SoundBoard Venture Fund

Managing Director Jonathan Hakakian, a Kauffman Fellow and NJBIZ '40 Under 40' recipient, leads the fund alongside co-founder Richard Magid. The investment committee includes LPs with operator backgrounds, such as Mike Hepp, who built and sold a public-sector networking business. The firm states it 'mobilizes our investors to join the evaluation and decision-making processes,' giving the LP base a direct role in underwriting.

The fund sources primarily through its own network of 400-plus members, many of whom are current and former operators across industries such as consumer products, telecom, and financial services. It targets the Mid-Atlantic corridor (Washington, D.C. to New York City) and favors companies that have not yet been heavily shopped to coastal venture funds. Jonathan Hakakian's role as Entrepreneur in Residence at Stevens Institute of Technology provides additional university-tied pipeline.

SoundBoard engages exclusively in direct, early-stage equity investments. The firm's website lists over 40 portfolio companies, all direct positions. There is no mention of fund-of-fund commitments or investments in other venture firms.

The fund focuses on Seed and Start-up stages, as confirmed by its stated strategy. It targets companies that have a scalable competitive advantage and assesses the founding team's culture and leadership gaps both before and after the initial investment.

The fund does not publish a hard exclusion list, but case studies and portfolio names show heavy concentration in enterprise software, industrial/robotics technology, digital health, agriculture/food tech, and mobility. It seeks 'understandable' businesses — a screening heuristic that likely filters out deep-tech biopharma or capital-intensive hardware plays far from commercialization.

SoundBoard Venture Fund is a direct outgrowth of SoundBoard Consulting Group, the leadership-coaching and executive-advisory firm Richard Magid founded in 2000. Magid used the consulting relationships as the initial base for SoundBoard Angel Fund when it launched in 2012. The fund's emphasis on assessing leadership teams and culture pre- and post-investment carries the consulting firm's DNA.

The firm presents itself as a collaborative vehicle that leans on its LP network for evaluation but does not publicly structure itself as a co-investment club alongside external GPs. Follow-on capital appears to be handled internally — the fund lists companies at various stages of maturity in its portfolio — but no publicly named co-investors or SPV vehicles are disclosed.