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Lara Adekoya – Part II
In part two of this episode, Lara shares three cookies for Justin to try at her Los Angeles bakery, Fleurs et Sel. Lara talks family, origin stories, and ingredients while Justin gets to eat cookies (and offers the ultimate compliment based on their shared Japanese culture).
Support Lara and Justin
Follow Lara and Fleurs et Sel: https://www.instagram.com/fleursetsel/
Follow Justin and Glenwood: https://www.instagram.com/glenwood.store
Buy Lara's issue of Glenwood magazine: https://www.glenwood.store/products/lara-adekoya
People of the Future is a longform conversation series with multicultural founders, exploring identity, resilience, and creativity. Created, hosted, and funded by me, Justin Barber, a designer born and raised in Tokyo, Japan.
Creative Staff
Created, hosted, and funded by Justin Barber
Lead Producer: Sheilby Macena
HMUA: Kristy Strate Production
Assistant/BTS: Ashley Seryn
Cinematographer: Kalea Calloway
Key Grip: Carl Stewart
Gaffer: Priscilla Marie Serrano
About Glenwood
Glenwood is the feelings company of Palo Alto, creating the promise of tomorrow in objects for today. Founded by me, Justin Barber, a designer born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. Shop: https://glenwood.store Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glenwood.store
Lara Adekoya – Part I
Lara Adekoya, daughter of a Japanese mother and Nigerian father, is the founder of Fleurs et Sel, a bakery specializing in cookies based in the historic West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles. She started her business in 2020 by delivering cookies out of her car during the pandemic. Today, her cookies are as famous as some of her customers—from Oprah to Russell Westbrook to Netflix.
But what inspires me most about Lara is her passion and commitment to creating a real community while retaining full ownership over her business. So I flew down to Los Angeles to ask her how her cultural identity, resilience, and creativity are shaping the future, one cookie at a time.
People of the Future is a longform conversation series with multicultural founders, exploring identity, resilience, and creativity. Created, hosted, and funded by me, Justin Barber, a designer born and raised in Tokyo, Japan.
Support Lara and Justin Follow Lara and Fleurs et Sel: https://www.instagram.com/fleursetsel/
Follow Justin and Glenwood: https://www.instagram.com/glenwood.store
Buy Lara's issue of Glenwood magazine: https://www.glenwood.store/products/lara-adekoya
Creative Staff
Created, hosted, and funded by Justin Barber
Lead Producer: Sheilby Macena
HMUA: Kristy Strate Production
Assistant/BTS: Ashley Seryn
Cinematographer: Kalea Calloway
Key Grip: Carl Stewart
Gaffer: Priscilla Marie Serrano
About Glenwood Glenwood is the feelings company of Palo Alto, creating the promise of tomorrow in objects for today. Founded by me, Justin Barber, a designer born and raised in Tokyo, Japan.
Shop: https://glenwood.store
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glenwood.store
Last updated 10th August
The Feelings Company of Palo Alto
Lux Capital AI Summit 2025 – New York
You can distill a "brand" down to two ingredients: words and visuals.
The purpose of these words and visuals is to inspire your investors, customers, and candidates to achieve outsized outcomes in fundraising, talent, and revenue.
But with generative AI, there's been a proliferation of words and visuals:
Despite this, the quantity of "high quality" – or inspiring – work is not going to inherently increase as a result.
So how do you push past making something derivative to create a truly inspiring brand?
Here are 3 core truths of creating an inspirational brand. Each one correlates to a specific part of the creative process
Creativity is a finite resource
• Creativity isn’t produced in a factory setting
• The primary risk of working with larger creative partners to develop your brand is that they will treat your brand as a commodity to maintain their reserves of creativity (for the week, month, year)
2 - Things are like other things
• If you're building X for Y, don't look at other companies building X for Y
• For example: if you're making a wifi router, don't reference what other wifi routers look like.
• Instead, reference objects that people put in their home (like how Google referenced Muji’s aroma diffuser)
• Find something adjacent and then pull in those metaphors to create something new
3 - Get copied or die trying
• If the work you put out is original and novel, it will inevitably get copied
• Others will copy the output in attempts to replicate your success, but copying shows that they don’t know why it was successful in the first place
• Success is rooted in authenticity and timing: that can’t be replicated
• You have two options: copy the work of others (because you don’t know how to be successful), or create the work that gets copied
Tech & Culture 25 minute presentation
Tech and Culture: Who Wins with AI?
AI is transforming tech and culture, but consumers are growing skeptical of the Silicon Valley narrative. With billions at stake, what strategies will define the winners and losers of the next decade?
Watch the full presentation on Youtube
Past: Phone Paradigm
1:04 What was tech & culture like in 2014?
2:38 Paradigm Shift
4:26 Winners & Losers
7:20 Path to Success
Present: Culture is tired
11:28 What is tech & culture like in 2025?
Future: AI Paradigm
My Time – Part 2
In the Beginning
Creation is life's most beautiful challenge. To bring new ideas into the world requires not just taste, vision, and execution—but also the vulnerability to fully immerse yourself in the process.
It took time for me to get there, but last year I finally centered my life around the pursuit of creative excellence by opening Glenwood. If I succeed in realizing my vision for the studio, this work will unfold across decades, locations, and disciplines. But nothing is perfect and nothing is promised. And right now, I’m still at the beginning.
Rather than laying out the vision, I want to share three foundational experiences that shaped my path to this point.
Growing up in Japan
I was born and raised in Tokyo, but I am not Japanese. This means I will always be a guest in the place I call home. My approach to life and design reflects that—a juxtaposition of East and West held together in one form, like Ando’s glass. If you know the reference, “there’s a little bit of Japan in everything I do.” Family and friends still live there, and I return every year, finding ways to keep giving back to the place that gave me so much. So the studio, like myself, will be multicultural (stay tuned for the first studio release later this year).
Working with Qasar
Joining Applied Intuition in its early days and working closely with Qasar changed my trajectory. Anyone who’s been around him knows his relentless work ethic and uncompromising standards for prioritization and execution. But the most important thing I learned from him is distillation: complexity only exists within the wrong set of constraints. While building AI systems for vehicles is a completely different business than a creative studio (you know, give or take a few billion in market cap), I’m approaching the business, operations, and design of the studio with the same dedication to simplicity.
Taking Bilal’s advice
After a few meetings in Lux's Menlo Park office (just a block away from my first California apartment on Glenwood Ave), Bilal called me with the push I needed: “You should just start your own thing.” It wasn’t merely words—he and Scott both promised their support and they’ve followed through. Glenwood wouldn’t be possible without their help, along with Tess and Brandon. The studio came out of relationships and will continue to stay centered on them.
Trust is where creation begins—in people, in process, in potential. That’s why Glenwood starts here, with a few stories and ample whitespace.
After all, time and space is a luxury.
Justin
God's Time – Part 1
Founded 2024
Community—work with us (and our friends).
Last updated 25th February
Growth & Operations
Glenwood
You've built e-commerce from 0→1
External
Applied AI Engineer
Valthos
Build and deploy software and biological AI systems to safeguard humanity.