Two months after the news that they were leaving their jobs, Justin Smith and Ben Smith are closing in on about $30 million in initial funding for their new global media venture and are likely to announce their investors in a matter of weeks, sources familiar with the matter tell me. Those investors will be a mix of personal and institutional investors who will have equity stakes in the business. An Axios report earlier this week identified a few bold faced names who had been approached for “Project Coda,” including Bob Iger and Laurene Powell Jobs. According to my sources, conversations with Iger didn’t go anywhere and Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective passed on the opportunity, citing conflicts with The Atlantic. (David Bradley, the former publisher of The Atlantic, does intend to invest, according to sources familiar.)