Catalyst by Camber Creek

Camber Creek
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Camber Creek invests in entrepreneurs who are reshaping entire industries. Our podcast Catalyst features interviews with leaders of this caliber in the startup world and far beyond. These are conversations that spark something, insights from some of the most interesting people we’ve met and want to get to know, leaders we admire, business executives, and diverse experts with something to say about why the world should be just a little bit different. But they don't stop at ideas; they have the know-how to make it happen. www.cambercreek.com

  1. This Is One Way to Save Local News

    VOR 1 TAG

    This Is One Way to Save Local News

    Local news is on life support in the US. Since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers have closed or merged. That is a staggering number. But different business models have sprung up to fill that gap, including digital-only and non-profit ventures like a startup media company in Maryland’s biggest city, the Baltimore Banner. How are communities affected when local events simply never become stories? How does removing the profit motive change the way the news is produced? And what's it like competing with a nearly 200-year-old incumbent? We put those questions to Julie Sharper, an enterprise reporter for the Banner. 2:45 Julie’s pattern of deep but shifting interests became an asset in journalism. 4:25 Julie is short, but people underestimate her at their peril. 7:00 The Baltimore Banner is a nonprofit, digital-first newsroom. 8:15 The nonprofit model shifts focus away from shareholder pressure (because there are no shareholders) toward journalism quality. 8:50 How does the Banner differ from the biggest paper in Maryland, Julie’s former employer, The Baltimore Sun? 11:30 In a digital-first newsroom, does anyone need to show up to the office? 14:05 The Banner’s financial model and how it sustains growth. Subscriptions make advertising revenue important but less central. 16:05 What is an enterprise reporter? 18:30 Covering city hall. 20:00 Why don’t more behind-the-scenes conflicts make it into published stories? 25:30 Investigating Baltimore Ravens player Justin Tucker. 28:30 The challenges of protecting anonymous sources while maintaining legal rigor. 31:00 Why legacy media organizations may hesitate to pursue big stories 33:30 The emotional toll and eventual validation of the reporting 34:50 The broader impact of local journalism on institutional accountability 38:10 The role of AI in journalism. Julie believes it will not replace core reporting or writing functions. 40:00 Baltimore’s reputation and how outsiders perceive the city

    45 Min.
  2. If We Don’t Run Out of Lithium, Josh Goldman Will Be One Reason Why

    1. APR.

    If We Don’t Run Out of Lithium, Josh Goldman Will Be One Reason Why

    Josh Goldman would never describe himself this way, but he may be one of the most important people in the world. As co-founder of KoBold Metals he has helped develop technologies that do a much better job finding deposits of lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper, and do so at a fraction of the billions of dollars that have become the industry average. These are items on a shortlist of what governments call critical minerals, which are vital for energy production. So, basically, Josh and his colleagues are helping keep the lights on. For example, KoBold uncovered what it projects will be one of the largest copper mines in the world. That deposit in Zambia is one reason the company, a startup, is already worth a few billion dollars. To reach this point, Josh and his team have had to solve tough scientific problems, navigate domestic and international politics, and take a firm stance against corruption. He credits his training as a physicist with helping him think through the things that really matter and how to approach them. 1:20 Josh reflects on his early identity as a physicist and how that shaped his thinking. Physics trains strong first-principles thinkers and generalists. But the day-to-day of being a scientist is tedious. 6:00 Why KoBold Metals has a chief philosopher 6:30 The mission to discover critical mineral deposits needed for electrification and AI-driven infrastructure 7:45 The core challenge: finding hidden mineral deposits deep underground where traditional methods fail. 12:00 Josh explains his transition from academia to consulting and eventually to the energy sector. 14:10 The scarcity is not minerals themselves but knowledge of where concentrated deposits exist. 22:00 How KoBold Metals decides where to explore, including logistical, financial, and social considerations 23:30 What it's like to make a big find 27:25 Fundraising to fund a company most people won't understand 28:45 The decision to not sell technology as a service but deploy it directly in exploration 30:10 Integrating scientists, engineers, and technologists into one team. 32:15 KoBold got a number of foundational business decisions right early on. 35:45 Navigating ethical consideration and geopolitics

    56 Min.
  3. How HousingWire Defines Who It Wants to Reach

    25. MÄRZ

    How HousingWire Defines Who It Wants to Reach

    Whatever industry you’re in, there’s probably a specialist media outlet that you consult on a regular basis. You’re familiar with what they write, but what does that publication look like on the inside? How do they define you, their audience? And what is it you should know to improve the likelihood that they’ll highlight your company? As President of HW Media, Diego Sanchez has answers to all of these questions for one of the most important publications in the housing industry, HousingWire. Housing is such a big topic and growing even bigger given the current affordability crisis. So Diego could go after a large, broad audience. But that’s not what HousingWire is doing at all. Diego and his team care most about a group of industry leaders and insiders that, if put in one place, would constitute a mid-sized US city. This approach is targeted, thoughtful, and may be a model for how to break through an incredibly noisy information environment. 1:30 Diego outlines his early career in investment banking at Credit Suisse and the skills he developed there along with his time at Microsoft. 7:20 Defining HousingWire’s core audience: 200,000–250,000 high-value professionals 10:45 HousingWire’s revenue model. Striving to become the “Bloomberg of housing.” 17:30 Integrating AI into products to enhance analysis and user experience 22:30 The trade-offs between investing in editorial content versus product development 26:30 How private equity ownership influences HousingWire’s strategy 27:10 HousingWire’s four core user personas: C-suite executives, capital markets leaders, homebuilders, and top-producing agents and loan originators. 32:30 Advice for professionals pitching stories to HousingWire 35:20 Will HousingWire branch out into multifamily? 39:35 Housing policy is hardly ever in the news as much as it is now. And that's not necessarily a good thing. 43:15 Are industry awards programs pay to play? Why HousingWire is not incentivized to play that game.

    52 Min.
  4. Your Smartphone Is Not Listening to Your Conversations, But You Should Still Be Concerned

    18. MÄRZ

    Your Smartphone Is Not Listening to Your Conversations, But You Should Still Be Concerned

    Does this sound familiar? You’re on a phone call. You tell the person on the other end that you're really craving barbecue for dinner, and within minutes, one of the apps you use serves you an ad for brisket. Or worse yet, you're not even on your phone when you say this, but the ad still finds you. By some estimates, more than half of Americans believe their smartphones are spying on them, recording every word they say. To be clear, there’s no evidence that this is true, but the suspicion persists. Digital advertising can feel creepy. Jeremy Hlavacek feels your pain. He’s run programmatic advertising operations for big companies like The Weather Channel, IBM’s Watson division, and Experian. An industry veteran, Jeremy has advice for entrepreneurs thinking about how to get their companies noticed, and he believes there’s a big difference between what advertising platforms can do and what they should do. 3:00 Jeremy describes his entry into the early internet era and how digital advertising emerged as a new career path. 4:10 Smartphones are not listening to users, but highly accurate predictions are driven by vast amounts of behavioral data. 5:05 How modern digital advertising uses demographic data and AI to target consumers far more precisely than traditional media. 6:00 Predictive algorithms have become so effective that they can feel invasive, even when they are not. 8:10 The rapid evolution of major tech platforms like Google, Amazon, and Facebook and their growing predictive power. 10:10 The rules that govern digital advertising. 11:40 Everyday digital interactions, like web browsing and app usage, generate valuable consumer data. 15:20 There are many more companies tracking you than you might think. 18:00 You can opt out from a lot of this. 20:30 Can digital marketing change human behavior? 26:00 Advertising has shifted away from traditional content-based media into platforms like search and commerce. 32:20 Companies like Walmart are building their own advertising capabilities through acquisitions, partnerships, and internal development. 35:20 Products like ChatGPT attract attention and inevitably create opportunities for advertising. 39:10 How venture-backed startups can avoid wasting money on digital ads.

    45 Min.
  5. Bruce Toll Built a $15 Billion Company by Helping American Families Go Up-Market

    11. MÄRZ

    Bruce Toll Built a $15 Billion Company by Helping American Families Go Up-Market

    Bruce Toll, working with his brother Robert, built Toll Brothers from two houses in Pennsylvania into one of the largest home builders in America, which today has a $15 billion market capitalization. We wanted to find out how he managed this, because housing is a very local product. Most local developers don't become regional players, and practically no one reaches national scale. But Bruce Toll just keeps going. Real estate has been his base. However, he also has large positions in healthcare, natural resources, and even produced more than 100 films. During this conversation with Camber Creek General Partner Jeffrey Berman, it became clear that Mr. Toll invests as much in people as he does in businesses. His relationships open unexpected opportunities and new spaces where he can build. 1:20 Learning the business from his father 2:37 Founding Toll Brothers and building the first two homes outside of Philadelphia 6:00 Early growth happened organically. It was not the result of a deliberate scaling strategy. 8:00 Abundant labor and strong housing demand in the 1960s made it relatively easy to assemble construction teams. 12:25 His father tells him to build more upscale homes because they’ll face less competition in that part of the market. 14:29 How housing design preferences have evolved 18:51 Pioneering uses of modular construction processes 22:21 Supply chains are now global, not just domestic. 25:10 The advantages of working with family. 26:20 Why Toll Brothers went public and what that enabled 29:35 Stepping away from day-to-day leadership of Toll Brothers and focusing on a wide array of other ventures through his family office, BET Investments 32:25 Producing more than 100 films through a partnership with Sidney Kimmel. 36:35 Bruce Toll talks about the industries he would pursue if he were starting out today

    42 Min.
  6. The Systems that Produce Our Food are Very, Very Messy. Ran Goel is Cleaning Them Up.

    4. MÄRZ

    The Systems that Produce Our Food are Very, Very Messy. Ran Goel is Cleaning Them Up.

    Before he founded what became one of the larger independent organic food companies in Southern Ontario, Canada, Ran Goel was not overly occupied with food trends. He started paying attention when he realized what we eat is a gateway to many other things he cares about, like land use, health, and addressing income inequality. 1:26 Ran’s unexpected transition from Wall Street lawyer to leader in the organic food space 3:10 Ran came to see food as a lever for addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and human rights concerns. 9:05 Fresh City Farm’s early days as an urban farm and the tangible seed-to-table experience that shaped the company’s ethos. 11:20 The evolution from Fresh City Farm to Mama Earth Organics 16:10 Why Mama Earth Organics believes vertical integration is necessary—for now 19:05 What is the value proposition of organic and locally sourced food? 25:40 Why food has become intertwined with identity and self-expression over the past two decades 27:45 Mama Earth’s own evolution from a slightly paternalistic model to a more inclusive, less judgmental brand 29:20 Would scaling organic and local food nationwide inevitably make it more expensive? 32:40 AI and robotics could lower food production costs. 34:00 Today’s food systems favor shelf-stable, highly processed products. 36:15 But cultural norms are powerful. There has been a positive shift in consumption patterns, including declining red meat, sugary drink, and alcohol consumption. 38:00 Can you make money in this business? 39:50 Community contributions, public goods, and the cumulative impact of small, consistent actions

    42 Min.
  7. How Do You Build a Massive Consumer Brand?

    25. FEB.

    How Do You Build a Massive Consumer Brand?

    In the early days of the mobile web, when Harley Miller decided he wanted to focus on consumer businesses—after many investors felt they’d been burned by brands that failed—he faced criticism. Then he made a whole lot of money with companies like Delivery Hero, HelloFresh, and The Farmer’s Dog, just to name a few. Some look at the millions of customer transactions it would take before a consumer brand could produce the kind of returns that would justify venture capital funding as too risky and too much of a long shot. But what Harley sees in all those numbers is data, which, if studied, can make a company’s growth potential clear. He explained his approach to Camber Creek General Partner Jeffrey Berman and Head of Platform Lionel Foster. 1:45 Harley’s first business: Camp Harley Baseball 6:35 Harley describes his decade at Insight Partners and why he chose to focus on consumer internet investing despite skepticism from traditional enterprise software investors. 7:27 How the rise of mobile transformed consumer categories from transactional novelties into durable, high-frequency digital businesses. 9:15 The “Google toothbrush rule”, a heuristic for identifying businesses with habitual, recurring customer behavior. 12:35 Is great consumer investing more mathematical (market size and frequency) or subjective (founder quality and vision). 13:30 Harley explains his “race versus jockey” framework, balancing total addressable market with founder obsession and execution. 16:20 Building a fund within a fund 17:15 Left Lane uses granular customer data to evaluate product-market fit earlier and more empirically than most venture investors. 19:15 Spinning out of Insight in 2019, receiving track-record attribution and a significant anchor commitment 21:50 Raising Left Lane’s $630 million debut fund and navigating deployment through COVID and the zero-interest-rate era. 22:45 Raising a $1.4 billion second fund, adapting to market corrections, and maintaining discipline after pandemic-era exuberance. 25:00 Finding “unfair” customer acquisition advantages, like Ryan Serhant’s personal brand and Bilt’s multifamily channel partnerships. 33:30 Kings League, a global seven-on-seven soccer league co-founded by Gerard Piqué that blends sport, streaming culture, and built-in influencer distribution 40:05 SERHANT. and the impact of the Netflix series Owning Manhattan on brand equity and distribution. 44:30 SERHANT.’s long-term empire-building ambitions and the synergy between Camber Creek’s domain expertise and Left Lane’s consumer lens

    48 Min.
  8. One Community, Three Segregated Churches, and an Experiment in Democracy

    18. FEB.

    One Community, Three Segregated Churches, and an Experiment in Democracy

    In 2013, Jason Green left his position at the White House—a position he had worked most of his life to obtain—to sit with his terminally ill grandmother and be an audience for the stories she knew about their family and the community they all grew up in. If you stop the description there, it may sound quaint and commendable. But what he learned was that the person he thought of as “Sweet Grandma Green” was a community organizer—and a bit of a radical—who helped merge three churches, two white and one Black, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Jason thought he would be the family archivist. Instead, he became convinced that the ordinary people he loved and grew up with had something urgent to teach us about the unfinished work of American democracy. His new book is Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility. We spoke a few weeks before its publication. 1:18 Jason’s book is about hope rooted in lived experience rather than abstract optimism. 2:40 Jason’s multifaceted background and his time in the White House. 4:40 Jason recounts working on local and national political campaigns, including witnessing Barack Obama’s 2004 DNC speech and deciding to support his presidential run. 6:10 Jason’s uncynical view of politics 10:00 Leaving a “good government job” 11:00 Money can be a catalyst rather than a corrupting force 16:30 The power of intergenerational conversations 18:50 Quince Orchard, its farming roots and segregated history 21:00 The Black and white Methodist congregations in Quince Orchard lived parallel but largely separate lives for decades. 23:00 Economic decline and shrinking membership force the congregations to confront the possibility of merging. 24:20 The impact of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination 27:00 Jason’s initial disbelief upon learning that his own grandmother helped lead what he now recognizes as a radical act of integration 29:00 The real miracle was not simply coming together but the decades-long commitment to staying together. 36:00 Civic infrastructure and small relational bridges make large-scale reconciliation possible when crises strike. 40:00 Jason’s 102-year-old great-uncle still drives weekly to the integrated church.

    47 Min.
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Camber Creek invests in entrepreneurs who are reshaping entire industries. Our podcast Catalyst features interviews with leaders of this caliber in the startup world and far beyond. These are conversations that spark something, insights from some of the most interesting people we’ve met and want to get to know, leaders we admire, business executives, and diverse experts with something to say about why the world should be just a little bit different. But they don't stop at ideas; they have the know-how to make it happen. www.cambercreek.com

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  • Erstellt von
    Camber Creek
  • Jahre aktiv
    2025 - 2026
  • Folgen
    21
  • Bewertung
    Unbedenklich
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    © Camber Creek
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