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-focused African businesses that are growing far faster - and surviving at rates far higher - than the typical American tech startup.

Luni explains why the standard venture playbook misses the realities of most global markets and walks through the alternatives he has built: hands-on company building, growth financing instead of burn financing, and a long-term model that aims for durability rather than quick exits. We dig into the structural advantages of food and agriculture ventures in Africa, how Africa Eats has navigated scaling in fragmented markets, and what he has learned during a year living and working from Mauritius.

If you’re interested in alternative venture models, operator-led investing, or the next wave of African market growth, this conversation offers a set of insights you won’t hear in typical VC discussions.

Chapters

00:00 Introducing Luni Libes

02:13 How Africa Eats began

02:57 Building Fledge and its global network

04:48 How Fledge expanded internationally

06:44 Lessons from decades of entrepreneurship

12:32 Africa Eats and the model behind its success

19:45 The value and timing of early stage capital

20:06 How living abroad reshaped his perspective

20:58 The plan for public listing and market participation in Africa

21:56 Breaking down the realities of African venture capital

23:15 Scaling the Africa Eats portfolio

25:36 What comes next

33:12 Personal reflections on the sabbatical

39:51 Closing thoughts

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. He's now building a podcast production company, Studio 1878. Sound Investments is a modest attempt to shine some light on the fantastic work being done in the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial community.

Luni Libes, Managing Partner, Pioneer Square Labs

Luni is a serial entrepreneur and investor with more than three decades of experience founding and scaling companies in software, social enterprise, and impact investing. He founded the global accelerator network Fledge and is the CEO of Africa Eats, an investment holding company building resilient food and agriculture businesses across the African continent. He also co-founded Realize Impact, a public charity that channels philanthropic capital into mission-driven ventures. Luni previously served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Washington’s CoMotion centre and has taught entrepreneurship at multiple institutions. He is the author of The Next Step series and creator of the Pinchot Impact Index, a framework for measuring aggregated impact across portfolios.

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