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For Jessi Baker, MBE, the journey to founding Provenance was a collision of engineering, art, and a burning frustration with the advertising industry.
After studying engineering at Cambridge and later working as a Creative Technologist for a large advertising agency, she saw a massive, fundamental disconnect: brands were spending millions on beautiful, emotive digital marketing, yet this bore little resemblance to the reality of how products were actually made.
This disconnect was an industry-wide issue known as greenwashing. With global consumer spending increasingly driven by ethical values, brands that market fiction over facts face massive regulatory risk (like the UK's Green Claims Code) and, critically, a loss of consumer trust. This problem is not just moral; it’s commercial, touching the multi-billion-pound market for values-driven shoppers.
Jessi’s core insight was simple: marketing should be "facts, not fiction".
You can listen to our full conversation with Jessi on the latest episode of Angel Insights by clicking the link below.
The spark for Provenance came during Jessi’s previous career in the engineering supply chain space, where she "first truly understood the provenance of products," seeing every step they took before reaching the consumer.
However, the definitive "Aha Moment" came when Jessi was tackling this problem as a side project to her PhD. She became obsessed with blockchain technology, seeing it as the ultimate tool for verifiable, shared data, and Provenance became the third-ever app built on the Ethereum blockchain.
This early exploration came with a high price tag. Jessi admits that the company's early experiments used a lot of Bitcoin and Ethereum. She recalls the "ridiculous experiments" and the "really scary" amount that was spent, joking that she spent so much on food in those days that it’s like she "spent $430,000 on sushi" at today's crypto value.
This intense experimentation, while costly in hindsight, led to a critical, commercial pivot:
The pivot: Jessi quickly realised that a fully blockchain-based traceability system for every single item was "completely impractical" in the real world.
The strategic shift: The team moved away from complex, internal supply chain tracing and towards the ultimate consumer-facing problem: verifying and communicating claims.
This shift was critical to finding product-market fit. Provenance chose to partner with certifiers and auditors (the people already on the ground with clipboards), and instead focus on becoming the essential platform that audits the auditors and turns verified data into compelling shopper information.
Provenance is now a sophisticated, AI-enabled software platform used by brands and retailers to manage their sustainability communications. It operates on two strategic fronts:
In a time of heightened scrutiny, Provenance uses AI to help brands "eradicate greenwash". The AI crawls a brand’s entire public-facing marketing output to identify and flag "nefarious claims" that could lead to non-compliance or reputational damage.
The core product enables a brand to make a claim (e.g., "vegan," "recyclable packaging," "female-led business") and then backs it up with verifiable data. This simple commitment to transparency is a major conversion driver:
Conversion: Data from Provenance shows that products with verified claims see a significantly higher conversion rate.
Efficiency: The platform increases efficiency for brands, making it "really easy for them to talk about sustainability".
The biggest strength for Provenance in the next five years lies in its data strategy, particularly in the age of generative AI.
Jessi is positioning Provenance to be the canonical data set for sustainability claims. Since LLMs are only as good as the data they are built on, Provenance is ensuring its data is indexed and referenced by LLMs and search engines. The goal is that if a shopper is using a chatbot for purchasing advice, the AI agent will pull its trustworthy information directly from Provenance.
In securing capital, Jessi made a conscious decision to pursue a balanced cap table, recognising the importance of diverse investors. This led her to partner with the Angel Academe network, which she called the best in the UK for female-led EIS investment. Angel Academe provided essential early-stage funding and crucial ongoing support, offering "off the cuff, connections, checkups, lending an ear even when times are not always great".
Looking ahead five years, Provenance’s future is focused on solidifying its position as the bedrock of transparent commerce. The company is doubling down on two key areas:
Becoming the data authority: The central goal is to be the canonical data set for sustainability claims, ensuring the data is "indexed and referenced by all of the LLMs and agents and chatbots". This establishes Provenance as the indispensable single source of truth for this vital data type.
Driving shopper behaviour: The ultimate measure of success is the platform's impact. This involves seeing "trustworthy, credible sustainability information... powering changes in shopper behaviour". This means linking sustainability claims to loyalty schemes and search results, actively helping citizens discover products that better match their values.
Jessi remains a techno-optimist, seeing huge potential in decentralised technologies, particularly in how tokens can revolutionise loyalty schemes for brands and restaurants. Her personal success criteria remain grounded: low stress, being in nature, and "working on fun, interesting ideas with cool people".
The Angel Academe EIS Fund:
Provenance is one example of the high-potential, female-founded businesses backed by the Angel Academe network. If you are a sophisticated investor looking to diversify your portfolio into this often-overlooked and high-performing segment of the UK tech market, you can learn more about their investment opportunities.
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