Gabe Newell is known to most as the co-founder and de facto leader of Valve, but did you know he also invests in cookery startups? Eater recently interviewed Newell over the phone, where he told a story about how a Seattle-based startup by the name of ChefSteps asked him if they could come to his home and cook food for him and his son. The food was made using Joule, a nifty kitchen peripheral that Newell was so impressed with that he decided to not only personally fund the startup, but even made a cameo appearance in their new commercial.
Gabe Newell has invested in a new cookery company. Newell was wowed by the Joule kitchen peripheral when its creators offered to come to his house and cook for the Valve boss and his 11-year-old son. So wowed, in fact, that he is now personally helping to fund the venture (Valve is not involved) and has recorded a cameo appearance in its new advert. The Joule is an “immersion circulator”, designed to help cook meals using the sous vide method which gently heats food in water (thanks, VentureBeat). It was designed by Seattle startup ChefSteps, founded by friends Chris Young and Grant Crilly – both former Microsoft alumni. “They came over and it was easily the best food I’d ever had,” Newell told Eater. “Spectacular in its design and execution.” Newell’s son was so entranced he began reading the gadget’s range of cookbooks. “It was his bedside reading for six months. Even though, up until then, he’d never been interested in cooking at all, he suddenly decided he wanted to be a chef. And when I talked to him, he was talking about it like an engineer talks about it, he was talking about trade offs and fundamental principles and thermodynamics.”
