Special episode, live from Beverly Hills, California from the SPECs launch event. What would you want to build on the most fashionable AR smart glasses, yet?

At the SPECS launch events in Beverly Hills in September, I connected with fashion influencers, press, professors, and of course the creators and developers making apps for these glasses. Awesome Future was invited to the launch, and after Evan Spiegel's presentation, I took my recording gear around the party to ask what this moment means to the people celebrating it.

**Editor’s note: These were live conversations from packed events, so the audio quality varies a little. Watch the full episode on YouTube for the full, captioned experience.

This special episode of The Tech Glow Up brings you into those conversations while we're between seasons. I asked everyone the same five questions and grouped their answers together, so you can hear how people with different experiences approach the same new device. AR, or augmented reality, puts digital content into your view of the world around you. These guests are figuring out how to make that useful, enjoyable, and something people choose to wear.

Episode Key Moment Highlights

• [00:03:21] Who are you and what do you do?
• [00:05:07] What do you want to build for these new wearables?
• [00:09:47] What caught your attention the most today?
• [00:14:28] Was there anything you wanted to hear more of that you didn't hear enough of?
• [00:18:36] What is holding back the industry the most?
• [00:25:52] Fill in the blank: Spatial creators are...

You'll hear a kitchen app that puts instructions around the room, ideas for shared experiences at events, and what it takes to help someone try a different way of using a computer.

I'm excited to share the people behind those ideas and the experiences they want to make possible.

Like, subscribe, and share The Tech Glow Up.

Watch the full episode with captions on YouTube → https://youtu.be/jdEclV35vG8

Join the Tech Glow Up newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Mental health shapes how a founder builds, decides, and leads, and most of us only talk about it when something has gone wrong. This special episode of The Tech Glow Up is a peek at what I'm up to while the show is on its season break: emceeing the first annual World Mental Health Day gathering in Portland, Oregon, hosted by Joyely at the Upstart Collective.

My own experience is the starting point. Paying attention to my body and my mental health, and to how the two support the work I'm trying to do, has been the biggest investment I've made in Awesome Future. Mental health is something you plan for and work to maintain, and it touches every other part of your life. This gathering gives Portland founders, civic leaders, and neighbors a place to talk about it together.

Join us on Friday, October 9, from 4:00 to 7:00 PM at the Upstart Collective, 111 SW 5th Ave in Portland. Food and drinks are provided, and community organizations will be tabling throughout the afternoon.

• Episode Key Moment Highlights:
• [00:00:00] Founder success and mental health, and why caring for both has been the biggest investment in my work.
• [00:01:20] Planning for mental health the way you plan for any other part of your business and your life.
• [00:02:27] The JQ Emotions Map from Joyely, a tool for understanding your emotions and how they show up in your body.
• [00:03:20] Mental health in the age of AI, with Dr. Ali Maaxa on what an always-on, hyper-productive coworker means for founders.
• [00:04:12] A panel with Portland civic leaders on mental health, startups, and the founder journey in this city.

Small change over time is transformation, and this gathering is a good place to start. I would love to see you there, and I hope you will bring a friend.

Register for World Mental Health Day → https://eventship.com/event/the-1st-annual-world-mental-health-day-hosted-by-joyely

Watch on YouTube →https://youtu.be/kcwona82GSQ

Join the Tech Glow Up newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

This is a special episode of The Tech Glow Up from SPECS launch day. I'm at the Beverly Wilshire for the SPECS smart glasses media preview, sharing first thoughts on the day of the public launch — September 16th.

I want to be upfront: I haven't tried every demo. This is about 30 minutes in the glasses from media day, not the full reveal. But the thing that stood out most was something that was missing. There's no hard line between the display and the world.

The screen feels blended with the world, not a picture-in-picture overlay. That's what makes the whole SPECS wearable computer experience feel integrated and contextual — not like you're looking through a device.

The field of view is clean, content is bright and readable, and you can anchor it in place or let it follow you. Fast streaming, clear picture, even in a bright room.

• [00:00:25] Why SPECS exists: technology that makes you more present, not less
• [00:01:32] Enterprise partnerships announced: Salesforce, AWS, NVIDIA, Hololight
• [00:02:54] SPECS Intelligence — the AI layer across glasses, Mac, and iPhone
• [00:03:40] First-person: what it feels like to see through the SPECS
• [00:05:28] The weight question — why fit mattered more than heaviness
• [00:06:15] Multiplayer consumer AR: the moment we've never had before
• [00:09:54] Open questions: battery life, connectivity, and what developers build next

I noticed the fit before the weight. The enterprise announcements were significant — heads-up retail, AI-powered work instructions, 3D spatial workstation workflows. SPECS Intelligence is the piece I'm watching most carefully.

More than anything, I'm excited to see what designers and developers build for multiplayer consumer AR — apps that help people connect and be more present. We've never had a moment where there were enough high-powered devices to see what these interactions could be.

Watch on YouTube →

Join the Tech Glow Up newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

This first international episode of The Tech Glow Up was recorded live in Harajuku, Japan at the offices of Mawari — a company building the streaming infrastructure for the next generation of smart glasses and immersive experiences since 2017.

Luis Oscar Ramírez is the co-founder and CEO. He started Mawari in Shibuya with a straightforward premise: if the world is three-dimensional, the internet shouldn't be flat. Nine years later, the company is one of the select few in XR that has earned more in licensing revenue than what they've raised from VC. Despite having an early innovation in a slow developing space, Mawari has adapted and grown; surviving when many of their peers have not.

They also built a distributed compute network backed by a real community in Japan. These are people who show up on Sundays to work on the mission, who sent handwritten congratulations notes to the company's virtual artist at her debut, who see participation in the network as something they actually care about.

This conversation covers what it takes to stay building when a market isn't ready. Luis talks about the moment that reframed everything for him: watching people with no connection to the tech industry spend 60 minutes in headsets at a concert, crying, holding hands. Not because the hardware was impressive. Because the content made them forget the hardware entirely. That's his definition of market fit.

We also get into the Techno Satoyama — his five-layer model for a self-sustaining ecosystem — and why Mawari moved to Harajuku to send a message: they're building culture, not just software.

Key Moments

• [00:00:51] What Mawari does and where the idea came from
• [00:09:50] Earning more in licensing than you've raised
• [00:11:11] What building in Japan teaches you about accountability
• [00:21:38] VTubers and why emotional presence beats impressive graphics
• [00:27:29] The five-layer Techno Satoyama model
• [00:34:44] Six-month milestones: platform launch, community event, 200,000 nodes

Watch the full Harajuku episode on YouTube → https://youtu.be/syDOFUIt6uE

Join the Tech Glow Up newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

About Luis Oscar Ramirez

Luis is the Founder and CEO of Mawari. In this role, his mission is to enable Synthetic Reality for everyone. He is committed to experimenting and developing with emerging technologies such as XR, 5G, cloud rendering and streaming, and has designed a patent pending 3D Streaming CODEC and split rendering technology that runs in the Mawari Network, a decentralized 3D & XR content delivery platform that breaks the bottlenecks of infrastructure supply for real-time rendering, and the lack of local compute power on XR Devices.

Mawari’s proprietary CODEC enables the highest visual quality to be streamed to mobile XR Devices by substantially lowering the heavy processing requirements of rich interactive and ultra-realistic 3D content like real-time digital humans, reducing cost, data size and battery consumption while unlocking scalability.

Prior to Mawari, he spearheaded and co-founded the Japanese version of MUTEK, a world-renowned festival dedicated to the dissemination and development of digital creativity in sound, music, and audio-visual art.

He also served as a Global Head of Marketing at MUSIC Tribe, one of the world’s largest holding companies for pro audio and music instruments.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Episode one started with a hypothesis: innovation is hard, and you shouldn't have to do it alone. 101 episodes later — recorded in under two years — that's still the most consistently true thing on this show.

This is a solo episode where I'm marking The Tech Glow Up's milestone and sharing what 100-plus conversations with founders, CEOs, and product leaders have actually taught me. The patterns are real: the innovators who make it through the barren middle — that stretch where insights come slowly, nothing is quite done, and the uncertainty is constant — are almost always the ones who built the right community around them before they needed it. Mentors, advisors, the people who believe in you before you believe in yourself. That is not a nice-to-have. It's the differentiator.

I also talk about what it means to host a show where five guests have cried on camera — and why I kept every single one of those moments in the episode. That emotional connection to a problem is one of the most reliable signals of a founder who's going to make it. The why has to be deeper than the pitch deck.

Key Moments:

• [00:01:30] Why I started The Tech Glow Up: curiosity, examples, and the gaps founders keep hitting
• [00:07:00] The top four lessons from 100+ episodes — what keeps showing up across every guest and industry
• [00:09:54] Five guests cried on this show, and why I kept it: the human connection is the differentiator
• [00:12:10] UX as a competitive advantage: why friction in your product is costing you more than you think
• [00:19:00] The real reason serial innovators keep going when the money alone wouldn't be enough

The through line is the same across every conversation: the founders who succeed aren't just the ones with the best ideas. They're the ones with the clearest why, the most honest relationship with their users, and the people around them who kept pushing when it was hard.

Watch on YouTube → https://youtu.be/I4znSE8W3IU
Join the Tech Glow Up newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

XR is the most fragmented technology ecosystem since the early internet — and Sean Mann, CEO of RP1, thinks the industry is making the same mistake AOL did.

Get a front row seat to the conversations about AI, AR smartglasses, and the future of enterprise technology from Augmented World Expo 2026.

Everyone is building walled gardens. Devices don't talk to each other. Enterprises can't build things that will work everywhere. And every developer who invests in one platform risks watching their skills disappear when that platform does.

The web broke all of this open in the '90s with one thing: an open-standards browser. Sean's argument is that spatial computing needs the exact same move right now.

At AWE 2026, RP1 launched OMBI — the Open Metaverse Browser Initiative — alongside Sneeze, an open-source spatial rendering engine designed to sit inside any web or metaverse browser the way Blink and WebKit do today.

Their goal isn't to win the browser war — it's to make the browser war unnecessary. Walk up to a location in AR glasses, connect to what's around you, and not have to think about which platform you're on. Just like going to a URL.

Key Moments:

• [00:01:25] The walled garden problem: why XR fragmentation mirrors the early internet's AOL era
• [00:04:15] From mass multiplayer to open metaverse: how RP1 found its real mission
• [00:07:07] The SOM: inventing a spatial evolution of the DOM for multi-origin experiences
• [00:10:08] Sneeze: the open engine any web or metaverse browser can embed
• [00:18:44] The Open Metaverse Academic Alliance and partnering with the University of Rochester

Sean's read is that the standards being written right now will determine whether the spatial web is open to everyone or controlled by a few. He's betting on the former — and building the infrastructure to make it happen.

Watch on YouTube → https://youtu.be/KcsIsXU0s8c

Join the Tech Glow Up newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

#OpenMetaverse #SpatialComputing #TechGlowUp #AWE2026 #XR

About Sean Mann

Sean Mann, CEO of RP1, is a visionary leader with 25 years of entrepreneurial and technology expertise. In 2023, he was named 'Innovator of the Year' at the WebXR Awards, ranked as a top 20 Metaverse Industry founder by Metaverse Insider, and a featured Industry thought leader on CNBC.

Sean shapes RP1's strategic direction, drawing from a diverse background in B2C and B2B sectors, including medical, consumer electronics, software technology, fitness, and wellness. His career highlights encompass business transformation, strategic partnerships, and pioneering marketing strategies.

Sean and RP1 are active members of the Metaverse Standards Forum, the Open ARCloud, IEEE, The World Wide Web Consortium

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Most conversations about smart glasses focus on the software, the display, or the AI. Omar Abed, CTO of InvenSense, a TDK group company, wants you to think about what's underneath all of that.

Get a front row seat to the conversations about AI, AR smartglasses, and the future of enterprise technology from Augmented World Expo 2026.

Today's smart glasses carry 10 to 20 sensors each — and by count, sensors are the most numerous component in any pair. They're what connects the glasses to the person wearing them, connects the glasses to the world around them, and generates the raw data that makes the AI useful in the first place.

TDK started as the brand on your cassette tape. Today their sensors are inside more than 80% of the smart glasses on the market — you just don't see the name on the box anymore.

Omar oversees all of TDK's sensor technology development, and at AWE 2026 he made the case that the next big unlock for wearables isn't the display or the model. It's audio, power efficiency, and what he calls the "disappear effect" — the point where the form factor gets small and comfortable enough that you forget you're wearing them two minutes after you put them on.

Key Moments:

• [00:01:00] Sensors by the numbers: why today's smart glasses carry 10 to 20 sensors per pair
• [00:02:00] The "disappear effect": what it takes to make smart glasses truly wearable all day
• [00:04:00] Privacy by design: why keeping data on-device is a prerequisite for mass adoption
• [00:05:57] Audio as the next wave: why voice is the most natural interface for wearables
• [00:07:00] Pay it forward: the mentor chain that shaped a career in sensor engineering

The technology that makes smart glasses seamless isn't visible. Omar's work is making sure it keeps getting smaller, smarter, and better at protecting the people wearing it.

You can learn more about TDK MEMS and TMR sensors in smart glasses at https://www.invensense.tdk.com/en-us/smart-glasses

Watch on YouTube → https://youtu.be/kApav6sqA5g

Join the Tech Glow Up newsletter on Substack → https://substack.com/@mxnathanc

#SmartGlasses #SpatialComputing #TechGlowUp #AWE2026 #Sensors

About Omar Abed

Omar Abed is CTO of InvenSense, a TDK Group company. He holds degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley and USC, is a Harvard Business School PLD alumnus, and holds five patents in MEMS pressure sensors.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.

Get a front row seat to the conversations about AI, AR smartglasses, and the future of enterprise technology from Augmented World Expo 2026.

Michael Allen Nesmith spent 10 years as a creative director at Amazon's Brand Lab — and built something there that had nothing to do with e-commerce: an in-house interpreting agency that embedded sign language interpreters across his team and eventually scaled to Amazon's global workforce. He left that behind to start Non-Breaking Space, a consulting firm helping tech companies build products that actually work for deaf and hard-of-hearing users from day one.

His argument is straightforward. ASL is a spatial language. Signers navigate three-dimensional space as grammar — direction, location, and movement all carry meaning.

The smart glasses industry is working hard to invent spatial context. Michael has been living it his whole life. His response when a company builds spatial hardware without any deaf input: "Uh, hello. We're here. We've been here for a very long time."

At AWE 2026, he walked me through the survivor bias of accessibility data, the curb cut effect as a product strategy, and what it actually means to pressure-test hardware when you're someone the product was never designed for in the first place.

Key Moments:

• [00:00:29] Non-Breaking Space: why Michael left Amazon to consult on deaf inclusion in spatial tech
• [00:01:40] ASL as a spatial language: what the glasses industry is still missing
• [00:05:01] The curb cut effect: how designing for disability creates better products for everyone
• [00:09:09] Nothing for us without us: what real accessibility in the design phase looks like
• [00:16:23] Survivor bias and disability data: "No data is data"

No data on disabled consumers is not a neutral fact. It's a signal your product isn't reaching them — and that's a design failure.

Watch the full episode on YouTube → https://youtu.be/tT2wlc2Z6lc

#SpatialComputing #AccessibilityDesign #TechGlowUp #AWE2026 #SmartGlasses

About Michael Allen Nesmith

Michael Allen Nesmith is a Deaf creative director and accessibility strategist building Non-Breaking Space ( ), a disability-led creative studio focused on emerging technology and accessibility consulting. Prior to founding Non-Breaking Space, Michael spent a decade at Amazon's Brand Innovation Lab, where he led creative on emerging advertising tactics within Amazon's ecosystem.

He also built the Fire TV Global Brand Book, now in active use across 1,500+ marketers worldwide. Earlier in his career, he served as Art Director at Wieden + Kennedy Portland, contributing to early concept development for Google Glass marketing, and went on to build one of the first subtitle apps for Glass in 2013, the same instinct that shapes his work today.

He holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, three B.A. degrees from Gallaudet University, and a CPACC certification. Michael has delivered a TED talk on inclusive wearable design and has been featured in Forbes, Campaign US, and Puget Sound Business Journal's 40 Under 40.

He also founded Amazon's first in-house ASL interpreting agency and has taught design courses and ASL at Columbia College Chicago, DePaul, Portland State, and SAIC.

A "glow up" signifies a positive transformation, reflecting the journey of becoming a better, more successful version of oneself.

At The Tech Glow Up, we humanize the startup and innovation landscape by focusing on the essential aspects of the entrepreneurial journey. Groundbreaking ideas are often ahead of their time, making resilience and perseverance vital for founders and product leaders.

In our podcast, we engage with innovators to discuss their transformative ideas, the challenges they face, and how they create value for future success.

If you're a founder or product leader seeking your own glow up, or a seasoned entrepreneur with stories to share, we invite you to join our guest list via this link.