Sound Investments - The Pacific Northwest VC & Startup Podcast with Ed Barker

Investing in Mavericks with Jordan Baker, Athenaeum Ventures

Ed Barker sits down with Jordan Baker, founding general partner of Seattle's Athenaeum Ventures, whose path to running a fund looks nothing like the standard resume. He left home at 14, passed through three high schools, dropped out at 16, skipped college, and built a career across music, streaming, and gaming, most prominently the brand agency Moonrock, before raising his first fund. Baker argues that venture has drifted from its original job, backing insane people with insane ideas, into what he calls consensus capital, where investors crowd the same credentialed founders and price out everyone else. His edge, he says, is finding mispriced founders and ideas before the rest of the market does, sourcing them inside the Discord servers, Reddit threads, and gaming communities most investors cannot reach, then committing to a hands-on stretch that runs from a blunt five-minute fit test through weeks of diligence and real help with hiring, customers, storytelling, and the next round. He runs the firm with unusual openness, sending LPs data-rich updates that log every cold outreach and conversion, and reports a 4.3x paper markup roughly seven weeks into a deliberately small $5M fund. He also explains why he refuses SPVs, shares dealflow freely with other managers, and is happy to back founders as unorthodox as a startup that cryogenically freezes pets. His sharpest words are for Seattle, a city he calls brilliant at producing business owners and poor at producing founders, where pedigree is prized, tech wealth sits idle, and the most interesting builders keep leaving for the Bay. 00:00 Introduction: Jordan Baker, Athenaeum Ventures 02:02 Leaving Home at 14: An Atypical Origin 12:01 The Investor as Mispriced Founder 12:28 Why Raise a Fund at All 18:33 Sourcing and Vetting Mispriced Founders 23:05 LP Strategy and Fund Metrics 30:15 Media, Storytelling, and Radical Honesty 36:20 Reach Versus Value: Building Niche Audiences 38:13 What Seattle Gets Wrong About Founders 47:16 Conviction, Risk, and the Future of Venture About Your Host Ed Barker has enjoyed a weird and varied career. Ed is a Brit now resident in Seattle and has founded three startups, enjoyed a long career in corporate strategy, and most recently as a VC. Sound Investments shines a small light on the fantastic work being done in the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial community. Studio 1878 Ed is Founder of Studio 1878, a podcast strategy and production studio focused on helping brands tell smarter, more human stories. We work with founders, operators, and marketing leaders to design shows that serve clear strategic goals. Studio 1878 handles the full process - from concept and positioning through recording, editing, and distribution. Our work blends editorial thinking with production craft, prioritizing substance over noise. The result is podcasts that build trust, credibility, and long-term brand value. Jordan Baker Jordan is the founder and general partner of Athenaeum Ventures, a $5 million Seattle micro-fund with a contrarian thesis: back mispriced founders the consensus has overlooked, often before any other investor finds them. His own story is that thesis in miniature. He left home at 14, moved through three Arizona high schools before dropping out at 16, and skipped college, building instead through music, streaming, and the Minecraft creator economy that grew into his gaming agency Moonrock, where he ran brand activations for Walmart, Samsung, and HR Block. He still finds founders the way he once found audiences, deep inside the Discords and game communities most VCs never enter, and he tracks the hunt obsessively: 481 cold outreaches, a 67% response rate, and a 4.3x paper markup about seven weeks into the fund. He is enough of a lifelong gamer that his wife walked down the aisle to the Minecraft theme. Connect with Alexandra: Athenaeum: athenaeum.vc [athenaeum.vc] LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jordan-baker-4319bb225 [linkedin.com/in/jordan-baker-4319bb225] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Decarbonising Heavy Industry with Alexandra Iljadica, BHP Ventures

Ed Barker talks to Alexandra Iljadica, Principal at BHP Ventures, the corporate venture arm of the global mining and minerals company, about what hard-tech and climate investing looks like from inside a major industrial. Alexandra traces her path from a nutrition science degree in Australia through founding and scaling a sustainability nonprofit, then burnout, a year in Croatia, and a 2018 move to Seattle where she helped build the 5G Open Innovation Lab. BHP has a three-part thesis covering novel energy for decarbonisation, mining operations from AI-led exploration to novel extraction and processing, and changing end-market demand around the energy transition. The mandate is follow-on, $3 to $10 million, stage-agnostic, and free to invest in non-core commodities like hydrogen and lithium. The conversation gets into copper substitution and recycling, the resurgence of nuclear and uranium, fusion-grade high-temperature superconducting tape, tailings repurposed into cementitious materials, and the capital-stack squeeze on climate companies trying to get from facility one to facility ten in the wake of Fervo Energy's IPO, where BHP was an early Series B investor. There are hard-won lessons in CVC deployment and a reflection on Seattle's introverted culture. The episode closes with practical advice for founders: meet strategic investors years before you need them, think carefully about which strategics belong on your cap table and when, and do the basic homework on what each one actually produces. 00:00 Introduction 01:41 Alexandra's Origin Story 05:25 About BHP Ventures 07:33 Critical Minerals and Where BHP Invests 10:59 Inside the Fund 13:58 Lessons from Corporate Venture Investing 23:07 Thesis Building and Looking Ahead 27:50 Nuclear, Copper and the Climate Rollercoaster 29:29 Founders in Mining 32:19 Seattle's Venture Scene 41:30 Advice for Founders About Your Host Ed Barker has enjoyed a weird and varied career. Ed is a Brit now resident in Seattle and has founded three startups, enjoyed a long career in corporate strategy, and most recently as a VC. Sound Investments shines a small light on the fantastic work being done in the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial community. Studio 1878 Ed is Founder of Studio 1878, a podcast strategy and production studio focused on helping brands tell smarter, more human stories. We work with founders, operators, and marketing leaders to design shows that serve clear strategic goals. Studio 1878 handles the full process - from concept and positioning through recording, editing, and distribution. Our work blends editorial thinking with production craft, prioritizing substance over noise. The result is podcasts that build trust, credibility, and long-term brand value. Alexandra Iljadica Alexandra is an Investor at BHP Ventures, the corporate venture arm of the global mining and minerals company BHP, where she invests in industrial decarbonisation, novel mining operations from AI-led exploration to extraction and processing, and the commodities of the energy transition. She joined BHP Ventures four years ago after helping stand up the 5G Open Innovation Lab, the Seattle-based accelerator. Her earlier career was in Australia, where she co-founded Youth Food Movement Australia and spent seven years scaling it into a national community of more than 20,000 young people, serving as CEO. She describes her own career as a series of moves "upstream" toward root causes, and is a visible presence in Seattle's climate community. Connect with Alexandra: BHP Ventures: bhp.com/about/our-businesses/ventures [https://www.bhp.com/about/our-businesses/ventures]  LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/alexandra-iljadica [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-iljadica/] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Innovating Circular Economies with Sarah O'Sell, UW CoMotion Labs

Ed Barker talks to Sarah O'Sell manager at CoMotion Labs’ Climate Tech Incubator at the University of Washington and a partner in the Seattle Climate Innovation Hub with Virtue Lab, NineZero, and the City of Seattle. Sarah recounts her circular-economy education in industrial design, early supply-chain work with Starbucks, and a career pivot after witnessing environmental harm and labor issues in China. She explains how the hub is designed to create “flow” from research to commercialization, and details the incubator’s application, review, and six-month program covering team-building, sales/marketing, operations, fundraising, mentor matching, and concluding with a demo day. Prior teams have raised about $1M each on average. The conversation defines sustainability, net zero, regenerative and degrowth, and highlights Ocean Made’s kelp-based seedling pot as an example of regenerative innovation. There's the impact of long timelines for materials and infrastructure innovation; it assesses venture scalability and identifies regional gaps like mobility/transportation amid shifting federal climate policy. 00:00 Introduction 01:47 Welcome Sarah O'Sell: Origin Story 08:08 The Seattle Climate Innovation Hub 10:08 Inside the Accelerator Programme 16:59 Defining the Language of Climate 20:42 Ocean Made: A Regenerative Company Case Study 24:30 The Pace of Breakthroughs 30:39 The Pacific Northwest Climate Ecosystem 35:54 Policy, Hype and What's Missing 41:47 Advice for Founders About Your Host Ed Barker has enjoyed a weird and varied career. Ed is a Brit now resident in Seattle and has founded three startups, enjoyed a long career in corporate strategy, and most recently as a VC. Sound Investments shines a small light on the fantastic work being done in the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial community. Studio 1878 Ed is Founder of Studio 1878, a podcast strategy and production studio focused on helping brands tell smarter, more human stories. We work with founders, operators, and marketing leaders to design shows that serve clear strategic goals. Studio 1878 handles the full process - from concept and positioning through recording, editing, and distribution. Our work blends editorial thinking with production craft, prioritizing substance over noise. The result is podcasts that build trust, credibility, and long-term brand value. Sarah O'Sell Sarah O'Sell is Manager of the CoMotion Labs Climate Tech Incubator at the University of Washington, the six-month cohort-based program housed inside the Seattle Climate Innovation Hub and run in partnership with the City of Seattle's Office of Economic Development, 9Zero, and VertueLab. She came to the role from Anim8 Collective, the circular economy strategy consultancy she founded after a decade of work spanning sustainable product design, supply chain transformation, and clean technology. Her introduction to the field was hands-on: at Western Washington University's industrial design engineering program, she sourced waste from local businesses and turned it into commercial products, and later co-founded a college solar startup that won EPA grants. She identifies publicly, including in her LinkedIn handle, as a circular economy practitioner. Across two cohorts she has reviewed 63 applicants and accepted 14, with portfolio companies spanning kelp-based agriculture, biochar, building performance software, EV adoption, and biodegradable materials. Connect with Sarah: Comotion Labs Climate Tech Incubator: comotion.uw.edu/startups-incubation/comotion-labs/comotion-labs-climate-tech-incubator/ [comotion.uw.edu/startups-incubation/comotion-labs/comotion-labs-climate-tech-incubator/] LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/circular-economy/ [linkedin.com/in/circular-economy/] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Rethinking Sustainability with Ben Eidelson, Stepchange

Ed Barker talks to Ben Eidelson, general partner at the Stepchange, about his path from engineering to Microsoft, to startups acquired by Google and Stripe, and then into climate ventures. After his first child was born and a growing urgency about the climate crisis, Ben began advising startups, making something like 12 angel investments in nine months. He realized VC was the job that incentivized helping early founders. Stepchange runs a $7.5M first fund aiming for 30 software/AI-centric climate investments, focused on venture-scale outcomes with major climate impact. The portfolio includes deployable solutions that improve distribution, financing, decision-making, and system incentives. Eidelson is also host of the long-form Stepchange Show, a research-heavy podcast that to build networks and attract talent. The conversation also touches on Seattle’s collaborative climate ecosystem - what’s now and what’s next. 00:00 Introduction 02:06 Ben's Journey: From Builder to Climate Investor 05:23 Building Community Around Climate Talent 08:28 Why a VC Fund? The Genesis of Stepchange 12:07 Software-Centric Climate Thesis 15:52 Fund Mechanics, Check Size, Collaboration 26:37 Stepchange Show: Acquired for Energy 38:35 Grid, Jevons Paradox, Regulation 47:37 Seattle Climate Ecosystem 51:07 Fund Two and What's Next About Your Host Ed Barker has enjoyed a weird and varied career. Ed is a Brit now resident in Seattle and has founded three startups, enjoyed a long career in corporate strategy, and most recently as a VC. Sound Investments shines a small light on the fantastic work being done in the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial community. Studio 1878 Ed is Founder of Studio 1878, a podcast strategy and production studio focused on helping brands tell smarter, more human stories. We work with founders, operators, and marketing leaders to design shows that serve clear strategic goals. Studio 1878 handles the full process - from concept and positioning through recording, editing, and distribution. Our work blends editorial thinking with production craft, prioritizing substance over noise. The result is podcasts that build trust, credibility, and long-term brand value. Ben Eidelson Ben is the co-founding general partner of Stepchange, a Seattle and LA-based venture fund backing software and AI-centric climate startups, where he and partner Anay Shah are deploying a $7.5M first fund across 30 investments focused on the deployment and distribution problems holding back already-proven climate technology. Before Stepchange he was a two-time founder whose companies were acquired by Google, where he worked on Photos and early mobile messaging, and Stripe, where he led work on ACH and US payment methods. He's also the co-host of The Stepchange Show, a long-form research podcast that has produced multi-hour episodes on the history of coal, data centers, and the grid. A Stanford-trained electrical engineer who pivoted to climate after the birth of his first child in 2018, Ben writes the Climate Papa newsletter and is a vocal advocate for bringing software, product, and operator talent into the climate transition. Connect with Ben: Stepchange: stepchange.vc [stepchange.vc] LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/beneidelson [linkedin.com/in/beneidelson] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

99 Seconds to Success with Nick Hughes, Founders Live

Nick Hughes, founder and CEO of Founders Live, discusses how a painful mobile payments startup failure led him to launch a casual Seattle pitch night in March 2014—five friends pitching for 99 seconds—which grew into a global entrepreneurship community across 155+ cities. He explains why 99 seconds became a differentiated, brandable format; how he treats community like a product with iterative growth; and how the “city leader” ambassador model enables local, self-sustaining events that don’t lose money while HQ builds a global member data layer. Hughes outlines Founders Live as an ecosystem focused on connection, knowledge, resources/capital, and exposure, with revenue increasingly driven by the Backstage marketplace and complemented by the global Pitch Challenge and premium membership with AI-powered search. He reflects on burnout, travel as renewal, lessons for Seattle’s ecosystem, and how AI will make starting easier but scaling and discovery harder. 00:00 Welcome: Nick Hughes, Founders Live 02:21 Origin Story: The First Event 03:55 The 99-Second Pitch 05:48 Going Global and The City Leader Model 10:20 Burnout and What Keeps Nick Going 13:20 The Founders Live Ecosystem and Business Model 32:41 Pitch Patterns and Storytelling 39:26 Seattle vs. the World 56:29 AI and the Future of Entrepreneurship About Your Host Ed Barker has enjoyed a weird and varied career. Ed is a Brit now resident in Seattle and has founded three startups, enjoyed a long career in corporate strategy, and most recently as a VC. Sound Investments shines a small light on the fantastic work being done in the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial community. Studio 1878 Ed is Founder of Studio 1878, a podcast strategy and production studio focused on helping brands tell smarter, more human stories. We work with founders, operators, and marketing leaders to design shows that serve clear strategic goals. Studio 1878 handles the full process - from concept and positioning through recording, editing, and distribution. Our work blends editorial thinking with production craft, prioritizing substance over noise. The result is podcasts that build trust, credibility, and long-term brand value. Nick Hughes Nick is the founder and CEO of Founders Live, the global community and media platform he started in Seattle in March 2014 as a Friday-night gathering with a 99-second pitch limit and audience voting. What began as Feature Friday has since grown into an event series running in more than 150 cities across 50-plus countries, alongside a digital ecosystem that now includes the Backchannel community, Backstage Intelligence, and the Prime Time Pitch Challenge global tournament. Before Founders Live, Nick founded mobile payments startup Seconds and was a co-founder of Coinme, the Bitcoin ATM company. He is a Seattle native, a Western Washington University graduate, and one of the most-traveled community builders in the global startup world. Connect with Nick: Founders Live: founderslive.com [founderslive.com] LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jnickhughes/ [linkedin.com/in/jnickhughes/] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.