons. And then there's the optimistic where life is beautiful and warm and the Jetsons and we have all this wonderful stuff and we move through space seamlessly and all that. And I think that
There's really good ideas that come out of science fiction. Like it's easier to invent a description than it is on a product. Yeah, I've heard Elon Musk talk in interviews a lot about his early days in science fiction and how that inspired him a bit. What's the science fiction that inspired you the most growing up? a lot. But I'm a big fan of...
Neil Stevenson. Okay, yeah. You know, he's done good. My favorite is probably Hyperion with Dan Simmons. I've read both of those. Very good. All four books of the Hyperion series. I've read the first book. I haven't gotten to the other three yet.
second tour. It gets better. It gets better. Okay. I'm adding that to my reading list as we speak. I'm telling you, it's probably one of the few books that I've read several times because the narration is thick and so every time you go through it the second time, you know, you get more out of it. Anyway, I love it.
Guy Reams (06:42.989)
I think Neil Stevenson's though, I think The Diamond Age is a pivotal book. Yes, that was a great book. And The Seven Eves really broke my brain in another way. Have you read Dodge and Hell? I have not read Dodge and Hell. No, I've been meaning to. I haven't got to it yet. Well, the whole concept that you can exist in a computer program, that if enough of your mind and stuff...
gets put into the computer that you can live there.
It's a very interesting concept. My son and I were pontificating on book ideas and I hate to say this on video because somebody will steal the idea but well. The idea is that we were coming up with is one day there'll be a chip inside connected to you that gives you internet access or gives you access to the net and there'll be a way that you can access that chip in your brain if you envision a happy place. You know how when you meditate you listen to the happy place? Right. So you like I have this castle in
mind I envision.
And when I go to that castle, that's how I access the chip. So you have to go to the specific place in order to get access to the chip console embedded in your brain. That's all we've got so far. There's a lot of stories in sci -fi about implants. Yes. And that just, you know, where you're constantly in the stream of data of stuff.
Guy Reams (08:16.975)
Perceptions. Elon's actually working on some of that, the brain, you know, the nerve. Yeah, Neuralink. Neuralink, yeah. That's fascinating, isn't it? It is. I think they had some positive tests with one of their first patients. The problem that we have as a biological species is that the information flow tends to be serial.
And pretty slow. I mean, we run at about 60 hertz, most of our stuff. And so in order to get data things, you have to have bundles. And interfacing with those bundles is an order of magnitude difficult. If you can interface with one thing, that's pretty good. But for example, if I have a severed
nerve bundle in my spinal cord, for example. Yeah. Paraplegic, quadriplegic. If I suppose that I can take that nerve bundle and interface it to something, it's a little bit like a video sensor construct. So there's a bunch of nerves.
talk like this. And on the other side, it's the same thing. And then you build a program that reconnects in the right way. Yes. Anyway, we diverge. Yes, we diverge. But that is a fascinating. I mean, the connections of what is possible with that is really mind blowing if you think about it.
It's incredible. You know, I have eight kids and Elon has nine. If I'd have known...
Guy Reams (10:16.493)
that that was going to happen. I've had more kids. I didn't realize we were in a competition until now. Or that he's trying to convince us that the world is going to reduce in population if we're not careful. I didn't realize we were under such a crisis. We're in a big problem. But the argument is pretty persuasive when you dig into it. You're like, wow, I didn't really think about, you know. Well, the one child policy in China, they...
project that China is going to lose 400 million people in the next 10 years. Yeah. 400 million. And the one child policy was a double whammy because most of the one childs turned out to be men. So they don't have wombs.
Yeah, so yeah, you're not going to be able to replicate yourself very easily. Exactly. Yeah, that's fascinating. Amazing. So I'm really curious about your opinion about all this AI hype that's happening nowadays. I mean, we have large language models that have taken the world by storm. A lot of artificial intelligence going on behind the scenes that people probably in the lay community don't understand. And then you've got every software company in the world.
adding AI components and even video games now are auto generating content like on the fly which is incredible right? My son who's got a little video game studio and he says it's accelerated his development by 3x. I think AI may be
one of the most important tools that we have. And I see, I would bet that people who understand AI, if you were talking about the job market, I think the kids that don't understand AI are obsolete.
Guy Reams (12:28.461)
I've heard of universities that have banned AI, high schools that have banned AI. They could not, you know, it's like forcing a generation of Irish to learn Gaelic. Well, when I was a child, you know, you had the parents when you were playing video games all day long.
the parents would tell you, that's never gonna, you're never gonna amount to anything playing that video game. But I mean, look at the video game industry today. I mean, geez, this is, my parents would have never have known that this would be, if they would have known it's gonna be the way it is today, they would have said, play more. Play more. Well, we've actually shown that video game play is really important to teach you resilience and grit.
and fail fast. And fail fast and just exercise your brain. I've got a company right now that's doing video game centric educational software. Okay. So the addictive nature of video games, wouldn't it be great if you were addicted to learning algebra?
That would be great, yes. And I think we can accomplish that. And it turns out that if you have kids engaged, that they learn and they remember significantly better. I think when we complete our project, you'll be able to learn everything that you currently learn in high school in six months.
Nolan, it's been awesome talking to you today. This is great. Thank you for coming to TechCon. Hey, my pleasure. It's a good group of people here. A lot of people that are going to be watching this are potential founders, entrepreneurs that have a dream. Of course, I don't think you knew that you would be changing the landscape of society when you were at Atari. Maybe you did. I don't know. But we can all dream. We can all dream. But what would you give as advice to somebody starting out?
Guy Reams (14:41.615)
in this in this tech industry trying to create something new and start a new company Do significantly more research and Really really drill down on the areas that are similar I mean You can say video games were really different, but you know
they had some traction in big mainframe computers at the time. And games have been around for a long time, you know, whether it be Monopoly from, you know, and Parker Brothers and all that, card games. So you really got to know the territory. You've got to really know the spreadsheet.
You know, spreadsheet the potential business. Play with the numbers that become very important. Like, a lot of businesses, kids don't properly figure out what the customer acquisition cost is, or what the lifetime value of customer. Like, if you pay $5 for a customer, is that customer worth...
$500 over the lifetime. Yeah, it's a good deal. Yes That is a good deal, you know, and so those are the sorts of things that sometimes You know you get focused on the product and yeah people are gonna love this But in order to love it, they got to find out about how they do that you know, and There's this education first. You have to know something exists then you have to
know what it does and then you have to figure out how it fits into their life and then you have to price it right. So you can't escape the basics can you? You can't. Exactly. Well it's nice to talk to you today Noah. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Founder's Journey. You can follow us at foundersjourney .fm for updates on our episodes and to recommend future guests.
Guy Reams (17:02.606)
Special thanks to our primary sponsor, New Fund Venture Group, who can be found at NewFund.