From a War Zone to Venture Capital — The "Chaos Native Strategist" Tigran Ghukasyan
18VC Podcast · Episode 8 · June 17, 2026
Guests: Tigran Ghukasyan
Source: https://www.18-vc.com/podcast/tigran-ghukasyan

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to our audiences, and a huge welcome to our guest, Tigran Gukasian, the founder of Saina Asserted by USC, the key person behind HTA, EVMA, and the first-ever USC Tech Fest event, and someone who helped lead various initiatives and programs across Plug and Play US, Armenia, and Japan, as well as the co-founder at Spheroid AR. Thank you so much for joining us at the episode eight of the 18VC Podcast, Tigran. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the 18VC Podcast, we are a student-run podcast featuring student founders, operators, and investors betting on the youngest and the smartest minds of the next generation. The host today will be me and Philip.

Hi, everybody. So Tigran and I were actually classmates back in 2025, and we first met each other during a course called Venture Lab at USC, and we got to know each other way better after interning together at Plug and Play LA during that summer. In my eyes, Tigran is perceptive and extremely well-networked, probably owing to his diverse background across BD, strategy, product, venture, and startups, and I really don't know who else I can reach out to among MBAs if this guy doesn't even have a clue about the one that I want to connect with. He even brought the co-founder of ServiceTitan to the Tech Fest event at USC, and I have no doubt that he'll go out there and do some remarkable things going forward.

So let's start this. For people meeting you for the first time, Tigran, how would you describe yourself? Well, it's great seeing you guys, and you gave so many titles. I would narrow it down to one, a friend, and yeah, even with the ServiceTitan part, it's all just being open to people and just being friendly. There are two types of people, who are dudes with everyone, and who are wearing photo titles, but thank you for the warm introduction.

Regarding your question, because I've started preparing, I went through only the first two questions. Okay. I'm like, "ChatGPT, what should I answer?" Well, it was very funny. The ChatGPT gave me this brand statement that I'm a chaos native strategist. I don't know what the hell that means to- Yeah ... but I would say probably it took it from my three core competencies.

Okay. I would describe myself as someone who can solve the unsolvable problems, or simply said, get the shit done. Okay. I would say I have a built-in discovery engine or just a very curious person. Mm-hmm. I would say the third one, I'm just into deep and real human connection. Mm. So those are the three things that can describe me the most, and that's what I want- Yeah ...

to be known for. And that chaos native strategist part probably refers to that when a lot of people freeze in the chaos, I wake up in the chaos because I'm curious. Yeah. I put myself a lot into the chaos because I want to see- Yeah ... what's behind it, right? Yeah. And then navigating the chaos is usually done through- Mm-hmm ... collaborating with people.

Yeah. So yeah, I would say those three things, people, curiosity, and just figuring it out. Yeah. That's great. My favorite quote before, there's a deadline at med school, like every- Yeah ... classmate of mine knew that the thing I would say is, "We'll figure it out," and we always did. Yeah. I think we just figure out something that AI can't do better than human and analyzing humans' context themselves, right?

Tigran, I think you did a pretty good job just summarizing some of your key traits. But we all know that childhood is an important period and some of the things that happened or positioned you or others around you made could significantly shape or define who you are today. Maybe, if you can, walk us back a bit and tell us a bit about what was the kind of environment that you grew up? That's a tough one because I grew up in a place called Artsakh.

Mm-hmm. And it almost feels impossible to describe because it reminds me that real-world version of Neverland, if you've heard of Neverland, the fairytale magic realm where time freezes, and it's impossible for adults to get in there. It's the same way as Neverland is. Oh. It feels very real from inside, but from outside, not many people know that even it exists.

And so that being said, Artsakh was an unrecognized state, fighting for its survival, and it was really this magical place where instead of going to restaurants and cafes to celebrate birthdays, would go to forests, waterfalls, and mountain lakes. It was very identity and memory heavy. When I had to stay by myself, I would go to this ruins of an ancient city called Tigranakert, built in first century before Christ- Mm-hmm. Holy ...

by the king after whom I'm named, and it's- What? ... the wildest place on the planet. The air vibrate differently there. You would see ancient aqueducts, horses drinking pure water- Wow ... from those aqueducts. Solar mechanisms still survive. Castles and temples fighting each other. Wow. Even being remnants full of dominance, who get better position in the city.

So there was a lot, and the society was very interesting. Everyone you have-- That's why I think I'm good with people, because although we're fighting a heavy war on the borders, internally- Yeah ... there was no person that wasn't known to everyone elseI would say it was the most progressive place I've ever been to, because it was progressive for the most core reason it could be for. We were trying to escape a blob and oppression and sort of get the attention of people who share the same values.

So it was very interesting being this unrecognized mountainous state, but still the most accepting, the most tolerant, and the most diverse in thoughts and ideas place that I could imagine. I see. That's where I grew up for, and then now it really feels like Neverland because it exists only in people's memory. It's a land that you lost and probably shaped me that I don't take stability, opportunity, and identity for granted.

I see the value of it because I lost it. Wow. But it still lives within like the Neverland. Thank you so much for sharing, though. So I think you briefly touched on that, but could you just elaborate a little bit more on how did that environment where you grew up provide you with resources or a lack of resources for what you want it to become now? As I mentioned, it made me value the three core competencies I was talking about, like valuing the human connection because I was in a place where every human mattered in a way that you want it or not, that human is part of your identity and your environment.

Also, because we were fighting for survival- Yes ... it made us grow up with thinking there are no excuses. And Shreno will always joke about that we're the most stubborn people, like the national trait being stubborn. Wow. We're stubborn, and we'll get the shit that we will still prevail. But I think the most valuable thing there is the curiosity. It was the same way as people dream about Neverland, the people of Neverland dreaming about the outside world, and I was very curious what's happening out there, and my magic artifact of connecting to the rest of the world was technology.

Is what? Is technology. Technology? Internet, the tech stuff we could build. Every time there was a tiny advancement in Internet, that would change our lives a lot because that's our way of learning about the outside world because it was so hard to get physically. You have to drive for eight hours to get somewhere that you can sit on a plane in the first place.

So I would say it channeled my curiosity through tech. Mm-hmm. Since childhood, it was my magic wand of traversing the realms of my dreams. I can see how that kind of sort of lead you or channel you into some of your previous background in startups and maybe your future and actually current aspiration into becoming a VC, investing in some kind of emerging technologies.

Yeah. So actually, what's your first entrepreneurial kind of attempt by your own definition, and what or who actually sparked that first try? That's actually a bad example, but bad examples are the best because you learn most from them. So it was during COVID. We noticed that a lot of people got stuck in the countries as tourists or expats. They were non-nationals that couldn't stay there for the period of COVID.

And usually, as a rule, they were transported back to their national countries by air. And the question arose, there's so many people who had cars in those countries and had drove in, but there was only one way out, an airplane. So clear market problem, and we decided to get in touch with a lot of embassies that have this problem and get in touch with a lot of tow trucks. Just basically build a bundle of organized tow truck groups to help transport the cars of those people through the embassies, and we're sure that the embassy even had a competitive mode because we were sure that embassies wouldn't do that, organize it themselves, because it's too much of a headache, and that the government workers never like too much headache.

They're never compensated enough for that. But, yeah, it failed in every possible way because why? Because it failed in every possible way, and I learned that the reason is in 21st century, this sharp guy mentality, the market intermediary mentality doesn't work anymore. I think we all have a lot of examples from our older generation that those people thought they were smart enough to be in the right place.

I saw wherever kitchen appliances are trending, so I decided to start selling that, and I didn't. But those times are finished. All the information that is accessible to you is accessible to everyone else, and the situation ended up getting so messy the same way as this car transportation, as so many people wanted to do that, that it was just like it didn't make sense to hold her and engage in that. I realized that in 21st century, in our age especially, if you want to make progress, you got to adopt a different mentality.

You got to create value instead of just figuring it out where you should be. So I learned early on from my very first experience that the majority of lessons I'm being taught by the older generation don't function anymore this way. Hmm, definitely. It sounds like being a middleman and arbitrage based on the information asymmetry does not work in the East.

Yes. A great friend of mine who works in... Can I say the company? Yeah, I can say it because I wouldn't name him. In BlackRock. I keep debating him that you are doing arbitrage. You don't create any value. You got to think about doing something else. Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course. Then can you walk us a little bit more about your journey through a business development role, then to a strategic role in corporate, and then a co-founder role in a startup.

And now you are pursuing a career in VC investment, in emerging technologies after your MBA. Then what actually sparked your interest in transitioning from either founder or corporate roles into a VC investor role? That's actually a much deeper question than a very easy answer. So the corporate experience and the startup experience. In startup, everyone cherishes new ideas, and they're very welcoming when they're wild.

Sometimes I was more conservative on my own ideas than the team. But the biggest problem we faced were always short of funding. Yeah, you have ideas, but you can't bring them to life because there's not much possible with investors and every payout is a headache, and there's so many use cases. You're just basically bound by finances. Mm-hmm. And it's always such a drag that 80% of your time is spent on doing stuff that aren't creating value, just- Mm-hmm ...

bringing funding, negotiating with the shareholders, building stuff under constraint for months, but understanding that you would be able to build this in a couple of weeks if you would have enough funding. While the corporate experience of mine, so I was in banking out of LA, it had the opposite problem. We didn't have any constraints in the financial resources. We almost had this infinite pool of resources to do whatever needs to be done.

But then we had this structure called the board of directors, which is the most conservative entity you would ever see in your life. And every time I would come up with this fancy, cool, new idea, it would be crushed by the board of directors because of some tiny risk that couldn't be addressed by 100% because it's dependent on a butterfly effect style of thinking that, "Oh, what will happen if we engage in this or that?" Even small things like changing design of certain products. The question is, oh, what if people really hate the design? What if offense comes?

What if so and so? What if the designer breaches the safety regulations? I have control over that as well. So two environments, very different, but similar in a sense that there was something lacking in both of them to be dynamic enough to be implementing new ideas over. So I sat down one day and I thought, "Well, what is the environment? Is there even an environment where I just can keep seeing new ideas and keep being motivated by that?" After thinking for a long time, I said that I had a few candidate industries, and I chose VC because on top of solving both issues, right?

Mm-hmm. You are the capital. You are not restricted by it, although there are fiduciary duties, you can't just go good things. Also, you keep seeing new ideas on daily basis. Other than that, it also will keep me close to the new tech. Me, myself as a person, up to date with new tech, because I believe the currency of the future will be less about money, more the access and other stuff of that nature.

I was fairly social, which was important for me, as I said, I'm a very social person. Got it. Checked all the boxes, and I thought, why not to try? And I got my MBA with the specific reason to pivot to venture capital. That makes a little more sense. I actually categorized all the people I met into roughly four types. The ones who want to build companies to build, and ones who build companies to invest, and the ones who invest in companies to invest, and ones who invest in companies to build.

Which one do you think you echo more with? Yeah, that's an interesting question. When you say build and invest, do you mean the financial aspect of the matter and the desire to bring a change to the world? Simply speaking, some people I meet are treating building as a median to become an investor, and some are doing the vice versa. And some are just born founders.

Okay. Even if they exit, they don't want to become investor. They would just- So you're asking about the founder versus investor loop. Basically, yeah. I think I just accidentally unconsciously gave you the answer. It's a loop. It's a loop. Mm-hmm. And if you're not ready to be in that loop, then you're doing something wrong. Hmm. Even from my experience, all the VCs are tracing back to some stories of founders, like ideologically, financially, or some other matter.

And all the founders, if they don't think like investors, they just wouldn't survive in 21st century. That's true. So it's essentially a loop andWherever you feel, I think the more stable side is investment because it's fairly straightforward. Not repetitive, but repetitive in some sense. So I would say investing is the stable stage and founding is the stage where you realize that you're in the right place at the right time with the right people, and you got to dare and try it again.

And there's always the investment part where I could come back to be stable for some time and then again go try something else. In my life, I plan to be in this loop constantly and I can control the VC side- Yeah ... that I'm stable and I'm there for the long term. And whenever I get back to venture- Yeah ... again, the stars should allow for that. Right.

In any way people talk about place. That's actually a smart one. Yeah, I might just think about using the same approach, I think. The next question is actually not concerning, but it's right kind of about your diverse cultural background. You came from Armenia to the US. Do you feel like this cultural background benefits or hurts you in your journey to pursue a startup venture here?

That's a good one because I think, so besides just being from Armenia, I lived in quite a few places and I worked in quite a few continents. Right. I realized that there are no good and bad traits. There are just winning combinations of certain traits, right? If you're charismatic and extroverted, that's great, but if you're charismatic but introverted, that sort of goes a little to the waste.

Mm. So I would say there is unique traits and I would rephrase your question more to being aware of what you are, how your cultural, family circle, educational, professional, all those backgrounds played into making you who you are and just being aware of those traits. So I think now I'm very aware of my cultural traits as an Armenian. Like a good example I would provide you, right now I'm learning Japanese cultural traits.

Yes. And what are the issues that they're facing in their venture ecosystem so that the whole world can learn from their problems today. Interestingly, as if it's just like a mindset, a cultural thing, but interesting, even genetically, there's a certain genome that's responsible for sort of risk-taking or better to say optimistic and pessimistic people. So if there's long and short, if one is long, one is short, you're kind of in between if it's both- Okay ...

are like, and then there's the two extremes, right? I see. Americans are around 30% optimists. So there's 30% of the people are genetically built to take more risks. Cool. In Japan, risk-takers are only less than 2%. 2%. Less than 2% of Japan. And no surprise that there's great technology being developed, but when the time comes to taking risks and taking it to the market and going on the edge, people just don't do it.

Not all of them. You can't generalize. Never. That's another thing I learned. But I would say as an Armenian, I'm genetically built to take risks and my cultural and childhood experiences also built me to the shape that now ChatGPT calls chaos native strategist. Yeah. So it's more about understanding your traits and picking the right bundle to fight with rather than- Yeah.

I mean, I can see you definitely have the two long traits, right? Yeah, I think so. I haven't tested on that, but I'm pretty sure it's two long traits. Then we want to move on to your experience in the startups you founded, as a co-founder, this Sphereoid universe. Can you share a little bit more with us that, what was the proudest achievement during the experience and what are the most valuable lessons you take away from these building experience?

Yeah. So the proudest achievements is it's always about the team, right? And that's the takeaway. Team matters more than anything you can think of. But how did I come to that conclusion and what's that achievement is? So Sphereoid started originally as this metaverse company, and as you know, we don't have any successful metaverses. Even the Meta itself isn't successful at that, but it was one of the first ones and one of the better ones.

But let's not get deep into that, but for several reasons, metaverses couldn't succeed back then, although I think they will come back at a certain point. During the journey, the team was developing applications on that metaverse by themselves, just like sort of the first iPhone came out, Apple was developing applications for iPhone until everyone else got into the ride and it became a marketplace for everyone to be creating in. While the team was developing the first applications on top of the metaverse, they were using the tools that were widely used to develop VR, XR, AR applications, and those tools were the gaming engines, the programming environments that are built for building games. And game engines suck for VR because there are many reasons they are not cross-platform.

So every time you make an application of one platform like web, you have to build it from the scratch on iOS, then Android and all the other platforms.Second, they are built for these power-hungry machines that get, I don't know how many voltages directly from the outlet. And we're talking about wearable devices, AR, we're talking maybe about mobile phones with tiny processors, with tiny batteries that are not optimized for it. So the team started building a lot of shortcuts to bypass the limitations of gaming engines. And then at some point we noticed that, "Hey, the amount of shortcuts you build, if you put them together and bundle them, and work a bit on the UX and UI, you have a product which will be the first ever XR native engine." This environment to develop applications in their sort of Photoshop for VR or sort of the programming language for that, like an intermediate layer of that.

So noticing that and understanding that this is the future and pushing that transformed the company completely. But as I said, there's so many issues with organizing the pivot. The investors were in the line, some of the founding team was in the line, but so many people just were not aligned, and that's where the main lesson came from that I've understood. If you want to make a change in any environment, you have a vision.

You don't talk to the decision-makers at the top. You build a momentum with it. You just go to the people who will be actually building that, to the developers, and talk to them if they share your idea. If they don't, you'll modify it based on the ground, not on stupid theoretical discussions. And as soon as I built momentum with it, and the transformation started happening by itself.

People will start bundling it already and an investor might come and see that, "Hey, what is this thing? Let me play with it. Oh, wow! Nice. Why doesn't my phone overheat anymore? What is Spirit script? What is that? Let me see GitHub. You have millions of followers on GitHub. What is GitHub?" Stuff like that just built the momentum and changed everything.

Yeah, there were some other tricks that we applied too, but just understanding that you are nothing without your team, and every single person in the team matters day to day. Interesting. Because you got such a diverse background in both the builder and investor side, how does that experience and that understanding of a group actually shape your way of looking at founders in these days? Honestly, I don't think it shaped how I look at the founders.

I think I had to relearn how I look at the founders when I got to VC. My perspective's very technical because all the founder is obsessing about is the product, right? And the founder doesn't really think about himself as a product. Mm-hmm. Or herself as a product. So, coming to VC, I had to learn to zoom out from the technical nature of things. It's okay if you don't have everything working, or it's okay if I don't see how you bridge everything from A to Z.

You might have some gaps between C and E letters. But if I see that you're a type of person that will figure it out and will be resilient enough, perseverant enough to get it done, and you have the right team, you have the right background, you have the right track record, I'm betting on you, especially in the early stage, right? I'm more focusing on early-stage investments. The earlier stage we invest in, the more we focus on, the more we invest in the founders themselves rather than the product.

So, that was how I had to relearn what a good founder is. Okay. That's actually super interesting because, from my personal view, I think founders who are kind of more of a technical background has been able to move faster in the earliest stage, during the time where we are talking to our fellow other founder interviewees we host a podcast on. And do you see that the founder who are kind of more a technical person would be a better, I don't know, founders in the earliest stage that can get things moving, at least?

I would say that being technical person is redefined today with all the tools that we have today. Again, also it's very industry dependent. Mm-hmm. If we're talking about quantum computers that we don't know when they'll be error-free and if they'll ever be, right? You need a technical person who just loves sitting in the lab developing the thing he develops, and then they understand the technicalities of the matter.

But if we move closer to my favorite industry, brand and retail, it's less about, okay, how technically... You don't need to be a scientist to come up with a new recipe that a lot of people would like. My preference and my experience is more on the deeper side of the things where the founders are more technical. But, A, it's very industry heavy, and B, it's always changing.

There's no sort of formula. Formula is always changing because, the more tools you have, the less technically capable you need to be. And, I would say investments in solo founders were not a thing two years ago. But now I don't think any issues with investing in solo founders, because they just can vibe code their way through up to even Series AAnd then they'll be able to hire someone technically very capable.

So depends on the industry and depends on the tools that are available today on the market. Yeah, definitely. And we want to move on to your story in Plug and Play. So you have been working in across Plug and Play US, Plug and Play Armenia, and also Plug and Play Japan. Tell us how this experience looks similar or different from each other. Ooh. That's actually probably the most valuable part of the experience, seeing how it is different.

First of all, it's how unique Plug and Play is. It has the most amount of international offices, the most amount of, over 100,000 startups in the ecosystems there. It's this leviathan beast consisting of so many moving parts inside. Experiences, there's so many differences. Maybe you should narrow it down because it's... Let me give you the biggest differences that I've seen, but please narrow it down to what.

Are you talking about the startups that I'm working with, the investor ecosystem- Yeah ... the employees, the colleagues? I think more on the startup and investor side. What feature do you observe or what industries or trades do they have differently, if there's any? I would say US is relentless. All the founders are relentless. All the investors are relentlessly competing in the market.

Europe is the opposite. Europe is heavily dependent on government funding. Hmm. And you sort of feel whenever there is that new government project that has a lot of funding, there's a lot of move around it, and people want to position themselves comfortably around it. Oh, that sounds like China. Yeah. And then when the red tape, the bureaucracy is finished, everyone kind of chills down and stops moving, and they just feel comfortable where they are until something new starts coming up, or probably more until that entity stops spreading the funding.

By the way, I think that's a big problem for Europe because it's not how... It doesn't create the best motivational ecosystem- Mm-hmm ... for ideas to thrive. I think Japan is a little bit different, right? Japanese have this thing called, it's called Kaizen mentality. Kaizen is this strive to perfection. Oh. And you notice that even you go to the smallest, tiniest, oldest cafe, and there's so many tiny details that someone paid attention to.

The way they frame the painting on the wall, and that's already dust. It's not dust, it's very clean, by the way. The way they take care of everything, the way the chef knows exactly where every product is coming from, and that transfers to everything they do. Right? So I would say in Japan, a lot of the innovation is driven by this idea of creating and just reaching the perfection in what they're doing.

But it stops there. There's a big gap between tech creation and tech commercialization. Same thing with the government funding. It's very government funding. It's reliant very much on government funding, but government would fund creation of the tech, but it wouldn't fund marketing, like, "You need us to pay for your marketing?" "What do you mean?" Ah.

I see. Right? And, there's so many historical reasons for that. One reason is, of course, we're living in a free society today, but Japan is super traditional, rooted in their traditions, and- Right ... the societal structure in the Western world, after the warriors, in every society, historically, the warriors were the high-ups under maybe the politicians or the ruling dynasty's whatever.

But in the Western societies, after warriors, we always had merchants. Merchants were very respected. In Japanese society, farmers come after... No, no, craftsmen come after the warriors, then farmers come after that, and then the merchants were considered the lowest- The bottom ... bottom of the society. Wow. So the commercialization mindset sort of doesn't really stick in Japan.

So I think Japan is US level, even better, self-motivated tech creation, but even worse than Europe motivation to, and understanding about these commercial aspect of the thing. That it doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be good enough to solve the problem right now. I see. We're actually seeing a lot of Chinese company trying to tap into the broad, specific US market.

Are you seeing similar things happening for Japanese startups, maybe? 100%. That's what I'm working exactly on right now, on specialty I got for this as well. I see the biggest opportunity in quantum computing. Mm-hmm. Right now, I'm working with a few quantum, actual quantum computers based on different architectures. Wow. Japan is killing it in physical tech, right?

And we're talking about survivorship bias. US partially was lucky to invest in SaaS and software mainly because that defined the decade, probably. Right. Decade, maybe that decade. Few decades. Right. Right now, what we're seeing with the development of AI, it may be coming back more to the physical tech. Because the new bottleneck is not the coding anymore.

The new bottleneck is physical-Access to the energy, physical compute powers, physical execution of what those AIs are capable of seeing, the computer vision, the sensing, collecting more information from nature because all the information on the web is already scraped and learned by the AIs. Mm-hmm. And you need physical sensors to go and get more information out of the wild- Mm-hmm ... let's put it that way.

So I think Japan has very strong competitive advantages, and this will be the age of Japan. So quantum will be one of those fields for sure. We'll go into- I see ... VR. And to answer your question in a more systems level- Mm-hmm ... what Japan will be good at, they call it suuriawase processes, which is like complex processes. Japanese have this gemba mentality.

Gemba means the place of happening. Mm-hmm. Every company has a gemba. It might be the manufacturing node for Toyota. It might be the call center for some branding company. But in that gemba, everyone shares responsibilities. Information flows very well. To give you an example, like in car manufacturing. In the US, the guy responsible for the brakes would never talk to the person responsible for the engine, and they would just keep specializing in what they are doing.

In Japan, they will talk a lot to each other. They will share information. If there's a change to the engine, it gets heavier, the brakes person will know about it and will adjust the brakes accordingly. So the analog process is not modular, not electronic, but analog, like cameras, another example. Japan is really good at it, and I think the age now is very favorable for Japan, and they are actively discussing it.

I see. And they are- Yeah. Next, I actually want to touch upon a bit on your vision, on your specific approach to how you perceive founders, how you actually see the world, because how you look into founders is a reflection of how you perceive the world, and particularly the world in the future. I remember you once mentioned to me specifically that you look into founders who share a similar vision of how the world should look like, and you invest in them.

So I'm just curious, what is your vision of how the world will look like in maybe 10, 15, 20 years? That's a hard question. Yeah, you're right. I always mention that the biggest thing about understanding if the founder is investable or not is I'm seeing if their perception of the future feels more understandable. Yeah. But I would say it's not... It's not...

Are you still upholding that belief, or you can share anything if that changed. It's like- Right ... touching an elephant in the dark. So we all can touch certain parts of it, try to understand what it looks like, but the whole elephant, you won't see it until the lights are on. So I have my understanding of certain parts of the elephant. I see. But I don't know what the whole elephant looks like.

And the beauty of venture is just being among like-minded people, so you can- I see ... touch the different parts of the elephant and put the puzzle together so you see it more. I see big changes in compute. I see big changes in energy consumption coming. I see big changes in how the AI will be shaped. The future of computers will be not electronic or even quantum.

They will be based on biomaterials, and they'll be- Right ... mimick a lot more humans. Yeah. We'll be seeing these loops of societies influencing how AI behaves, the general- Yeah ... the fundamental models, and then the model behaving how the society behaves. Yeah. Those loops can heavily affect the way AI perceives itself. Totally. At some point, it might think that it's this godly figure that represents the societal sentiment.

So I'm looping back to the beginning. I think energy consumption will be the biggest challenge. Yeah. I think you were quite bullish on anything like XR, VR, AR related. Are you still upholding the same mindset or attitude? For sure. I think it's just like after COVID, we realized just people like working from home. Why wouldn't they like- Yeah ... getting entertained from home?

Yeah. I think VR is just a tiny piece of the puzzle there. We have to catch up in our audio technologies. We have to catch up in our sensing technologies, right? Yeah. On Sushi Tech, I've seen this cool thing. It's a printer that- Mm-hmm ... 3D prints food. And it uses paste that tastes exactly like the food it prints. Wow. So there's just so many ways we can play with senses of people that there's infinitely more possibilities inside your little chamber if you had the right tech than just going out and being in the real world, unfortunately.

I think real-world interactions will become more like a luxury. Like sort of like people listen to vinyl records today because of the vibes more than the quality. That will be the world that we'll be seeing in the future. Makes sense. Yeah. Interesting. There was one other question. It's about if you have the chance to s-own fund, will your investment thesis different from what it is now?

Because in many cases, if for the associate or entry-level investors, their taste or their investment thesis are kind of shaped by the people in the ICs who have the power to pull the trigger. Is your current thesis different from what it would be if you have your own fund in the future? I would say if I had my thesis, I would have been already building that, because as I said, I'm the get the shit done type of guy, and doesn't matter if my track record isn't enough to do that. If I see that has a potential, I would do it.

No, I think my mentors in Plug and Play at USC and everywhere else, they have a much deeper understanding of vision of everything, and I've yet learned it from. It doesn't mean I copy their vision- Mm-hmm ... but there's so many things that they see, and I go like, "Oh, wow, okay." Then there was this type of question that could have been asked, and why didn't I even think about coming up with tackling the problem from that specific angle. So I think my mentors are way, way, way ahead of me, and I'm very lucky for that.

Yeah, I think, Lucas, you can continue for. We know you're the founder of PsyNet started at USC. Tell us what PsyNet is in your own words. PsyNet is a big experiment. For me, it was an experiment with time. Because a lot of accelerators, they just, from my experiences, they suck with time maybe. They disrespect founders' time in every possible way. Founder has a problem they want to solve, there is an application period and deadline that just like...

So it takes so many things change from the time you apply to the time you get to the accelerator. They make founders sit in the rooms and listen to lectures that are just not relevant to them. Everyone is fed with this product market fit type of lectures. And then there's some things that founders only need to solve once and never to come back to, and then you'd spend time to teach them how to do it, and the founder goes and solves it.

It just creates a lot of waste of time. So PsyNet was this idea of trying to build an accelerator that is built for solving problems in the most time-efficient way. Interesting. We already have many high-quality clubs and organizations focusing on venture and startup across undergrad, both undergrad and graduate level. Why do you think it's important to build another initiative, like PsyNet?

And how does it, in your vision, how does it fit into the USC entrepreneurship ecosystem? In some sense, it doesn't, and that was the whole point, right? Okay. We have dozens of accelerators in USC. Yeah, already have. All of them, we have so many. And I don't want to name them because I'm kind of speaking against their ideology. And all of them are built to, they're building walls around USC, Marshall, between the schools, between the school and the city.

All of them have this thesis of investing only in Trojan-led ideas- Right ... and teams, but venture doesn't work that way. Venture is an ecosystem, and PsyNet's idea is, A, to demolish the walls around Marshall and connect it to the ecosystem. If you're an LA founder, feel free to come in. University shouldn't be any more these segregated places that people are...

People in schools are just people who chose to do certain things. They're not better or worse in any aspect than, and it's, A, attempt to connect the LA ecosystem to USC. B, it is what I call the power of handshake. There is a lot of dry powder. There's a lot of potential in schools that we don't realize. Mm-hmm. Students are wasting their times, in some sense, doing classes.

You are not creating real value or solving problems of the past. You're studying the cases just to get the experience. Why not get that experience from solving real problems of real companies today, right? And that creates a lot of value for the startups. They come and they get the support. If they don't like it, they just made a network. They made the strongest network of the United States, the Trojan network.

And again, it gives credit. A lot of people in MBA aid people to different careers, and they need these emerging tech experiences. From the moment of handshake, they already have that emerging tech experience. A lot of startups are fighting for credibility, right? If they have done anything serious, if anyone validated that, and doing something in a top 20 school of the US is already a validation for them.

So that's the power of handshake. Both sides get some validation for the efforts they're making to reach success. So I think those three things, demolishing the walls, experience-based learning, and the power of handshake are three things that PsyNet creates value in, and that's why it's important. Hmm, definitely. And there was actually one of the more kind of, how to say, it's not a philosophical question, but it's bounced back to you were mentioning that by setting up PsyNet, you're actually encouraging students kind of go out of their classrooms and solve real problems.

And now we have been seeing VCs are looking for younger and younger founders to some extent. Correct me if that's wrong. And for example, college dropouts are maybe already too late, and they're looking for high schoolers or I don't know if it's possible they want to look for middle schoolers in the most extreme case. And are these ideas of the founders they are targeting, are they just a social media hype, or is it like a real solid investment thesis?

I mean, there is always untapped communities with an untapped potential, for sure. And during the Tower Times, during summer with Lucas at Plug and Play, we had one of the startups that the founder, she was underaged, and she had to be with her mother on the meetings, which was a wild experience at the beginning, but then I realized, like, why wouldn't it be? Also depends on the environment and on the perception of the-- So all the limitations are in our heads. I would say yes, the typical founder image in the US is a college dropout.

The typical founder image in Japan is a university professor with like- Oh ... three years of tenure at least. Interesting. Hmm. So limitations are in our heads. Why there wouldn't be a fund that focuses on founders that are 60 years and above, right? I'm not a big fan of starting the thesis from a group with a potential, untapped potential. Mm-hmm.

I would rather start from a market, a trend, or a certain technology that you can become an expert in, but then funnel it down and just have these reminders, just have the stickers all over your board. Just don't let your stereotypes limit your investment capability. Hmm. Definitely. And age is simply one of the criterias that may matters or may not matters, but yeah, as you mentioned, technology may be the source where great startups that grows up.

And we would also ask you another question in a little bit, larger question there, is your attitude towards AI. I know it's super large, but you can narrow it down in a way you feel comfortable. So there was a saying that there will be a class of people called the permanent underclass, which describes an end day image where normal people contribute zero economic value, and all the AI is around the production and economic activities and only these AI oligarchs own all the wealth. Do you agree on that?

If so, to what extent do you agree? And if not, what kind of thing do you try to do to prevent that from happening? It's a large word, but yeah, basically that's the direction. Is that a question that leads to universal income? Yeah. That can be a solution in that people's idea. So what I think is, it's a question more about the fundamental human nature.

And this is a debate that I keep having with people, and I just can claim an opinion, not a solution that I have. In my perspective, people are overly obsessed with the social status. They need to feel that they have done something that someone else couldn't have done. Like just think about today, we are living in an age of the basic needs that you're saying that will be addressed are already addressed in a lot of senses.

The majority of people in the United States are not fighting for survival, for shelter, for food and water. They're fighting for having this designer purse that would communicate their social status. So seeing that, you already sort of see it, and people are still doing things to try to convey that they're better than others. And will AI create enough resources that humans will evolve into these more zen creatures?

Maybe. Some people make the references that regionally, people were built different and were living different. They were living for the community. That community was always above it. You can a little bit see that in Japan. But so far from what I see, I don't see there's any more reason for that evolution to happen today than it was the reason for it to happen 100 years ago when we discovered pesticides and could make enough food about people being worried about dying from starving that day.

Right. So I think as people will retrain, people will start using AI. There will be companies who will be creating easy mechanism to implement AI in your life, like neural tech is becoming clean enough. Is it so? Yeah. I think nothing will change fundamentally and therefore people have to retrain. People have to learn new skills. Yeah. I mean, I have a sense of feeling, people agree that their deepest human nature is indefinite, and it's probably not an easy thing for innovation like AI to fully satiate what we have deep down in our heart, right?

I took a look at your LinkedIn profile. You have so many titles in your LinkedIn. A couple examples include Tokyo, Los Angeles, venture capital, immersion tech entrepreneurs, international finance expert, MBA, USC, right? Are you positioning yourself more like a generalist across these fields or are you thinking about like a potential specialist position in some of these selected fields?

To answer that question, I think it continues the AI topic. How does it continue the AI topic? In a sense-The many skills and the ways I position myself with AI. AI will be great at replacing specific skills of humans. Hmm. What it will not be great at is filling this in-between places. For example, there could be an AI that can read perfectly the customer center, can collect all the possible reviews, and you don't need to waste human hours to talk to the customer and see what his needs are.

And there will be an AI that will be implementing the changes necessary to the product in a way that's the most efficient, ecological, and effective. But you still need a human to bridge those two different skills to understand, let's say, if the complaint of the customer was the issue of the product or it was the customer was just using it in a stupid way. You need to change the playbook that you give to the customer, you need to change the product itself. And I think the place of humans in the age of AI will be in between those skills.

And you have to cherish the diversity of your skills you have, and you have to push it more, be it in your resume, LinkedIn, or wherever, because that's your true value in the age of AI. If you go somewhere and say that, "Hey, I'm super specialized in this one thing, and that's the only one thing I can do well," some people might buy it, but you'll be replaced in some time if you keep doing one specialized thing, and you don't bridge skills. Right. That makes a lot of sense.

This will be the second to last question. We all make decisions regularly, a lot of decisions on a daily basis, but some of them are trivial, right? While others may have more profound implications in our future. To you, what was the one decision that you made or people around you made that profoundly changed your life or the direction that it went?

I would say it's not just the decision itself, although it played a huge role, it was how the decision was made. And it was right after the war. I was part of the war in 2020- Oh ... in Armenia. And after the war, I realized I need to make big changes in my life, and I was going to an undergrad school in Armenia, and I've decided to transfer to the US.

I finished three years of undergrad studies in Armenia. All the people around me were saying, "You either lose years. Instead of losing a year at least for transferring- Uh-huh ... you can just do a master's instead." Right. "You won't lose that year." And majority of other people would say that's physically impossible. If that would be possible, everyone would do that.

Long story short, I pushed the transfer to University of Massachusetts in Boston without losing a single year, a single month on the way. It was a long process. I had to loop in some BBC reporters just to make them feel that they shouldn't be depriving me of my rights to prove that my education wasn't any worse and to take many exams. But I pushed that through, and the fact that it happened after the war, and the fact that everyone was saying, "Mate, that's impossible," and I still made it.

And I think US is this, yeah, it's a venture hub. I've learned so much. I didn't know what private equity is before coming to the US. Wow. That was how much my worldview expanded. Wow. That was the best decision in my life. But the way how it happened, getting the impossible done, going against everyone's advice not to waste time, helped me realize that I can keep doing this.

Wow. And that's actually touches perfectly on my last question. For all the other student founders or early-stage founders, not necessarily students, out there who feel early or uncertain, what would you want them to hear? What's your advice? Uncertain is good. Own the chaos. If you're uncertain, it means you have-- Okay, during the war, it was a war that we lost, right?

Yeah. And we had this joke. So the soldier reports to the commander. "Commander, we're encircled." And the commander goes, "Great, we can attack in any direction." Oh, wow. So if you are encircled, you can attack in any direction. It's actually the world is your oyster is probably being said in this case, because if you know exactly what you want to do, and especially if you know what you don't like, oh, man, that's the worst.

You're limiting yourself so much. So to the people who are just getting to their programs, I was one of you. I am still one of you, right? I'm still studying here in Japan as well in exchange. I had no idea how to break into venturing. People were saying like- Uh-huh ... I was networking my ass off. I was networking my ass off. I'm, "What does it mean?

Is it like collecting the souls on LinkedIn? Is it just going and begging a certain venture capitalist that I deserve an intern?" Like, how does this even work? And people would tell me these overly complicated stories of how great they are, like they figured out the most relevant thing to say over email, and they would send that relevant thing every Tuesday, 8:00 AM. I don't appreciate those people overcomplicating it for me.

The solution is just be there. If you don't know how something is done, but you're curious enough, just be around. Go to events, talk to people, watch YouTube videos until you start owning that. That's how everything is learned. When we were kids, we didn't know how to walk. We just tried- Exactly ... failed, tried, failed until we figured out, and now we can walk, right?

It's the best place that you can be at, that you're curious and you have many possibilities. There is nothing better than that freedom of making a choice. Thank you so much, Tigran. Thank you so much, Tigran, for your time and for joining us tonight, and for being with us on this episode. I really appreciate your time. And folks- Thank you ... if you like what we are building at 18VC, don't forget to like and subscribe, and stay tuned for our next releases.

See you. Bye. Thank you. See you. Thanks a lot, guys. Keep an eye on Quantum, especially the one coming from Japan. Will make a big difference. All right. Thank you