Jameson Seidel
18 Oct 2025Jack and Jill raise $20m, Oura hits $11bn, UK IPO Market, IPO push for Nscale, Waymo announce London
Jameson Seidel Announces The Engine Room
Jameson Seidel, GP at early-stage fund Chapter One, joins and announces The Engine Room, a one-week sprint giving eight teams £5,000 to turn side projects or PhD ideas into companies, with mentors from ElevenLabs, Anthropic, DeepMind and Coinbase. She explains the name came from Zoe after her earlier Phoenix Club idea, the program grew out of their AI Engine hackathons, and applications are open for engineers with velocity and people commercializing specialized knowledge.
Poker Nights: Vegas Upbringing and London Games
Jameson explains her poker roots: her father is a professional poker player, she grew up in Las Vegas and has played since age 12, later joining a game run by Uber engineers in San Francisco. She now hosts monthly low-stakes £50 buy-in games in London, and the group discusses why poker beats stiff networking happy hours for actually meeting people.
Twitter Years, Bots, and the X Algorithm
Jameson recalls her five years at Twitter from 2016 to 2021, where she was technical lead on the platform manipulation team building bot-detection and election-interference algorithms. She weighs in on Nikita Bier as X's head of product and his TBH/Gas background, the algorithm's shift toward short video and polished launch videos versus the old community-driven timeline, and notes her data-sourcing systems skew toward US founders because fewer Europeans are on X.
Jameson's Goodbye and Gamifying Networking
Jameson signs off, directing listeners to engineroom.run to apply. The hosts then debrief, citing Andreas Klinger's point about dense micro-communities, floating the idea of livestreaming a poker game, and discussing how gamified events like chess nights and their own launch party choices help networking feel less forced.
17 Oct 2025etn. Episode 2
Jameson Seidel launches The Engine Room (Chapter One)
Jameson Seidel, general partner at early-stage fund Chapter One, announces The Engine Room: a one-week sprint giving eight teams £5,000 to turn side projects or PhD research into real companies, with mentors from ElevenLabs, Anthropic, DeepMind, and Coinbase, running the 10th–14th with applications open now. She explains the name came from Zoe of AI Engine after earlier drafts like the 'Phoenix Club,' and that the program grew out of their AI Engine hackathons and a Chapter One brainstorm with founder Jeff Morris. She says they're especially looking for high-velocity engineers and PhDs looking to commercialize, positioned between a hackathon and an accelerator.
Jameson's poker life: Vegas roots to London games
Jameson shares her poker roots: her father is a professional poker player, she grew up in Las Vegas and has played since age 12, and she later joined a much-loved game run by Uber engineers in San Francisco. Since moving to London she hosts a monthly £50 buy-in game for founders, engineers, and investors, sending famously stern reminder emails because attendance matters. The hosts agree it beats stiff networking happy hours, and one host offers a live on-air apology for bailing on a game after signing up.
Twitter years: platform manipulation & X under Nikita Beer
Jameson recounts her five years at Twitter (2016–2021), where she was technical lead of the platform manipulation team building bot-detection and election-interference algorithms during the post-2016 techlash. The hosts ask about Nikita Beer stepping in as X's head of product — the Polymarket bet on his exit, his tbh/Gas track record, and his build-in-public style — and she credits him while noting the algorithm now favors short video and feels less personal. She describes her Twitter-data-driven founder-sourcing systems skewing toward US founders, says she misses the community-driven timeline, and signs off with a plug to apply to The Engine Room.