Welcome to the confession booth.
Nathaniel Koloc is an entrepreneur, talent builder, and longtime family office operator. He spent years in venture studios and on a presidential campaign before landing at Pardon, a family office built on the belief that art and entrepreneurship are twin engines of creativity. We ask him what distinguishes a great work from any other piece in a portfolio.
In this episode, we explore what people misunderstand about the connection between wealth and political power, why we need rites of passage with real risk, and the pursuit of stirring the human soul.
We talk about:
Nathaniel’s story
Across ecology studies, a presidential campaign, and venture studios [01:10]
A shot on goal that didn’t work out [05:14]
How family offices work
“100% degrees of freedom” wealth [09:37]
Effective altruists and family offices [12:14]
What makes a great work
Wealth as temporarily stored kinetic energy [12:53]
“Is it something that stirs the hearts of men?” [13:17]
Money carries energy [17:02]
Political power
Money alone buys less political power than people think [18:28]
What to fund next
Stewardship at planetary scale [22:08]
The new aesthetics [24:06]
Rites of passage
Losing our phase transitions [25:55]
Adventure as a practice in uncertainty [30:43]
Philanthropy and risk
“You can’t take it with you anyway”: why collectively we can afford some failures [35:01]
Necessary humiliation [37:11]
Legibility versus inquiry
Epistemic humility, model uncertainty, and mission legibility [39:33]
Rigor in qualitative reasoning: watering the garden of inquiry [42:54]
What would you do with $100 million? [44:37]
Our favorite lines from this episode include:
On what makes a great work:
“It’s that unique signature of one person caring enough to be able to produce this. To me, that is probably the most notable quality.”
On political power:
“Picking candidates is like changing the paint color on your walls. It’s very superficial. … I think people probably throw around too much money on candidate elections and not enough money on underlying worldview development.”
On why we need to take more philanthropic risk:
“So far as we know, you can’t take it [money] with you anyway, right? … Even if it fails, it is circulating amongst people getting paid salaries. You’re still part of the Earth system trying to figure out what we can do here. … Collectively, we can afford some failures.”
About Nathaniel: Nathaniel Koloc is an entrepreneur and operator who has spent his career building teams and organizations. He chaired a successful long-shot New York state senate race in 2018 and worked with several venture studios before spending the last five years with the family office Pardon, most recently as head of ventures.
If you want to go deeper, here are the references from this episode:
“The World Needs Your Great Work”: Nathaniel’s essay in Palladium, March 2026 [00:25]
Cannery Village: Pardon’s creative workspace and gallery in Newport Beach [05:14]
Simon Sarris’ The Map is Mostly Water: essays on beauty and craft [15:04]
Rainmaker: the cloud-seeding company aiming to ease freshwater shortages [22:08]
Natural General Intelligence: Ryan Orbuch’s essay on an Earth-system foundation model [22:08]
Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood by Satya Doyle Byock [27:34]
Goodhart’s Law [33:35]
Against Method by Paul Feyerabend, from Analogue’s curriculum [44:08]
