Nic Fonta leads XR at Autodesk, where architects, engineers, and designers collaborate in virtual reality to catch design problems before construction begins. The math is stark: $280 billion spent globally every year on rework and material waste on construction sites because of poor communication and misalignment. Workshop XR, Autodesk's immersive collaborative platform, lets teams put on VR headsets and walk through their designs at full scale before a single brick is laid.

His background is surprising for someone leading a design collaboration tool: Nic is a software engineer who started in flight simulator technology working on a $35 million MIG-29 cockpit simulator. After hesitating between architecture and engineering in university, engineering won—but he ended up serving architects anyway. His entire career has been in real-time rendering and simulation: flight simulators, gaming at Electronic Arts, and now helping the AEC industry see what they're building before they build it.

The magic happens when an architect puts on a VR headset and realizes they missed a design flaw for months—something twisted in the geometry that appeared broken in VR but was invisible in their 2D design tool. That moment changed everything for Nic. He knew XR could transform how people work.

Today, Workshop XR helps teams find problems earlier, reduce material waste, increase engagement during design reviews, and identify safety hazards before workers hit the site. The next frontier: integrating AI agents into the immersive space so they learn from spatial relationships and how humans understand and feel design decisions.

Episode Highlights:

• A $35 million MIG-29 flight simulator cockpit sparked a career in real-time simulation that led to serving architects instead—because Nic chose engineering over architecture in university but ended up designing tools for both.
• Workshop XR reduces $280 billion in annual global construction rework by helping teams find design problems earlier when they're cheaper and faster to fix.
• One architect walked into VR, spotted a twisted geometry in the main entrance, and realized months later in his 2D tool that he'd missed the same flaw the entire time—that moment proved XR transforms how people see.
• Safety reviews emerged as a second use case when construction teams used the same immersive experience to identify hazards before workers reached the site, reducing accidents and rework.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube.

About Nic Fonta

Nic Fonta is a Montreal-based technology and product executive with over 25 years of experience driving innovation at the intersection of real-time rendering, simulation, gaming, and XR. Since joining Autodesk in 2014 for his deep real-time expertise, Nic has played a pivotal role in shaping the company’s XR strategy.

He led the development and go-to-market of Revit Live, managed the 3ds Max product line, and now serves as General Manager for XR, spearheading Autodesk’s XR vision and execution. Following the acquisi

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.

David Nussbaum started Proto Hologram in his living room in 2018 to answer a simple question: what if instead of using holograms to bring back dead musicians, you used them to connect the living? The result is a seven-foot-tall holographic display that lets people beam into rooms across the world—live, prerecorded, or as interactive AI avatars that speak more than 300 languages and dialects.

His background is broadcasting. As a kid, David sat in his dad's Volkswagen listening to talk radio, fascinated by communicating with someone who wasn’t physically there.

That turned into an obsession with connection across distance—first as a radio broadcaster, then as one of the first 1000 podcasters on Apple, where he eventually met his wife. Proto is the next evolution of that obsession: instead of talking into a phone, you broadcast yourself as a hologram.

Episode Highlights:

• Broadcasting obsession started in a Volkswagen listening to talk radio, led to a Howard Stern fixation at 14, turned into 25–30 years in radio and one of the first 1000 podcasts on Apple—where David met his wife.
• William Shatner beams into Sydney for a keynote and calls Proto a time machine because it saved him two weeks of travel—he gave his speech and was home having breakfast with his wife in LA the same morning.
• Christie’s beams multi-million-dollar sculptures and paintings globally instead of physically shipping them, protecting priceless works while giving collectors intimate previews before auction.
• Healthcare is the next frontier: oncologists beam into rural clinics, HIPAA compliance is live, and David’s goal is to replace flat Zoom calls and virtual doctor visits with the presence of holographic physicians for cancer patients receiving sensitive news.

David Nussbaum has spent his life obsessed with connection across distance. Proto is the latest evolution of that mission. His favorite part: he still sells through experience—visitors create their own AI avatar in the office and walk out with a piece of the technology.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube to hear why David believes AI isn’t something to fear, but something to embrace—and how using it well can create connection instead of replacement.

About David Nussbaum

An award-winning An award-winning writer and producer, Nussbaum founded Proto after 20 years in the entertainment industry, having spent time in sports radio, television, podcasting and live events.

David was named to TIME’s Healthcare100 List for 2025 and has spoken at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, USC, the Infinity Festival, CES, Christie's Art + Tech Conference, and at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

With the slogan, “If you can’t BE there, BEAM there!” David walks the walk, beaming from company headquarters in Los Angeles to meetings on multiple continents every week to save on business travel time and expense & carbon impact.

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 of the time spatail computing isn't rocket science, but for this conversation, it is. Alex Goldberg leads augmented reality at Blue Origin. He helps rocket scientists and manufacturing engineers work faster, collaborate better, and solve problems that require precision at the edge of what's possible.

His tools include AR glasses for remote assistance, digital twins built from reality capture, and spatial data that tells the story of how a component travels through a manufacturing lifecycle from fabrication to launch.

Alex's work is about giving engineers infographics on steroids; helpful tips in their field of view when they need them. It's about capturing the physical environment as digital twins so teams can see what actually got built versus what was designed. And it's about giving people the freedom to discover uses for the technology that even he didn't expect.

Episode Highlights:

• A VR arcade job at 19 led to game testing at Rocket Science Games, years later at Blue Origin actual rocket scientists call Alex a wizard when they see what AR does for manufacturing.
• AR for manufacturing works best as contextual infographics right now; helpful tips in engineers' field of view—because rapid iteration cycles outpace documentation updates.
• Remote assist delivers a massive win; factory floor workers put on AR glasses, call offsite experts, get unblocked in real time, and can create annotations for asynchronous training without an expert present.
• People who have access to actual spatial data stop thinking of information as living on a server and start thinking of it as living in that physical location—they've built a new mental model for data organization.
• The best moments in innovation happen six months after launch when someone in the team discovers a novel application that solves a problem Alex wasn't even aware existed.

Alex Goldberg builds for the moment when an engineer looks at spatial data overlaid on reality and understands something they couldn't have grasped from a flat screen. His focus is on getting out of the way and listening to how teams actually work.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube to hear why mixed reality is fading and why see-through AR glasses are the inevitable future within three to five years.

About Alex Goldberg:

Alex’s work bridges storytelling and cutting-edge technology and empowers teams across the education, retail, and manufacturing sectors to maximize the full potential of spatial computing.

Alex brings a unique blend of creativity and technical expertise to the world of interactive technology. Leveraging a broad background in mobile game and app production, Alex has produced many top-ranking enterprise and consumer applications for iOS and Android platforms.

Since 2015, Alex has stood at the forefront of spatial computing: designing innovative augmented reality experiences that focus on training for complex tasks and procedures.

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.