frontiertower

Toy Story took 5 years to make. Clarence Keith thinks the 3D work behind it should take a fraction of that, and he's building the tool to prove it. Episode 14 of the 18VC podcast is live. We sat down with Clarence Keith, founder of Nalana – an AI-native design software he pitches as "Cursor for Blender." Speak your idea, and the 3D model builds itself in front of you. Clarence has lived the 3D designer's life: years in Blender, Honda vehicle projects, industrial footwear design, and 100+ students taught. Now he's compressing the weeks-long modeling grind into a conversation. A few takeaways that stuck with us: 🌟 LLMs are great at Python. Blender has a Python console. Nobody had connected the dots for 3D – until now 🌟 Why he refuses to build a plugin, and how owning the platform becomes a data moat that's "profitable and defensible" 🌟 What a vacuum teaches you about go-to-market 🌟 "Designing the wait": the UX insight born from users asking "is it working?" five seconds after a prompt 🌟 The "be the 2%" mindset: how he transferred twice (Emory → USC Marshall School of Business → USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy) without ever looking at acceptance rates For anyone betting on where AI meets creative tools, this one's worth the hour. 🎧 🔗 Full episode – link in comment   Shoutout to the GOATs at Blackstone LaunchPad and USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy, Clarence loves y’all so much that he dropped these names in our episode: Amiah Sheppard, MAIO, Albert Napoli, Chris Swain, Tina Sharkey, Grant Delgatty, Davina Wolter, Thomas Dadourian, Jose Carrillo, M.Ed., etc. Special thanks to the frontiertower for providing the space and Boyun Liu for the intro. 18VC Team: Lucas He, David Lee, Philip Zeng #startups #AI #venturecapital #youngfounders #3Ddesign #18VC #Nalana #podcast #Blender #Cursor

Hosted the first Syndicate Poker Night at frontiertower in SF. Full table. Founders building at the frontier of Robotics, Healthtech, Neurodiagnostics, and Applied AI. Investors from some of the largest corporate funds in the Valley. Great cards, better conversations. Running these regularly. If you're a founder, investor, or operator working on something serious in SF and want to be considered for a future event, DM me.

🏆 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗲𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗜𝗻𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗼𝗦𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗛𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗻! 🥇 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 – Data Infrastructure for Life Sciences Congratulations to Alvi Sreya & Rafit Jamil for building an innovative solution tackling one of the biggest challenges in modern biology: making scientific data more accessible, connected, and actionable. 🥈 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 – Synthetic Biology & Biomanufacturing Shout out to Ashanti Matlock, Ph.D., Justinn Eddie - MME, SSBB, CSWP, & Hailie Hom for an impressive synthetic biology solution that showcased both technical creativity and real-world potential. 🥉 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗱 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 – AI-Driven Drug Discovery Congratulations to Iqra Tariq, Dubem N., YM L., & David Coleman, and for demonstrating how AI can accelerate the future of therapeutic discovery and development. While these teams took home the prizes, one of my favorite parts of the day happened beyond the judging. Many of these participants walked into the room not knowing anyone. By the end of the hackathon, they had found teammates, future collaborators, and a community. Watching strangers become builders together was incredibly rewarding, and even more exciting is hearing that several teams are continuing to work on their ideas after the event. Thank you to every participant, mentor, judge, volunteer, sponsor, and partner who made this day possible. We can't wait to see what this community builds next. 🚀 Hosts: NSBE SF Bay Area Professionals Syntex [data] ImpaktBio Sponsors: frontiertower, Fulcrum Genomics LLC, Overbyte, /dev/color, Replit 📸 : Bethany Weldon. PhD