Entrepreneurship is rarely a straight path, and few stories illustrate that better than Nathen Mazri’s journey from launching the world’s first Garfield-themed restaurant to becoming a leading advocate for intellectual property licensing. As Co-Founder and Chief Value Officer at eGeez, Nathen has built his career around transforming bold ideas into valuable business opportunities. In this conversation with Bright Founders Talk, he shares the lessons learned from navigating viral success, public scrutiny, and the realities of building a business around globally recognized brands.

Drawing from his experiences with Garfield Eats, Nathen reflects on the difference between attention and revenue, and why brand engagement does not always translate into commercial success. He also opens up about the challenges of entrepreneurship, including failure, resilience, and the importance of embracing mistakes as part of the learning process. With his trademark energy and unfiltered honesty, Nathen challenges conventional business wisdom and encourages founders to carve their own paths.

The discussion explores the power of licensing, the evolving relationship between intellectual property and consumer experiences, and the mindset required to thrive in a constantly changing market. Whether you're an entrepreneur, startup founder, or business leader, Nathen’s insights offer a refreshing perspective on innovation, risk-taking, and creating lasting value.

From Garfield Pizza to Hard Truths: Nathen Mazri’s Unfiltered Entrepreneurial Journey

Nathen Mazri has never been interested in playing it safe. Long before becoming a licensing expert, he chased an idea that many people would have dismissed as impossible: turning Garfield into the face of a global lasagna franchise. What started as a bold vision became Garfield Eats, the world's first officially licensed Garfield-themed restaurant. Backed by a family deeply rooted in franchising, Nathen dreamed of building the “McDonald’s of lasagna” with hundreds of locations around the world. Instead, the venture took him on a much more unexpected ride—one filled with viral fame, internet attention, and lessons that no business book could teach.

As Garfield Eats exploded online, Nathen quickly discovered that popularity and profitability are not the same thing. Fans flooded in to take photos, share content, and experience the novelty of the brand, but attention didn’t always lead to sales. The experience forced him to rethink how businesses measure success. He learned the difference between engagement and conversion, between impressions and purchases, and between building buzz and building a sustainable company. Looking back, he openly admits mistakes were made—from choosing the wrong location to underestimating operational challenges—but he views those missteps as essential parts of the journey rather than failures.

That mindset became even more important when the internet turned its spotlight on him. Nathen faced relentless criticism, online trolling, and even death threats at the peak of Garfield Eats' notoriety. Yet instead of retreating, he embraced the experience and used it as fuel for growth. Working alongside Garfield creator Jim Davis also gave him a front-row seat to the power of intellectual property and licensing. Most importantly, it reinforced a belief he still carries today: entrepreneurship isn’t about following someone else’s formula. It’s a deeply personal journey, shaped by risk, resilience, and the willingness to keep moving forward when everyone else tells you to stop.

The Hidden Billion-Dollar Industry Nobody Talks About

For Nathen, the story didn’t end with Garfield Eats. If anything, that experience opened his eyes to a much bigger opportunity hiding behind the scenes. As a licensee working with one of the world's most recognizable brands, he saw firsthand how complicated the licensing ecosystem really was. Huge global brands, retailers, creators, manufacturers, and fans were all connected, yet the industry itself remained surprisingly fragmented. While industries like transportation and hospitality were transformed by platforms such as Uber and Airbnb, licensing was still operating with outdated systems and disconnected data.

That realization eventually became eGeez. What started as an idea for a marketplace connecting licensed products with fans evolved into something far more ambitious. Nathen envisioned a platform that could bring transparency to an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars. One of the biggest problems? Nobody had a complete picture. Authentic licensed products were scattered across markets, counterfeits flooded online stores, and valuable information about licensing agreements, territories, royalties, and sales remained buried in spreadsheets and isolated databases. For Nathen, the gap was impossible to ignore.

Building eGeez turned into a decade-long mission. Along the way, Nathen immersed himself in licensing research, earned recognition from industry organizations, published academic work, and secured support for developing new technology. Today, eGeez is much more than a marketplace—it's an infrastructure platform designed to bring order to a complex global industry. Looking back, Nathen sees a direct line connecting his Garfield adventure to his current vision. What began with a Garfield-shaped pizza ultimately led him to tackle one of the biggest data and transparency challenges in the world of intellectual property licensing.

Why Nathen Sees Licensing Through the Eyes of a Fan

For Nathen, eGeez didn’t stay a “simple app idea” for long. What he first imagined as a marketplace slowly grew into something much bigger: an AI-powered infrastructure built to fix the messy, outdated parts of licensing. The more he studied the industry, the more problems he found—confusing clauses, royalty gaps, weak transparency, and a system that many people still reduce to just contracts. But for Nathen, licensing has never been only about paperwork. It’s about fans, creators, products, stories, and the emotional connection people have with the characters and brands they love.

That fan-first mindset completely changed the way Nathen looks at the world. A walk through a mall is no longer just shopping; it’s research. He notices who manufactured a product, which IP is being used, where it might be sold, and why some brilliant licensees remain invisible to the public. He talks about companies like Bumpkins, a smaller licensee creating beautiful Disney baby products, as if they were hidden artists waiting for the spotlight. In his eyes, licensees are not just manufacturers—they are creative partners who help bring beloved characters into everyday life.

This is where Nathen’s vision for eGeez becomes more personal. He wants the platform to give these licensees more visibility, better margins, and a direct connection to fans. He also sees huge potential for emerging creators on YouTube, TikTok, and beyond—people with passionate audiences but little knowledge of how licensing works. For him, the future of licensing is not only about big studios and toy giants. It’s about making the industry more open, more transparent, and more rewarding for the people who actually create value.

Building a Legacy, Not Just a Business

Money matters, and Nathen doesn’t pretend otherwise. He openly admits that success, wealth, and recognition are attractive goals—especially in a world constantly showcasing billionaires, luxury lifestyles, and overnight success stories. But beneath the ambition lies something deeper. What truly drives him is the idea of creating something that becomes part of people’s everyday lives. He lights up when talking about the possibility of someone one day saying, “I use your app all the time.” For Nathen, that's the real reward: building something meaningful enough to be remembered.

That desire to leave a mark goes far beyond business metrics. Nathen wants his work, ideas, and methods to outlive him. He hopes future entrepreneurs will study what he built, learn from it, and use it as a foundation for their own journeys. Yet he’s also refreshingly honest about the darker side of entrepreneurship. He describes it as lonely, exhausting, and emotionally demanding. Years of uncertainty taught him the value of what he calls “inner peace” — accepting what you can’t control, staying grateful, and trusting the process even when nothing seems to be going your way.

The conversation eventually turned to the next generation, a topic Nathen clearly cares about. He worries about the pressure young people face from social media, unrealistic success stories, and the rapid rise of AI. At the same time, he sees reasons for optimism. Today’s generation is asking harder questions, demanding authenticity, and becoming more aware of the world around them. For founders, his advice is simple: embrace AI, stay lean, solve real problems, and keep moving forward. Because in the end, the companies that survive aren’t necessarily the loudest—they’re the ones creating genuine value and refusing to quit when things get difficult.