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
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jnickhughes
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