Nathan Lands | Founder and Investor

Four-time founder. Investor in Factory, Erebor and SF Compute. a16z Scout. Raised in Alabama. Tornado survivor.

@NathanLands LinkedIn

The record

Backed and built

GameStreamer. Raised ~$10M. Our booth at E3, 2010.
Gamify. Sold Gamification.org to Badgeville, 2012. Our billboard in San Francisco.
Binded. Acquired by Pixsy, 2019. On a panel about the future of copyright.
The Next Wave. 1.5M+ plays. On the INBOUND main stage for HubSpot, 2025.

Investor
Factory
Agent-native software development. Helped launch it.
Investor
Erebor
A nationally chartered bank for American innovation, founded by Palmer Luckey.
Investor
SF Compute
A market for GPU clusters. Buy large-scale compute, resell what you don't use.
Investor
Vanguard Defense
Mission-ready data for autonomous defense systems, labeled by U.S. veterans.

Co-founder and CEO
Gamify
Created Gamification.org, acquired by Badgeville in 2012.
Co-founder and CEO
Binded
Copyright protection for artists. Acquired by Pixsy in 2019.
Co-founder
GameStreamer
Cloud gaming. Raised ~$10M and grew to 50+ people.
Consultant
Gaikai
Early strategy for founder David Perry. Acquired by Sony for $380M.

Each company, and what I did there.

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The story

Alabama, Taiwan, San Francisco, Japan

Newspaper clipping headlined At least 4 die in Arab tornado, above a photo of rescue workers searching ruins — **February 16, 1995.** Rescue workers search the ruins in Arab, Alabama. Associated Press photo, from a newspaper clipping.

Chapter one Joppa, Alabama

Tornado hit without warning

4:25 a.m.

Lightning knocks out the weather radar in Huntsville.

4:59 a.m.

A tornado touches down three miles west of Joppa. No warning has been issued.

Minutes later

I am ten. My mother picks me up and runs. I watch the walls shake like Jell-O. Then they pop, and everything goes black.

That was chapter one. Since then: a business inside a video game, two TV commercials in Taiwan, a word I coined, four companies, and a film studio founded with the producer of The Lord of the Rings.

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