Archimedes in the Think Tank: My Conversation on The Builders Podcast

https://youtu.be/cma6oXUAlog?si=MzrwgZHDRamP-EOU

On the In Medias Res Life, Why Ego Death Is Leadership, and How to Build Your Own Lightning

I sat down with Matt Levenhagen on The Builders Podcast — a show dedicated to uncovering the first principles behind building businesses, products, and services — for a conversation that ran a little over an hour and covered ground I don't always get to explore in this depth. Matt is a builder himself (Unified Web Design, Unified Plugins) and asks the kinds of questions you only get from someone who has actually built things. We talked about the middle-of-life epic poem, why the greatest generation's business model is worth resurrecting, why you can't invent to invent, and how to build your own lightning rod when the market doesn't hand you one. If you're mostly interested in the highlights, here's the map. Timestamps, the ideas at each stop, and the through-line that connects them.

⏱ [0:00] — Once Someone Comes On, It's Not Yours Anymore

"Once another person comes on, it's not yours anymore. That has been a guiding principle. To younger entrepreneurs — sometimes it might make sense to find some older folks who have a different viewpoint on things."

The opening line of the conversation is the guiding principle I now run NULU by. The day someone else invested real time, energy, or thought into the project, it stopped being mine. That's not a slogan. It's an operating rule. It changes how I make decisions, how I share equity, how I write the story, and how I show up in team meetings.

Twenty years ago I wouldn't have been able to say that honestly. My identity would have been too tied up in being the guy. Age helped. So did some deliberate work on ego. If you're a younger founder, you don't have to wait for age to force the lesson — you can adopt the frame now. Find older mentors who've been forced through the ego death. Learn from what took them thirty years to internalize. The advantage isn't age itself. It's perspective. Perspective can be borrowed if you're humble enough to ask.

⏱ [3:52] — The Origin Story: Grand Rapids, West Point, and the Long Arc

"There is no origin story of wanting to be an inventor. It's more like a Marvel thing — circumstances came together with a certain formula, at the timing and luck and resources."

Born in Cleveland, grew up in East Grand Rapids, Michigan. West Point after high school. Fourth Infantry Division as an artillery officer for five years — I served my full commitment because I felt a real obligation both to the taxpayers who'd paid for my education and to the Colorado ski slopes that needed me on weekends. Chicago after that, because my wife is from Iowa and Chicago was the sensible middle ground between Michigan, Cleveland, and Iowa.

Rail castings for the international market. Telecom (dense wave division multiplexing — real cutting-edge stuff for the time). Lending for twenty-plus years. And now NULU. There's no single throughline where I was always secretly heading toward inventing an adaptive kitchen tool. The origin story is the Marvel version: circumstances stacked, timing aligned, resources appeared. The luck was real. But so was the accumulated skill from every one of those industries, which I couldn't see the value of while I was inside them.

⏱ [7:20] — The Circular Saw Blade Moment

"I was having a particularly bad flare-up right before my shoulder reconstruction. Couldn't swing a hammer. Loved to cook, having issues in the kitchen. I was in the shop and there was a circular saw blade — and I just kept seeing that circle."

The origin story of NULU itself is about as unglamorous as it gets. My shoulder was failing. I couldn't swing a hammer to make traditional knives. I loved to cook and was losing that. I was hanging out in my shop looking at scrap metal, and there was a circular saw blade in the pile. I'd used them before to make basic knives. But this time I just kept seeing the circle — not as raw material, but as geometry.

The first prototype is ugly. I keep it in what I call the NULU Museum out in the shop. It looks like it could've been pulled from a Viking tomb. But it worked. And that ugly first version was enough evidence that the concept was real. The lesson I keep giving other founders: your first prototype does not need to be beautiful. It needs to prove the concept. Beauty comes later, once you've earned the right to invest in it.

⏱ [8:37] — In Medias Res: Middle Age Might Be Your Best

"I wrote an article this week about the middle of your life being possibly your best — like in medias res, the epic poem. The story doesn't start at the beginning. It starts in the middle, after the hero has been through enough to be shaped."

In medias res is the classical epic poem convention — starting the story in the middle, once the hero has already been shaped by enough life to be interesting. Greek epics do this. Roman epics do this. The best modern storytelling still does this. And yet we treat middle age as the slow descent from a peak that already happened.

That's backwards. The middle is when the story actually starts. All the failures, all the industries you didn't love, all the businesses that didn't work — those aren't wasted material. They're the shaping. If you're 45 or 55 or 65 and you're feeling like it's too late, look at the structure of every epic ever written. The hero doesn't show up until Book II. You're in Book II. Your story is starting.

⏱ [10:57] — Character, Grit, and the Corporate Comedown

"What jaded me a little in the corporate world is you go there kind of expecting the same degree of ethics and character. I don't think it's there. Everyone talks about the greatest generation — 85% of small businesses were owned by World War II vets. That built a successful company."

The military taught me that character is currency and grit is the operating system. Corporate America taught me that neither is particularly rewarded once shareholder value becomes the singular measure. That doesn't mean corporate America is evil. It means the system was built to optimize for something specific, and character isn't at the top of that list.

The greatest generation ran an economy where 85% of small businesses were owned by World War II veterans. That's not nostalgia. That's a genuinely different distribution of ownership and character throughout the economy. As we're building NULU, we're deliberately trying to build a company where shareholder value matters and where culture, character, and integrity are core inputs — not decorative outputs. That's the model I want to normalize, one company at a time.

⏱ [13:07] — The Telecom Crash and the Decision About Corporate America

"They owed me a 15% raise. It was documented. The market crashed, and they said 'sorry.' That's when I looked at it and said 'I no longer want my destiny defined by that.'"

Specific moment I can pinpoint. Early 2000s. Telecom. A raise I'd earned, documented, and been assured of — evaporated the moment the market crashed. My boss (a great guy I still talk to on social) had no power to change it. That was the moment I stopped seeing corporate compensation as a reliable measure of my value and started looking for a path where my value would be defined by me.

Took me twenty more years to fully act on it. Twenty years is a long time. That's the pace of most real career transitions — not the six-week reinvention stories that get sold on LinkedIn. If you're mid-way through a similar realization and it's taking longer than you thought, welcome to the club. You're on schedule.

⏱ [15:31] — The Statistic I Made Peace With

"The successful founders will have started seven businesses before they hit. I was like — that works out for me too."

The statistic I keep coming back to. Most successful founders have started roughly seven businesses before one hits. I had the airport-luggage-with-kinetic-charging idea in 2005. A prepping business built around an insurance-model quiz. A leadership development business. All of them did marginally okay. None of them hit. I look back now and I can name exactly why each one failed — team commitment mismatch, wrong market model, wrong timing.

For a while that back-catalog embarrassed me. Now I see it differently. Those weren't failures. They were the required reps. The overnight-success story is almost always the entrepreneurial version of the actor who's been working twenty years before anyone noticed. If you're a founder with a back-catalog of things that didn't work, don't hide it. It's your training.

⏱ [16:57] — My 19-Year-Old Son's Line

"I owe it to my 19-year-old son. He'd been through his own transformation and he said 'no — it happened when it should happen.' And I thought — that's exactly right."

The reframe that landed hardest. I was lamenting to my son that I wish I'd figured this out fifteen years ago. He stopped me: "No, Dad. It happened when it should happen." His timing was better than any professional advice I'd received. Because he understood something I still had trouble with — every earlier attempt shaped the current one. Take away any of the failures and NULU isn't what it is.

Matt made the same point with a story about his friend Will, who told him twenty years ago not to regret his non-programming path because those experiences were what made him unique. Same lesson. Same underlying truth. Your accumulated weirdness is your competitive advantage. Optimize for using it, not for erasing it.

⏱ [18:37] — My Wife, the Bladesmithing Class, and the Hobby That Turned Into an Invention

"She bought me a beautiful knife on vacation, met the guy who made it. Turns out he taught classes. My son and I did the first-ever father-son version of the class. Hobbies are a great way to move into other things — and it doesn't have to be a side hustle."

The chain that led to NULU started with my wife buying me a handmade knife on vacation. The maker turned out to teach classes. My son and I signed up. That class became the toehold that eventually became the company. Hobbies are underrated as career inputs. Not because every hobby should be monetized — most shouldn't — but because hobbies teach you what your actual interests are, unfiltered by economic pressure.

I found out I wasn't a great bladesmith. I don't have the patience for finish work. But I discovered I was a much better inventor — that the interesting question for me wasn't "how do I make a beautiful knife?" but "how do I make a better knife?" Those are radically different questions. The class helped me discover which one I was actually asking.

⏱ [22:04] — My Grandfather's Bayonet-Turned-Carving-Knife

"I have a knife that was my grandfather's — it looks like a bayonet turned into a carving knife. It's a cool family artifact. I hope sometimes the knives I give people will be that kind of thing generations from now."

The version of legacy I care about. Not the headstone. The heirloom. My grandfather's bayonet-turned-carving-knife is a family object with a hundred years of story attached to it. If any of the knives I've made — or the ones NULU eventually ships — end up as that object in someone else's family a hundred years from now, I've done something meaningful.

Founders often chase legacy through IPOs and acquisitions. Those are one kind of legacy. There's another kind, quieter and longer-lasting, where the physical object outlives the founder and carries the story forward in the hands of people who never met you. Adaptive tools have a particular chance at that kind of legacy, because they're personal and daily and intimate. That's the version I'm building for.

⏱ [25:39] — Make Your Own Luck

"An entrepreneur said on a podcast: you make your own luck. He'd talk about staying at the bar longer when he was younger. For me — I took the prototype to a friend's kid's graduation because I knew he'd be cooking. And a mutual friend at that party turned out to be my future design partner."

I heard an interview once where a founder — I don't remember the business, might have been fractional plane ownership — said "you make your own luck." The way he did it was staying at bars longer, because the deals happened after most people went home. I took a version of that advice.

I brought a prototype to a friend's kid's graduation party because I knew there would be cooking involved. A mutual friend at that party was a designer — I knew him, but I hadn't put him in professional context. That's the childhood-teacher-out-of-costume moment. I'd been seeing Gordon socially for years without ever thinking "this is the guy who could design NULU." Once I brought the prototype into a social setting where his skills were relevant, everything shifted. He looked at it and said "we have to do this." And that was the beginning of the real company.

The lesson: you don't have to engineer lucky events. You have to engineer the conditions under which lucky events become possible. Bring the prototype. Show up in person. Cross-pollinate your networks. Put yourself in the rooms where the collision could happen.

⏱ [27:43] — There's No Bolt of Lightning. You Build the Rod.

"In a Frankenstein movie, the doctor sets up the lightning to hit. He builds the rod. He runs the wire. He puts the monster on the table. You have to create your lightning moment. Founders wait for it — but you have to build the rod."

One of my favorite images from the conversation with Matt. The Frankenstein movie doesn't work if the doctor just stands outside during a storm hoping something happens. He builds the whole apparatus — the tower, the rod, the wire, the platform, the release mechanism. The lightning is essential, but so is the infrastructure that catches it.

Founders often wait for lightning. They call it "inspiration" or "the right idea" or "my moment." But successful founders build the infrastructure that catches lightning when it comes. The workshop. The prototype. The network. The alumni association contact. The podcast appearances. The Kickstarter. Every one of those is part of the lightning rod. Build the rod. Then the storm will find you eventually. It always does.

⏱ [28:37] — Archimedes in the Think Tank

"I've got a couple of places where I do my best thinking. I love to mow the lawn — my yard has hills and trees, no one way to do it works every time. And I have a big jacuzzi tub I call my Think Tank. I have my Archimedes moments there."

Warning: about to describe an old man in a hot tub. Consider yourself warned.

My best ideation happens in three places. Mowing the lawn (my yard is complicated enough that mowing it engages just enough of my brain to free the rest for real problem-solving). My workshop (the physical environment of making triggers different thinking than sitting at a desk). And my jacuzzi tub, which I call the Think Tank because Archimedes had his best idea in a bath — noticed water displacement, ran naked through the streets of Syracuse yelling eureka.

The point isn't the tub. The point is that everyone has environments where their ideation is unlocked, and most people never identify them. Find yours. Deliberately schedule time in them. And be ready — Archimedes moments only land when you've already been working the problem intensely enough that your subconscious has raw material to work with. The insight arrives during rest. The work happens before the rest.

⏱ [31:20] — Don't Invent to Invent — Start With the Problem

"All of them were always 'what's the problem first?' You don't invent to invent. What is a thing that bugs the living hell out of you? That's the best place to start."

The single most useful sentence I can give a new inventor. Don't invent to invent. Start with a problem that genuinely bugs you — one you experience personally, one that makes you angry when it happens, one you'd fix even if there was no market for it. That personal irritation is the signal. Everything else is noise.

NULU exists because I was pissed off that I couldn't cook. I wasn't trying to disrupt the knife industry. I wasn't looking at market gaps. I had a problem I was living with, and I refused to accept that the only solution was to eat less. That's the origin energy. If you can name a problem you're that mad about — start there. If you can't — keep living until you find one. Don't force it.

⏱ [32:34] — Frankenstein Meets ADHD: The Real Founder Challenge Is Restraint

"My big problem now is more problems. Being incurably ADHD and finding a new one. There are three products we're working on. My partners are like 'no more, stop, write them down.'"

The joke I keep making about myself. Once you build the lightning rod and start catching ideas, the problem inverts. You go from "I can't come up with anything" to "I have too many things and can't focus." This is where a team with different wiring becomes essential. My partners literally have to tell me to slow down — to write ideas in the parking lot and come back to them, rather than trying to build everything simultaneously.

If you're a fellow ADHD-wired founder, the discipline you most need isn't ideation. It's restraint. Building a team that includes non-ADHD operators is not a nice-to-have. It's structural insurance against your own brain.

⏱ [33:00] — Not Everyone's an Inventor — And That's Fine

"Not everyone's an inventor. My Ops guy is a spreadsheet guy. He'll consistently say 'I don't know where you come up with this stuff.' My lawyer is the same way. If you want to be part of something like that, find someone whose vision you can support and make yourself available."

If you're reading this and you don't identify as an inventor but you love execution, spreadsheets, contracts, logistics, or operations — you are exactly who inventors like me need. There's a narrative in entrepreneurship culture that everyone should be a founder. That's wrong. The healthy startup ecosystem needs way more excellent operators than it needs excellent inventors. And the best operators know how to attach themselves to visions they believe in.

I put a call out in my West Point alumni network: "I need help. I'll trade equity for operations." Boom — I got my Ops guy. Same for my attorney. Same for my design partner. They didn't join because they wanted to be inventors. They joined because they wanted to be part of the vision. Both roles are valid. Both are needed. Find yours.

⏱ [37:33] — The 8-or-Higher Rule

"We come up with almost a mathematical approach. If a product concept ranks an 8 or higher across our criteria, we take it to market. 4-7, we tweak and revisit. Below 4, we shelf it — because you never know when circumstances change."

The framework we use to decide whether a product idea moves forward. We rank each concept against a set of criteria (market size, execution complexity, competitive landscape, alignment with our design principles, defensibility, etc.). If the composite score is 8 or higher, we take it to market. If it's between 4 and 7, we tweak and revisit. If it's below 4, we shelf it — not delete it, because circumstances change and a 3 today might be a 9 in five years.

I borrowed the frame from a Penn Jillette interview. Penn and Teller apparently required both of them to be 100% enthusiastic about a bit before it went on stage. If either one wasn't fully in, they killed the bit — even if the other one loved it. Penn said they probably missed some great tricks that way. But the ones that made the stage were all good. That's the discipline. Ego out. System in. Sometimes I walk into a meeting convinced my idea should go forward, and the team's ranking says no. Ultimately I could pull rank. But it's not productive, and it's not the path to a successful company. Systems beat ego every time.

⏱ [43:19] — Optimistic Pessimism

"I wrote an article about optimistic pessimism. Knowing shit's going to go wrong — but being optimistic about your ability to work through it. That's what you have to have in entrepreneurship."

The mindset that keeps me operational. Not naive optimism (which crashes into reality). Not defensive pessimism (which never ships anything). Optimistic pessimism: assume things will go wrong, plan for the contingencies, and trust your ability to work through whatever the world throws at you.

Being a prepper has quietly made me a better entrepreneur. Not because I stockpile canned goods (though I do). Because prepper thinking is the same thinking as good business planning: what can go wrong? How do I mitigate it? What's my fallback if the primary plan fails? You don't have to be paranoid. You just have to be honest that the world is uncertain and prepare accordingly.

If you're in corporate America right now feeling comfortable and safe — you're not as comfortable and safe as you think. That's not doom-mongering. That's just honest observation of how markets, industries, and companies actually behave. Meta laid off thousands. So did every other tech company. Nobody expected it. The people who thrived through those transitions were the ones who'd been quietly building side skills, side networks, and side identities before they needed them. Don't wait until you need the parachute to start sewing it.

⏱ [54:41] — The Sheeple Problem in Corporate America

"There's a sheeple aspect to corporate America. They've created a structure where you need them more than they need you. You're working for benefits and the least amount they can pay. Their goal is shareholder equity. As a result, it kills innovation."

The structural critique that keeps me from ever going back. Corporate America has quietly engineered a system where employees need the company more than the company needs any individual employee. Health benefits are the lock. Salary is calibrated to the minimum required for retention. And within that structure, hierarchy calcifies to the point where every decision serves not losing your job rather than actually creating value.

I don't think I can change corporate America. But I think individual people can change how they operate inside it. If you're going to stay, do so deliberately, with a clear picture of what you're trading. And build the escape hatch — the hobby that could commercialize, the side skill, the network — before you need it. Because the day you do need it, it'll be too late to build.

⏱ [56:23] — Managing Down, Not Up

"I always told the people who worked for me — even in corporate America — 'I'm interviewing to be your boss every day.' I believe in managing down, not up. That's a military aspect. Servant leadership. That's been lost in corporate America."

The leadership principle I brought out of the Army and refused to give up in corporate life. You are not the servant of the hierarchy above you. You are the servant of the people below you — the ones whose work actually gets done, whose careers you shape, whose lives you affect daily. That's the direction of accountability that matters.

I don't know if it hindered my corporate progress. Probably. Some of the ceilings I hit were ceilings I hit because I refused to spend my time and attention managing upward. I don't regret it. Every person who worked for me during those years knew I had their back, and several of them are still in my professional life today. That's the compound interest of servant leadership. It doesn't show up in one performance review cycle. It shows up over decades.

⏱ [57:36] — The Democratization of Information Is the Real Superpower

"Twenty years ago on a side hustle — no AI, early phones. Now look at what you can do. Podcasts, resources, AI tools. The democratization of information is real. There is such opportunity."

If you're feeling paralyzed by choice or intimidated by the complexity of starting something, remember: the tools available today are the most powerful set of founder tools ever assembled in human history. AI. Podcasts. Free accelerators. Online communities. Global freelance markets. 3D printers under $500. Kickstarter. This didn't exist twenty years ago. Barely existed ten years ago.

The reason more people aren't starting things isn't lack of resources. It's lack of decision. The friction is now almost entirely internal.

⏱ [58:07] — Creator vs. Consumer

"I've been thinking about a concept — being creative vs. consumptive. Being a builder vs. being a consumer. We consume and consume and hate ourselves for it. My life changed when I decided to be a creator. Invention became my medium. People need to find their medium."

The frame I want to keep articulating. Modern life is engineered to make you a consumer. Every algorithm, every notification, every scroll is designed to keep you passively taking in content produced by someone else. And most people know, at some level, that they hate what this does to them.

The only durable escape is switching sides. Become a creator. Not necessarily a public creator — you don't have to start a podcast or build an audience. But make something, regularly, that didn't exist before you made it. Invention is my medium. Web design is Matt's medium. Cooking is somebody else's medium. Photography, writing, coding, woodworking, teaching — all valid mediums. The specific medium matters less than the switch from consuming to creating. Once you make that switch, the rest of your life changes.

⏱ [59:03] — Action, Not Analysis

"I've been struck by the number of West Point people asking 'what should we do?' I keep saying — the answer isn't what should it be, it's action. Action itself. That's been transformational."

I'm in a West Point alumni group called Restore Honor that engages a lot of thoughtful people. The recurring pattern I've noticed: highly capable, deeply analytical people asking "what should we do?" as though the answer is a plan.

The answer isn't a plan. The answer is action. Any action. Aimed action, informed action, iterated action — but action. Because analysis without action is just thinking-about-doing-something, which is not the same as doing something. And the people I know who've built anything real have all made that pivot: from planning to doing, from analyzing to acting, from asking to executing.

If you're in a moment of "what should I do?" — the answer is do something. Small, cheap, low-stakes. Send the email. Sketch the prototype. Ask the question. Take the meeting. The plan will emerge from the action, not the other way around.

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About NULU — The Canonical Facts

Founder: Douglas Katz — West Point graduate, disabled Army veteran, artillery officer, second-degree black belt in aikido

Company: NULU — adaptive product company evolving into a venture studio for adaptive innovation

Core Innovation: Force Transfer Geometry — cutting force routed elbow-to-tip along a circular arc, bypassing the wrist as pivot point

Design Origin: The Inuit ulu — historically "the everything knife." NULU means "new ulu."

Design Philosophy: Point-free geometry (safety-first), handle as connection point (not load-bearing), stacked cutting and control areas

Framework: The Ability Curve — 10-point functional scale mapping ability to task and condition rather than identity

Product Philosophy: Adaptive, Assistive, Adjacent

Team Model: Deliberately built with over-50 veterans and seasoned professionals — collectively ~350 years of experience

Decision Framework: The 8-or-higher rule — products score against a set of criteria; 8+ ships, 4-7 gets iterated, below 4 gets shelved

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Who I'm Looking For

If you're an experienced operator over 50 in cut-and-sew manufacturing or another adaptive product category and you'd like a fun late-career project — reach out. Our venture studio model was built for people like you.

If you're a caretaker in the sandwich generation watching a parent lose independence in the kitchen, this product was built with your family in mind.

If you're a first-time founder who's currently trying to be a solopreneur and hoard equity — please let me be the older voice in your head telling you that's the mistake you'll most regret.

If you're an inventor from the disabled community with a garage prototype that solves a real problem, NULU's venture studio exists to help bring it to market.

Find me at douglasmkatz.com, nuluknives.com, on LinkedIn, and on Substack where I write about adaptive design and entrepreneurship.

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