About
3rd Space Project is Viet Nguyen
and Natalie Luke.
We help mid-market Pacific Northwest companies make good AI decisions and we run a podcast about how operators are actually using AI in the work.
Why this exists
The origin story is boring but honest.
We kept having the same conversation.
Someone would call Viet, usually a CEO or a Chief of Staff at a company between $10M and $500M in revenue, and describe the same problem. Their team was under pressure to do something about AI. They had talked to two or three vendors. One was priced for a Fortune 500 buyer. One had a smart deck and a junior team. One wanted to sell a platform when the caller asked for a plan.
None of that landed. The caller wanted advice from someone who had actually shipped AI work inside a real organization, not someone selling the tool.
We started 3rd Space Project because that phone call kept coming. And because the show we run, Volume Control, was already doing half the work of finding operators who thought the same way we did.
The name
Not a coworking metaphor.
“3rd Space” is not a metaphor about hybrid work or coworking lounges.
We think of it as the space between the vendor and the customer. Between the technology and the business. Between the hype and the fear. The space where an operator has to make a real decision without a clean answer.
That is where we work.
Who we are
Two founders. Fifty-fifty.
Viet Nguyen
Runs advisory.
He started in politics. Campaign management first, then four years running communications and policy for a member of the King County Council. He moved into corporate communications from there: agency work at Frause, then in-house at T-Mobile, then Microsoft, running comms for enterprise organizations of 12,000 people and up.
Most recently, he spent six years at 5G Americas, the trade association representing the wireless industry across North and South America. He was president through the end of the organization’s run, translating deep-in-the-weeds spectrum and 5G policy for a mainstream audience.
He has built and shipped AI-powered editorial systems, civic data platforms, and internal automation for organizations that were not sure they wanted them yet. He has been the guy in the room when the CEO asked, “so what do we actually do about this?”
Based in Seattle. Political Science degree from the University of Washington. Writes about state politics and civic AI in his own time.
Natalie Luke
Runs brand and production.
She has been Executive Creative Director at idesign since 1999. Her client work covers most of the enterprise brands you would recognize on this coast: Microsoft, Google, T-Mobile, Starbucks, Alaska Airlines, Boeing, Marriott. Brand systems, executive communications, keynote storytelling, campaign work. Twenty-six years of it.
In 2019 she started idlegal, a second practice partnering with plaintiff trial teams on litigation visuals and trial strategy. Cases she has supported have resulted in more than $210M in verdicts and settlements. She teaches CLE courses on visual storytelling and AI workflows and presents at trial institutes.
Volume Control’s identity is hers. So is every piece of design work on this site. When you hire us for branded content, she is the one who actually makes it look and sound the way it should.
Based in Seattle. Studied at the University of Washington. Portfolio at natalieluke.com.
How we work together
Small is the strategy.
Viet runs client-facing advisory. Nat runs brand and production. Both of us weigh in on the strategic calls: service line positioning, editorial direction, who we take on as a client.
We meet weekly. We disagree in writing before we disagree in person. We share a Signal thread for the fast-moving stuff and a long-form document for anything that will still matter in a year.
We are a two-person business. That is a feature. It means the partners are running your engagement, not selling it and handing it off. If we grow past two of us, we will do it carefully and we will tell you before we do.
What we believe
Not a manifesto. Just what you should know.
AI is a business decision, not a technology decision.
The interesting question is never “which model.” It is “what should this company be doing differently, and how does AI change the answer.” Most engagements that fail fail because someone confused those two questions.
Most AI vendors are wrong for most companies.
Not because vendors are dishonest. Because most vendors are built for one kind of buyer and end up pitching everyone. Part of our job is to tell you which vendor is right for you and which ones are not, without a referral fee shaping the answer.
Operators are the real audience.
The show is called Volume Control because we think the current AI conversation is too loud in every direction. Too much fear. Too much hype. Not enough people actually describing what they have tried. We interview operators, not analysts.
Small is a strategy.
We are two people. We take a small number of engagements. We turn down more than we take. That is the model, not a phase we are going to grow out of.
Where we came from
The show came first.
Nat and Viet started Volume Control as a podcast because we could not find a show that talked about AI the way our friends actually did: practically, skeptically, and without a vendor narrative behind it. It has grown from that.
The advisory work followed. Guests became referrers. Referrers became clients. Clients started asking us to produce their own branded content. We formalized 3rd Space Project as an LLC when it stopped being a side project.
We are building the business we wish had existed when the calls started coming in.
The newsletter
Field Notes
Short pieces on what we are seeing, written for operators.
In person
We host Volume Control salons in Seattle and speak at regional AI and business events across the PNW. If you would like us at yours, get in touch.
Legal
3rd Space Project, LLC. Washington limited liability company. UBI 606 236 392. Formed June 12, 2026.
Working on an AI question that is not getting a clean answer?
Thirty minutes. Free. If we are not the right team, we will tell you who is.