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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 gro...

Ed Barker talks to Aina Abiodun, President and Executive Director of VertueLab, about how the Hurricane Sandy blackout and failed emergency infrastructure in New York drove her into climate work, her five years in Germany learning how Europe funds climate tech, and why she moved to Seattle in 2023. Aina talks about VertueLab’s role funding and supporting climate entrepreneurs, how Washington’s Cli...

Ed Barker talks to Jim Houston, an early Intel Capital team member and later founder of the Portland Seed Fund, now a climate investor with E8. Jim remembers Intel Capital’s 1995 origins to help shape the emerging internet, its rapid global scale, its ecosystem-building investment approach, and what he learned about syndication and founders. Jim talks about why he launched Portland Seed Fund in 20...

This week Ed Barker talks to Buffy Allegria, managing partner and co-founder at Loud Ventures, about how her corporate banking background and experiences after having premature twins led her into healthcare venture capital. We talk about how VC is structurally broken for healthcare, where regulatory, reimbursement, and adoption hurdles require more than a check. Loud’s model embeds fractional exec...

This week Ed Barker talks to Jeff Walton, Chief Risk Officer at Strive, about the company's shift from anti-ESG activism to building a Bitcoin treasury aimed at institutional exposure. Walton's background in reinsurance positions him well to understand the changing Bitcoin landscape, and how others in the market are delivering Bitcoin-driven balance-sheet growth. The conversation covers Strive’s a...

Ed Barker talks to Gabriel Scheer, Senior Director, Investments & Innovation at Elemental Impact. Elemental Impact is a nonprofit venture fund investing in companies with environmental and community impact. Gabriel’s path goes from startups like Lime to investing in climate impact.  The conversation covers Elemental’s donor-funded model, where exits are recycled into new investments and a...

Ed Barker talks to Laura Ruderman, CEO of the Technology Alliance, about Washington State's innovation economy. Ruderman's path to leading the Alliance is anything but straight: she moved to Seattle from New York in the early 90s to stage manager at the Rep, ended up at a small multimedia startup owned by Bill Gates, got swept into Microsoft through an acquisition, and then spent years in the stat...

Ed Barker chats to Nicole Doyle, Seattle Director at the Founders Institute and founder of Aspir, about why Seattle needs more early-stage founder support. There's a deep-dive into FI’s non-equity model, its focus on true zero-to-one founders, and its three financial pathways. The conversation touches on agentic-AI imperatives, how AI impacts scaling, and the role Seattle plays in this new world....

Navigating Venture Capital, Media, and AI Ed Barker sits down with Arif Gürsel, partner at Uncap Ventures, to discuss his journey from the world of Big Tech to VC. Arif shares his initial hesitance and subsequent embrace of the venture world, and the founding of Uncap Ventures and its mission to support startups with black founders. They dive into the importance of media and storytelling in entrep...

In this episode, Ed Barker talks with Anthony Herman, managing partner at Snowball, an innovation advisory firm specializing in corporate venture capital (CVC). The discussion highlights the dual roles of CVC employees, who balance traditional venture capital duties with corporate stakeholder engagement. Anthony shares his career journey, including his early work in private equity, founding a VR e...

Perfecting Your Pitch: Insights from Dana Sather Robinson In this episode, Ed Barker is joined by Dana Sather Robinson, founder of Pitch4Impact, to discuss common mistakes founders make in their pitches and how to improve them. Dana emphasizes the importance of understanding what investors really want to hear and how to craft a compelling narrative. She highlights the significance of good communic...

Navigating the Climate Tech Investment Landscape Ed Barker sits down with Jeff Canin, an active member of E8 Angels, board member at Virtue Lab, and co-chair of the Clean Energy Institute Advisory Council at the University of Washington. Jeff shares his journey from engineering and business to becoming a leading figure in climate tech and clean tech investing. 00:00 Introduction 05:13 Mission in C...

The Creative Destruction Lab: Connecting Innovation with Impact In this episode, Emer Dooley, site lead for the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) at the Foster School of Business, University of Washington, discusses the CDL's mission to commercialize deep tech startups for the benefit of humankind. She elaborates on CDL’s mentoring program, which pairs high-caliber mentors with promising startups in...

Jonathan Azoff: From Gaming to Scientific Venture - Building SNØCAP Fund’s Model for Commercializing Real Science In this episode of Sound Investments, Jonathan Azoff, co-founder and General Partner at SNØCAP, traces his nonlinear path from software and gaming through logistics, real estate, and eventually into climate and deep tech. That shift began at Sweet Farm, a nonprofit agric...

From Tech to Bananas: A New Investment Horizon This week, Ed Barker sits down with Luni Libes, one of Seattle’s most quietly influential entrepreneurs and investors. Luni built and ran multiple software companies before launching Fledge, the accelerator network that helped more than 120 founders around the world. His current focus is Africa Eats, an investment company backing a portfolio of food-f...

Navigating Tech Optimism and AI Innovation with TA McCann of Pioneer Square Labs In this episode, Ed Barker sits down with TA McCann, Managing Partner at Pioneer Square Labs, to explore what it takes to build ambitious companies in an era defined by artificial intelligence. TA’s background spans founding and scaling startups, leading high-performing teams, and backing the next generation of founde...

Harnessing Innovation: How CoMotion Turns Research into Real-World Impact In this episode of Sound Investments, we talk with François Baneyx, Vice Provost for Innovation and Director of CoMotion at the University of Washington. François shares his journey from growing up in southwestern France to leading one of the nation’s most forward-thinking university innovation hubs. We explore how CoMotion...

Building the Future: Space Tech, Startups, and the Seattle Advantage with Chris Le Seattle might not shout the loudest, but it’s quietly becoming one of the most important cities in the space tech revolution. In this episode, Chris Le - Managing Partner at Actuate Ventures - joins Ed Barker to explore how deep-tech founders are reshaping aerospace, why Seattle has the world’s highest concentr...

What makes a great angel investor - and how do you build a startup funding ecosystem from scratch? In this episode of  Sound Investments , Ed Barker talks with  John Sechrest , Managing Director of the  Seattle Angel Conference , about the mechanics of early-stage investing and what it takes to create a thriving investor community. John breaks down the difference between funding a&n...

Bridging Tech Breakthroughs with Sierra Clouse Ed Barker sits down with Sierra Clouse to unpack Barclo Venture Studio’s model for moving deep tech from research to market in the Pacific Northwest. They cover why “research → roadmap → revenue” beats slideware, how to score opportunities across the future tech stack, and where sovereign security, post-quantum cryptography and data-center realities c...

The Future of AI and Corporate Innovation with Taylor Black What happens when one of the world’s biggest tech companies leans into the AI boom - while staying connected to the scrappy, risk-taking energy of startups? In this episode of  Sound Investments , Ed Barker sits down with  Taylor Black, Director of AI and Venture Ecosystems at Microsoft , to explore the shifting landscape of art...