Nate Bosshard opens YC Demo Day coverage with early-stage investing outlook

You're watching TVN. Today is Tuesday, September 9th, 2025. We are live from the Palace of Party Rounds. We are at YC Demo Day. Uh the batch is fall 2025, right? F 2025 because it used to just be winter and summer but now they've added it's a quarterly batch and so I believe we're in fall. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah.

And so we are here with Nate. Uh introduce yourself, tell the stream who you are, why you're here. Nate Valsard, friend of the pod. You the first time you came on was at the first time we did YC Demay two quarters ago. Been in the Bay Area for uh longer than I care to admit. 2008.

bounced around a few technology companies, spent some time at some institutional VC firms, have dabbled as an entrepreneur, and now have a seed fund. Take it back further. How did you make your first dollar on the internet? Uh, I sold used records on eBay. Used records 2001. 2001. Vinyl guy. Yes.

This is crazy because I sold record players on eBay. I sold DJ equipment. As we know, as everything becomes more digital, tactile, physical things become more important. So, I was early adopter there. Is there uh was the ARB? So my ARB was international shipping.

Basically people wanted top tier DJ gear in Australia and they couldn't get it because the companies wouldn't export or was it more about like going in uh what do they call it? Crate digging. Crate digging. Finding stuff that wasn't available in, you know, in Ohio and then you ship it there or Wisconsin.

You would travel up and down the Mississippi River corridor hitting up antique shops getting rare soul funk jazz and psychedelic rock records. And then you would sell them at a 10x markup to our friends in Japan. That's cool. That's cool. Uh we have one more lightning round question. Japan was your exit liquidity.

We're starting with the lightning round. Uh a most underrated or greatest entrepreneur of all time. Who you got? Oh god. Um underrated or greatest is actually kind of hard to throw. Wait, wait.

What's the actual So, we're going to ask we're going to try and ask every single uh person who comes on the stream how they made the first dollar on the internet and what their favorite entrepreneur is. Favorite it could be anyone. I'm going to go the last decade, last 5 years.

I think Andrew Duden from Hims and Hers is incredibly fastest consumer company to go public. Oh yeah, that's true. The only successful consumer spack trading at 11 billion. They went Yeah, they went out as a spack, but then they actually held the price. an absolute killer. He's got a retail army. Exactly.

Which is weird. Yeah. Not Not every boardroom general can lead a retail army. Fantastic. And I I would just I think Andrew is incredibly underrated. I'm not going to say all time, but in a last call cycle, but we're we're going favor.

There was some recent news that that they didn't didn't uh compounding like generally get like a a green light, which is very good for him.

Yeah, they've had a great uh kind of uh new wave with the Yeah, like a regulatory royal flash has been kind of drawn and there's been a lot of uh uncertainty about which way the the chips would fall and they got lucky.

And I want to give one other founder Hillary Kohl's who also doesn't get a lot of publicity, but she is also, you know, an incredible founder and, you know, important to the to the success. Fantastic. Um well, I have to put you in the truth zone. This is Y Cominator demo day summer 2025. This is summer. End of summer.

Demo end of summer. We're starting fallatch. So, we met some founders who had F who were I think going into the fall batch, but they they've been accepted. They'll be joining the next batch. Summer. Yes. Oh, great. My first my first YC was five. Wow. I was summer 12 as 12. So, just a mere 13 years. Yeah. Still kicking.

Uh, but I mean I was what, 21 at the time or something like that. Just a lad. Just a lad. Just a lad. Just a boy. What else is the top of your timeline today? Have did you watch the Apple event? Were you shaking? Were you crying? Were you Were you gasping? Were you clapping? Standing ovation from you for the iPhone.

The iPhone 4000. I was looking for more innovation on the wired headphones. Speaking his language, my boy. It just like pushes live. Yeah.

I feel like the uh of the app store like uh kids being able to build like Flatty Bird and then just go viral and you're going to see like most of the stuff is just it's just going to be so much slop and so much so many zeros but you're going to get these crazy crazy breakout stories of like some kid just vibe coded something had a really unique idea and was able to execute on it so much faster already.

the barrier to getting an app in the app store is like way lower than boxed software like where you had to literally call Masayoshi son and get like physical distribution. Well, I think by the way guys stream was down the last 5 minutes. That was a fantastic conversation but we're back up. We're back up.

But I think what you said while we were out was uh apps as memes. I think the concept of like kind of transient ephemeral software software as gifts.

I mean, the original like think about like 10 15 years ago, everyone had an app idea and and like I don't know like 10,000 people in the world were actually like qualified to like ship something pretty decent, right?

May maybe more than that obviously, but but it was like the amount of demand like the reason that companies like lovable have blown up is like the demand for apps is like so much higher than uh the supply of developers that can actually like build these things.

And then especially too, like most app ideas are not worth investing $100,000 into or $50,000 or even$10,000, right? It's just like something that should just be created for fun. Maybe it turns into a company.

Maybe it's just a little piece of software that it is sort of a gauntlet being thrown down for the ideas guys because it's like John Fio, but like seriously, it's like it's like now you're in you're you're going to be in a paradigm where like oh you have an idea. Okay.

like uh you now can just put your idea into a text box and get it in front of millions of people. Uh let's see how good your idea really is. I think let's figure it out. I think the concept of social app marketplace all at on Etsy where now you have this more artisal software experience.

People with ideas can iterate and build and ship things. I think that there's going to be some sort of new thing. Is the app store the next app store? I don't know. But I think when you lower the bar Yep. super low. There's a lot of interesting ramifications of that.

Yeah, I was I was I was thinking about that in the context of like OpenAI.

Like we've we've been in this era where, you know, it's like, okay, you have this $200 a month plan, you get like the super frontier model in a fantastic iOS app and if they go towards agentic commerce and ads and eventually they want to monetize fully, like do the paid plans go away and does the product become more one-sizefits-all or do we continue to live in this world where if you have the budget, you can get like a really, really, really special app experience.

And the flip side of that is like is like there are a bunch of pieces of software that I could imagine building that don't work as businesses but would work essentially like uh as as like a one-of-one piece of software.

The example that I always give is like if I if I hire an assistant I can pay that person to buy a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg and print out the articles physically remove all the ads and give me just a book of exactly what I want. very expensive to do.

It was probably, you know, like lots of lots of money. But like I could have a piece of software that does that. Now, I couldn't go and sell that software because I'm reselling subscriptions and I'm de taking ads out of the product. But in terms of like a a vibecoded one of one, there's only one person that's using it.

Like it seems like potentially you could see more more stuff that feels like the domain of only like you needed a person to do this. To take it even a step further, I just want instead of you being on my contacts, I want the John app. Yeah, that's interesting. And so, what would the John app have?

Well, it would just be everything you're into. Okay. Right. And I don't need to ask you any questions. I know what you're reading. I know what you're buying. I know where you're going. I know what you're shopping.

And when you think about like contacts as this new dynamic piece of software, there's like a portal through you. Yeah. Yeah. That's something that's super interesting. And I I'm just riffing here, but like I think that where you think where this goes Yeah. Yeah.

becomes really trippy and you know the the language like Uber for John basically it's Uber for John. It's Door Dash for John. It's Trip Adviser for John. It's whatever workout app for John or or is it more like John like or is it more like a return to like the old like uh 2000s web? Yeah, exactly.

like like we we we have we have all been forced into expressing expressing ourselves through these like narrow boxes and like yeah you can put like any MP4 in there or any any MP3 or any image in there but but you can't actually make any social app like your profile like fully your own and customize everything.

But you could do that on just a normal website. Maybe that's coming back. Think think about every time someone asks you for advice. Sure. Oh yeah, that or pings you and it's just like you just it's just like here's my app.

like it's like you're just a proxy to your and you can John and I are John and I are investors in Deli which kind of similar thesis of you know making yourself available 24/7. Um let's uh switch gears a little bit.

Are you going to be buying the uh Elon are you going to be signing up for Elon's uh SpaceX telecom Starlink direct phone? Excited about this? Yeah, I'm a I'm a fan of rural environments and Oh, you are you are and you need connectivity. Yeah.

And so I absolutely will be What's your do you do you travel with a Starlink setup much when you're going on escapades? No, but I would say like when I'm situated in place for sure. Um my my partner Dave who uh is a sprinter van guy is fully mobile mobile Starlink on his van. Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, so what are your thoughts on 996? Uh, deep fates on X says, "Yeah, I work 996. 9 minutes coding, 9 hours tweeting, six energy drinks. " It's just it's just an extension of the performative mail meme. Let's just be honest. So, so I would totally agree with you, but we had R.

Carazian from Ramp, the economist over there, uh, on the show yesterday. He looked at the credit card data and there's actually a meaningful uptick in in business activity in San Francisco. just San Francisco on Saturday just as of 6 months ago and it's like a meaningful uptick and so he says it's real. Sure.

There's always people that are living the realness. Sure. And then there's the performative social media cloud chasing and so yeah, of course there's always there's truth in every meme. Yeah. It's like it's like maybe there's a 20% uptick in 996ing and then that's been like 5xed by the the volume of like post.

Atlas Atlas was joking. It was like the great lock in and it's just like working Chinese hours for 4 months. I mean, I think Nal Nal had uh some new some new press today. He said, "Nal Ravocan expects employees to work 24/7 at his new startup. " That's the next level after 996 is just don't sleep.

Just stay at your desk. Just 12 127 12 12 12 12 a. m. I'm bullish on him and hers then for the kind of performance-enhancing aspects required. Okay. Okay. You think they might get into some some sleep deprivation? Back in the day people used to take pro vigil. Yeah.

Uh there was always that lore about like the air force pilots combat. I've never done that but you know that was always Obama's hack as he would you know you came on like we're not going to talk about politics and here you are.

Nothing that's about Yeah, that's performance performance and I'm you know I'm sure that you know providial is not like a partisan issue. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It's bipartisan. That's as far as we'll go on that. Anyway, um do you want to run through the the the first Elon Treasury company? Did you see this?

Have you been following the the the treasury stock memes? I mean strategy micro strategy, but then there are a few that do ETH and Salana. There's five Salana treasuries that all launched within the same like 3we period. So like essenti Yeah. If you if you track it, there's uh there's one that uh Panta launched.

Uh there's one that I think uh yeah, Joe Mccan I think was working on one. Um there's a few coming through the don't understand it, but maybe it's just because I'm aware of like you can buy crypto directly, but maybe it's like a tax thing.

No, it's an on-ramp for uh Tradfi to play in crypto as a as a more safer play because it's highly regulated and so they I think instead of them just buying Salana, they can buy into this thing and Okay.

a regulatory thing more than a more than a tax thing for traditional finance and I'm just being super reductive on that but I think that's that's the appeal and then you know assume that there's if they're hoovering up as much and then you give retail an opportunity for new forms of basically betting it all comes back to that but so we were talking about Echoar so so SpaceX uh acquired a spectrum that's going to enable them to get into direct to sell 17 billion um yeah it was 8.

5 billion of cash 8 and a half billion of stock. Uh Echoar is not is up 24% in the last 5 days but is pretty much flat today. And um people people were starting people yesterday realized they were like wait a $20 billion public company holds 8. 5 billion of SpaceX stock.

Like this is an Elon treasury company but small issue. They have $30 billion of debt.

And so we were kind of like doing some rough math yesterday and realizing like SpaceX needs to be like uh closer to a $2 trillion company for them to just pay off the and this is a company that's losing a lot of money in in in their core um core business.

Spectrum purchase is is highly strategic and makes me very very bullish. I think people also should be looking at if they're if they want a public market comp uh you know more global play like look at Rocket Lab.

They're almost like a correlary to every time Elon kind of does something publicly that's embarrassing or that is against you know the political is like I guess that that stock like which one? Rocket Lab. Rocket Lab. Okay. Yeah. It's also a publicly traded another successful deep tech spack of the era.

Yeah, they started off like and they're actually launching rockets now, but there are a couple of those like the anti- Elon trade. Like there's this satellite company that's as they've been like mooning in the in the public markets, but I don't think that they've actually like shipped any satellites.

It's all like deals at this point. Rocket Lab should Rocket Labs for sure. 15 billion market cap spa. Yeah. Uh road kind of like a rough period and now has been ripping. Yeah. Firefly also got out and did quite well I believe in the IPO. So the spack the spack universe like there's some winners. Yep. Let's be honest.

Yeah. Yeah. None of them that was part of same thing. No, no, no. That's wrong. So he did So and so up. Okay. Yeah. So truth zone. One out of Yeah. It's like one out of eight. Uh so that's like you know that's likely spread across them.

It it was not a good time but it was a rough time for a lot of people in a lot of markets. Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. Sorry. Did you guys see this company yesterday, Alter Ego, that uh that's doing the uh it's like a telepathic like headset device that you can like think messages in. Thought it was pretty interesting.

That'll be big in the astrology community. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. Um went pretty got almost two million views since yesterday. Some people were pushing back and saying like you actually have to like mouth the words, but I think it's fine. like a like a fish. Is this actual shipable or pre-order?

Somebody I don't know I don't know pre-ord live, but I don't know how true this is. Somebody quoted it and said this is the same type of thing Alman and and Ivory launching by the way future is here. I think I think that would totally make sense and I think that's a good good call.

Um the question is just like yeah can how quickly can like AirPods 4 fast follow that technology? But um if it's doing something else with like the electrical signals or like the mandable this is a good so we have to talk about this.

Uh Hunter SPX Thompson says Nvidia sells chips to Nebus to sell to Microsoft to sell to OpenAI all for OpenAI to burn 100 billion between now and 2029 so I can ask digital god for company primers and get answers in paragraph format pulled from seeking alpha dog Wow. Absolutely brutal.

uh the Nebas deal that got announced uh yesterday. Total uh total retail yesterday was an insane day in the market, right? Yeah, Nebas is up another 40 it's 42% in the last 5 days. $22 billion company right now. Retail uh they had a retail army behind them treasury company. Did you see that?

Oh, is there a treasury for that? No. So, there's a there's a company there's going to be a treasury for everything. Uh so I wasn't familiar with these these folks but Dan Ies is uh Wedbush Securities.

So he is now leading a crypto treasury strategy focused on Worldcoin, the native token of the blockchain used in OpenAI's creator Sam Alman's identity startup World.

And they bought so they bought uh $250 million um they had a $250 million pipe into the com into the public company OTO and the company I believe went up 2,500%. Which is a lot. So, Fartcoin Treasury win. Seriously, I'm actually not kidding. Yeah.

Well, we we were pitching this idea of instead of focusing on these like crypto assets, you could create a company that has a treasury that's just pure scratchoff lottery tickets. So, you have like $10 million of lottery tickets in there. And it's like, who knows what it could be worth.

It's hard to get to a book value on that. You could do the expected value, but who knows? Maybe maybe the investors will just will just not do the book value. Securitize it. Exactly. Get get derivatives against the the the right to scratch off. This is something there. I do want to cover a bit more Nebius.

Uh there's there's some coverage here from Techrunch that's pretty solid because we covered this company earlier this year in a different context. So, um Nebius is a real company. It's a it's hypers scale, right? Or Neocloud. No. So, I'll get into it. So, Nebius has actually been public for 13 years.

floating in May 2011 as Yandex Envy, the Dutch holding company of Russian internet giant Yandex, which is the Google of Russia. Out of Yandex, remember that's crazy. So, at the tail end of 2021, Yandex hit a peak valuation of 31 billion. But in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, everything changed.

NASDAQ halted trading on Yandex shares in February due to sanctions imposed on Russian affiliated companies. And a year later, NASDAQ said it would delist Yandex altogether. But Yandex successfully appealed on the basis that it was restructuring a process that would take an additional 16 months to fully complete.

Part of this included offloading all of its Russian assets, which was where most of the real business value lay. But what remained under Yandex's ownership was a random assortment of infrastructure and business units that just so happened to be located outside of Russia. That's crazy.

So they had set up data centers outside of Russia and everything effectively in Russia was was seized and sort of like pulled back uh into the country. What a wild story. This divestment concluded in July with Yandex changing its name to Neas AI, a cloud compute uh platform with its own Finnish data center. Finish.

Um so uh we saw a billboard for Nebas on the drive-in today. Yeah. So, the new business uh was to be spear spearheaded by Arcadi, the Russian Yandex co-founder and former CEO who was removed from a European sanctions list in March after he publicly condemned Russia's assault on Ukraine.

The core Nebus business sells GPUs as a service to companies needing compute. Uh and that is pro I don't need to continue that. Um so anyways, uh crazy crazy story here. Uh uh Highway 101 billboard. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe saw it when we saw it. Not not 101, but we we saw it rolling in today. Yeah.

Where did I took a picture of it because I love advertising. Um anyway, for the East Bay the Eastbay people coming in. Yeah, exactly. That's us came from Oakland. Uh it said AI runs better on us. Echoar has a wild story too. Uh Brandon GR dug into it on the Substack. Go to Substack. What is it? TVPN. stack. com. Yeah.

Uh subscribe. Uh we I believe we have our first guest. So, thank you so much for coming on. Great to see you, Titans. Enjoy the rest of your demo day. Get out there. Your founder on the show. I will find that team. Bring them over. Did you bring enough checks? Is your checkbook full?

I hope you're not running out of check. It's all Apple Pay. All Apple Pay now. We need a ping sound effect. Ching.