Founded & Funded
116 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsListen to conversations between Madrona investors and entrepreneurs, founders, and startup personalities who talk about some of the key moments in building a company. Designed to give would-be founders and others interested in working with or for startups a view into the struggle and the lessons learned, these conversations are informal and informative.
With more than 25 years of investing in early-stage technology companies, Madrona has worked with founders from day one to help build their company for the long run. We invest in seed and Series A companies in the Pacific Northwest building across the information technology spectrum and in Acceleration (B and beyond) stage companies building with AI, regardless of geography.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
How Bobsled is Revolutionizing Cross-Cloud Data Sharing
March 20, 2024 11:00 - 33 minutes - 45.8 MBInvestor Sabrina Wu hosts Bobsled Co-founder and CEO Jake Graham for the latest episode of Founded & Funded. Jake is revolutionizing data sharing across platforms, enabling customers to get to analysis faster directly in the platforms where they work. Madrona co-led Bobsled's $17 million series A last year, which put the company at an $87 million valuation. In this episode, Jake — who had stints at Neo4j, Intel, and Microsoft — provides his perspective on why enabling cross-cloud data sha...
How Writer CEO May Habib Is Making GenAI Work For the Enterprise
March 06, 2024 11:00 - 27 minutes - 38.3 MBMadrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami hosts May Habib, co-founder and CEO of Writer, a 2023 IA40 winner. Writer is a full-stack generative AI platform for the enterprise. In this episode, May shares her perspective on founding a GenAI company before the ChatGPT craze, building an enterprise-grade product and go-to-market motion with 200% NRR, whether RAG and vector DBs even have a role in the enterprise, the essential attributes she looks for when hiring, and some valuable lessons she learned from...
Investor Spotlight: A Conversation with Madrona’s Soma Somasegar
February 21, 2024 12:22 - 13 minutes - 12.6 MBHear from Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar as he discusses his path to venture capital by way of 27 years at Microsoft. He shares invaluable insights about what he looks for in a founder, the importance of passion in founders, the state of cloud technology, and the future of AI and Startups. Tim also shares Madrona's core principles, his favorite books for entrepreneurs, and his personal interests outside of work, including his passion for outdoor sports and the nonprofit Global Part...
Dust Founders Bet Foundation Models Will Change How Companies Work
February 07, 2024 12:00 - 36 minutes - 50.5 MBMadrona Partner Jon Turow hosts Gabriel Hubert and Stan Polu, the co-founders of a 2023 IA40 winner, Dust, which enables information workers to create LLM-based agents that help them do their own work more efficiently. They discuss the broader AI/LLM ecosystem, the merits and potential of horizontal vs vertical solutions, limitations of AI assistants, and the influence of Stripe on their business. The founders dive into the future use cases and adoption of AI in businesses and also touch on ...
From Creating Kubernetes to Founding Stacklok: Open-Source and Security with Craig McLuckie
January 24, 2024 12:00 - 34 minutes - 47.1 MBIn this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter talks to Craig McLuckie, who’s most known as one of the creators of Kubernetes at Google. Madrona previously backed Craig’s company, Heptio, and was excited to back his latest company — Stacklok. Stacklok is a software supply chain security company that helps developers and open-source communities build more secure software and keep that software safe. Tim and Craig discuss Stacklok’s developer-centric approach to secu...
The Evolution of Enterprise AI: A Conversation with Arvind Jain
January 10, 2024 12:00 - 30 minutes - 41.3 MBMadrona Investor Palak Goel talks with Arvind Jain, founder and CEO of Glean, which has raised about $155M since launching in 2019 and was named a 2023 IA40 winner. It should be no surprise that Glean is touted as the search engine for the enterprise because Arvind spent over a decade at Google as a distinguished engineer, where he led teams in Google Search. Palak and Arvind dive into Glean's vision to be the AI-powered personal assistants in the workplace, how AI should not be thought of a...
Investor Spotlight: A Conversation with Madrona’s Tim Porter
December 13, 2023 12:00 - 17 minutes - 15.8 MBHear from Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter as he discusses his path to venture capital by way of mechanical engineering and Microsoft. He shares invaluable insights about what he looks for in a founder, the importance of customer focus, and the high priority he places on integrity. Tim also shares Madrona's core principles, his favorite books for entrepreneurs, and his personal interests outside of work, including his passion for outdoor sports and the nonprofit Global Partnerships. This...
Navigating the Dynamics of Startup Boards: Managing Disagreements & Effective Governance
November 29, 2023 12:00 - 16 minutes - 14.8 MBIn this episode, Madrona Managing Director S. Somasegar and General Counsel Joanna Black discuss the fundamental role of a board in a startup's growth and development. They touch upon the importance of aligning strategic views with board members, managing disagreements, and effective governance to ensure that the organization is run efficiently. The duo offers numerous insights into the intricacies of board structure at different stages of a startup lifecycle, drawing parallels from recent e...
Karan Mehandru & Anna Baird on Go-To-Market Strategy, and Navigating Sales, Growth, and Leadership
November 15, 2023 12:00 - 27 minutes - 38.2 MBThis week, Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru hosts Madrona Operating Partner Anna Baird. The operating partner role is a new one for Madrona, and we're excited to have her on the team to advise our founders. Before transitioning to board positions in the last couple of years, Anna was most recently the CRO at Outreach. Before that, she was the COO at Outreach, and before that, she was the CFO at several companies. That trifecta of C-Suite experience gives Anna a unique perspective to ...
Tigera CEO Ratan Tipirneni On Commercializing Open Source
November 01, 2023 11:30 - 26 minutes - 36 MBMadrona Partner Aseem Datar hosts Tigera CEO Ratan Tipirneni. Tigera is in the business of preventing and detecting security breaches in cloud-native applications, and its open-source offering Calico is one of the most widely adopted container networking and security solutions out there. Aseem and Ratan dive into whether or not you should open source, the three business models founders should evaluate when thinking about commercializing an open-source project, how to compete with free, how p...
Founded & Funded Investor Spotlight with Maria Gilfoyle
October 18, 2023 11:30 - 11 minutes - 10.1 MBGet to know Madrona Investor Maria Gilfoyle. Learn how she pivoted from wanting to become an artist into venture capital, her design-first mindset focus, what she looks for in founders, and what she enjoys doing outside the office.
Troop Travel Founders on the Startup Journey and Relationships That Matter
October 04, 2023 11:00 - 33 minutes - 46.1 MBToday, managing director Steve Singh sits down with Troop Travel Co-founders Dennis Vilovic and Leonard Cremer. Madrona invested in Troop and its corporate travel meeting management platform in 2021. These three talk about looking for the right problem to solve, to launch a company, and how you decide if it's the right time. They also discuss when you need to switch from bringing on generalists to bringing on experts, how to identify the right investors to work with, why working closely with...
Investor Spotlight with Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru
September 27, 2023 11:00 - 18 minutes - 16.7 MBGet to know Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru. Learn what drew him to venture capital and working with founders, what he looks for in founders, what he thinks founders should look for in VC partners, and what he enjoys doing outside the office. (00:00:00) Introduction (00:01:00) Madrona Managing Partner Karan Mehandru's background (00:01:33) Why venture capital (00:02:50) Founders: Become the best version of yourself (00:04:58) Understand the person behind titles and...
Statsig Founder Vijaye Raji on Product Building, Launching a Startup, and AI
September 20, 2023 11:00 - 35 minutes - 48.9 MBToday, Madrona Managing Director S. Somasegar talks with Statsig founder and CEO Vijaye Raji, who spent 20 years at Microsoft and Facebook before launching Statsig as a way to bring the powerful tools he was used to using inside Facebook to all builders. Statsig experimentation platform and automated AB testing helps companies make product decisions in a data-driven way at scale, which means shipping the right products faster. Vijaye and Soma go way back and take a little trip down memory ...
NYSE's Lynn Martin on Capital Markets, IPOs, and the Role AI Is Playing in the Markets
September 12, 2023 21:42 - 31 minutes - 42.6 MBIn this week's episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain hosts NYSE Group President Lynn Martin ahead of our Intelligent Applications Summit on October 10th and 11th. Lynn will be speaking at the Summit, but we thought it would be great to have her on the show to talk more about her background, the NYSE, capital markets, IPOs, and, of course, the role data, AI, and large language models are playing in the markets and in companies broadly! This conversation couldn’t...
Chroma's Jeff Huber on Vector Databases and Getting AI into Production
September 06, 2023 10:00 - 39 minutes - 35.8 MBThis week, Vivek Ramaswami talks with Chroma Co-founder and CEO Jeff Huber. Chroma is an open-source vector database, and vector databases have taken the AI world by storm recently, with Chroma quickly emerging as one of the leading offerings in the space. Jeff's background is in machine learning, and for him and his co-founder, starting Chroma was a classic "there has to be a better way moment when it comes to going from demo to production". Vivek and Jeff talk about why on earth we need ...
Cohere's Ivan Zhang on Foundation Models, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and Feedback Loops
August 23, 2023 10:00 - 21 minutes - 30 MBIn this episode, Madrona Partner Jon Turow and Cohere CTO and Co-founder Ivan Zhang dive into the world of foundation models for the enterprise. Cohere was founded in 2019 — a time when even the most passionate believers did not realize how soon the world would be struck by the capabilities of foundation models. The company announced a $270 million raise in June – which put it at an over $2 billion valuation — and — Ivan’s co-founder Aidan Gomez was a co-author of the seminal paper “Attentio...
Data Visionary Bob Muglia on Data, AI, and New Book — 'The Datapreneurs'
August 09, 2023 10:30 - 34 minutes - 47.5 MBThis week we have the pleasure of having former Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia on the show again. Bob is an active investor and sits on the boards of many next-generation data platform companies, and more recently, he launched his first book — "The Datapreneurs." Given the long history between Bob and Madrona Managing Partner Soma, we had to have Bob joins us again to talk about his new book and dive into the world of data and AI. These two old friends discuss what exactly a datapreneur is and th...
Google's James Phillips and Former Tableau CEO Mark Nelson on PLG and Scaling in the Face of Stiff Competition
July 26, 2023 18:30 - 37 minutes - 51.9 MBThis week, investor Aseem Datar is possibly making app dev and product development history with his guests. We've got former Tableau CEO Mark Nelson and James Phillips, the former president of Microsoft who drove the creation of many of the company's most successful products, including, of course, Tableau's number one competitor — Power BI. James was also just named the VP of Google Cloud. Mark and James are both part of the Madrona family, as venture partner and strategic director respectiv...
Typeface Founder Abhay Parasnis on Shaping Enterprise GenAI Strategy
July 12, 2023 11:00 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBIn this episode, Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar talks with Typeface Founder and CEO Abhay Parasnis. Typeface combines generative AI platforms with its own brand-personalized AI, so all businesses can create content that is multimodal and on-brand. Typeface just announced $100 million in new funding, and Madrona couldn’t have been happier to participate in the round. Abhay and Soma have known each other for almost 20 years from their time at Microsoft. But In 2022, Abhay left Adob...
Founded & Funded Investor Spotlight with Vivek Ramaswami
June 28, 2023 12:00 - 15 minutes - 14 MBGet to know Madrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami. Learn what drew him to venture capital and working with founders, what he looks for in founders, where he focuses, and what he enjoys doing outside the office. (00:00:00) Introduction (00:00:15) Vivek Ramaswami’s background (00:00:55) Why venture capital (00:02:47) What Vivek looks for in founders (00:04:38) One thing every founder needs (00:06:54) Sectors in which Vivek is interested (00:09:33) Why Madrona (00:11:24) Vivek's...
Airtable's Howie Liu on Product-Led Growth & Embedding a 'Little LLM Brain' in Every Cell
June 14, 2023 11:30 - 35 minutes - 41.1 MBIn this week's IA40 spotlight episode of Founded & Funded, Investor Sabrina Wu talks with Airtable Co-founder and CEO Howie Liu. Airtable is a low-code platform that enables teams to easily build workflows that modernize their business processes. The company launched in 2012 and has been on a product-led journey since then. Last year, Airtable ranked number three in the growth stage section of the intelligent applications 40. And just in May, the company announced new embedded AI capabilitie...
Numbers Station Founders on Applying Foundation Models to Data Wrangling
May 31, 2023 11:00 - 35 minutes - 32.4 MBThis week, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter talks to Numbers Station Co-founders Chris Aberger and Ines Chami. We announced our investment in Numbers Station’s $17.5M Series A in March and are very excited about the work they’re doing with foundation models, which is very different than what has been making headlines this year. It isn’t content or image generation – Numbers Station is bringing the transformational power of AI inside of those foundation models to the data-wrangling probl...
Investor Spotlight with Jon Turow
May 18, 2023 16:49 - 9 minutes - 8.81 MBGet to know Madrona Partner Jon Turow. Learn why he got into VC, what he looks for in founders, where the opportunities lay for founders when it comes to generative AI, and what he enjoys doing outside the office. (00:00:00) Introduction (00:00:39) Jon Turow's background (00:01:19) Why venture capital (00:02:27) Why Madrona (00:03:20) Opportunities in generative AI (00:05:35) What Jon looks for in founders (00:07:02) Jon's book recommendations (00:08:58) What Jon does for...
Panther Labs Founder Jack Naglieri on Cloud-Native SIEM and Self-Growth
May 03, 2023 11:00 - 35 minutes - 32.6 MBThis week on Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami talks to Jack Naglieri, Founder and CEO of 2022 IA40 winner Panther Labs. Jack founded Panther, a leading cloud-native security information and event management platform, because he had experienced first-hand the threat detection challenges companies have at cloud scale. Growing frustrated with the compromises required by traditional SIEM platforms, Jack took his experiences from Yahoo and Airbnb and set out to build a solution t...
MotherDuck's Jordan Tigani and DuckDB's Hannes Mühleisen on partnerships and commercializing open-source projects
April 20, 2023 11:00 - 30 minutes - 28 MBThis week, Madrona Partner Jon Turow brings us a story about a great partnership forming between two people, who had never even met, when they each find themselves on a mission to focus on what it is they do best. You’ll hear from Hannes Mühleisen, creator of the DuckDB open-source project, and Jordan Tigani, the database leader who saw an opportunity to commercialize it, about the lightning-bolt moment that led to one of them flying halfway around the world to meet — how does this happen ...
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke on Generative AI-powered Developer Experiences
April 06, 2023 15:20 - 23 minutes - 21.1 MBToday we have the pleasure of hosting GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke! He and Madrona Partner Aseem Datar talk about how Thomas got into working with computers and coding and the work he's been doing since becoming GitHub CEO in November 2021, including the recent launch of Copilot X. But these two discuss so much more, including the rise of generative AI, talking about everything from how it is a new way for developers – everyone really – to express their creativity to how it democratizes many ski...
IA40 Spotlight: Credo AI's Navrina Singh on ‘AI-First, Ethics Forward’ Responsible AI
March 30, 2023 12:00 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBIn this week’s IA40 Spotlight Episode, Madrona Investor Sabrina Wu talks with Credo AI Founder and CEO Navrina Singh. Founded in 2020, Credo’s intelligent responsible AI governance platform helps companies minimize AI-related risk by ensuring their AI is fair, compliant, secure, auditable, and human-centered. The company announced a $12.8M Series A last summer to continue its mission of empowering every organization in the world to create AI with the highest ethical standards. Navrina and ...
Acquired Hosts Ben and David on Getting Started at Madrona and Tom Alberg’s Legacy
March 28, 2023 13:00 - 37 minutes - 69.3 MBThis week, we’re excited to release a special live episode recorded during the community event portion of the Madrona 2023 annual meeting. Managing Director Matt McIlwain talks with Madrona Alumni and Acquired Podcast Hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. The three reflect on Acquired episode No. 28, which dove into the Amazon IPO with the late Madrona Co-founder and original Amazon Board Member Tom Alberg, and the early days getting the show off the ground from the Madrona offices.
Common Room's Viraj Mody on Building Community, Foundation Models and Being Relentless
March 17, 2023 11:00 - 29 minutes - 26.8 MBMadrona Managing Director Soma dives into the world of intelligent applications and generative AI with Common Room Co-founder and CTO Viraj Mody. Madrona first invested in Common Room in 2020 — and we had the pleasure of having the founders join us on Founded & Funded the following year. Common Room is an intelligent community growth platform that combines engagement data from platforms like LinkedIn, Slack, Twitter, Reddit, GitHub, and others with product usage and CRM data to surface i...
Investor Spotlight with Matt McIlwain
March 01, 2023 00:29 - 13 minutes - 12.3 MBGet to know Madrona Managing Partner Matt McIlwain. Learn where he gets his spark to work with entrepreneurs, what he looks for in founders, where the opportunities lay for founders when it comes to generative AI, and what he enjoys doing outside the office.
Leaf Logistics CEO Anshu Prasad on Applying AI to Freight and Transportation Logistics
February 16, 2023 12:00 - 35 minutes - 32.9 MBIn this episode of Founded & Funded, partner Aseem Datar talks with Leaf Logistics Co-founder and CEO Anshu Prasad. Leaf is applying AI to the complexities of the freight and transportation industry, connecting shippers, carriers, and partners to better plan, coordinate, and schedule transportation logistics. This enables network efficiencies and unlocks a forward view of tomorrow’s transportation market while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions. Leaf Logistics was founded in 2017, an...
Lexion's Gaurav Oberoi on Applying AI to Change an Industry
February 02, 2023 12:00 - 39 minutes - 35.8 MBIn this week's IA40 Spotlight Episode of Founded & Funded, Investor Elisa La Cava talks to Lexion Co-founder and CEO Gaurav Oberoi. Lexion was one of the first spinouts from AI2, and Madrona invested in the first round the company raised in 2019. Like many companies that come from AI2 – Lexion is focused on applying AI to change an industry. Specifically, Lexion helps legal teams at enterprises manage contracts – and they are one of the companies that have added features using OpenAI’s GPT ...
Magnify's Josh Crossman on Incubating a Startup and Bringing AI to the Customer Experience
January 19, 2023 11:00 - 27 minutes - 25.3 MBIn this episode, investor Elisa La Cava talks with Josh Crossman, CEO of Magnify, which was incubated at Madrona Venture Labs. Josh was actually recruited by Madrona Venture Labs to help launch a business that would bring AI to the customer experience. He was quickly persuaded and signed on in 2021, spinning out of MVL in less than three months with a $6 million seed round. Josh and Elisa discussed the incubation process and how Magnify's intelligent application to improve customer retenti...
IA40 Spotlight: A-Alpha Bio's David Younger on machine learning in biotech, building cross-functional teams
January 05, 2023 11:00 - 32 minutes - 29.3 MBThis week on Founded & Funded, Partner Chris Picardo is talking with A-Alpha Bio Co-founder and CEO David Younger for our first Intelligent Application 40 Spotlight episode of 2023. We announced the 2022 IA40 winners in October, and A-Alpha was the first biotech company to make the list, which was no surprise to us. As one of our portfolio companies, we know the work David and his team are doing at the intersections of biological and data/computer sciences will change the world — but having ...
IA40 Spotlight: dbt Labs Founder Tristan Handy on the modern data stack, partnerships, and creating community
November 03, 2022 11:00 - 37 minutes - 34.4 MBIn this week's IA40 Spotlight episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona partner Jon Turow talks with dbt Labs Founder and CEO Tristan Handy. Here at Madrona, we just announced our 2022 IA40, and dbt Labs is one of our two-time winners. The company has positioned itself as the industry standard for data transformation in the cloud, and it raised $222 million at the beginning of the year, which was led by Altimeter, but Databricks and Snowflakes both participated in the round, further solidifying ...
Data Visionary Bob Muglia on the Modern Data Stack and Lessons from Snowflake
October 20, 2022 11:00 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBIn this week's episode which is leading up to our Intelligent Applications Summit on November 2nd, Soma speaks with Bob Muglia. Bob has thought deeply about the Modern Data Stack and they speak about it here - what is needed in the data stack to enable Intelligent Applications (or data driven apps as Bob calls them) and the opportunities for new companies to innovate. Bob is also well known as the CEO that took Snowflake from a promising application for the public cloud to success by focusi...
IA40 Spotlight: Fivetran CEO George Fraser on Data Replication and Connectors
October 06, 2022 11:00 - 33 minutes - 30.8 MBThis week Madrona Investor Sabrina Wu talks with Fivetran Co-founder and CEO George Fraser. Fivetran is fundamentally a data replication company — that’s how George explains it. But the company actually started out trying to solve a completely different problem when it was founded in 2012 and pivoted to strictly data integration in 2015 after multiple customers started asking for help. But in attacking that problem differently than it had ever been done before — by only focusing on replicati...
Stack Co-Founder and CEO Will Rush on Teen Crypto Investing
September 22, 2022 12:00 - 30 minutes - 27.8 MBThis week, Investor Aseem Datar is talking with Will Rush, co-founder and CEO of Stack, a teen crypto platform to educate a young crypto-curious generation — and their parents — about responsible investing. After working at a company, building a banking app for teens, Will took his decade-long experience in securities and finance and applied it to crypto and Web3. He saw the excitement and curiosity that teens had for crypto and knew he could apply his experience to create a world of respons...
Battlesnake Founder Brad Van Vugt on Creating Community Through Programming Competitions
September 08, 2022 11:30 - 33 minutes - 30.7 MBThis week, Investor Maria Gilfoyle talks to Brad Van Vugt, founder and CEO of Battlesnake, a multiplayer programming game for experienced web developers where your code is your controller. Battlesnake builds games for programmers that encourage self-directed learning and are challenging to master. In this episode, Maria and Brad dive into where the idea for the game came from, how they get the developer community so involved, and how they're able to combine aspects of gaming, eSports, and tr...
IA40 Spotlight: Tesorio Co-founders Carlos Vega and Fabio Fleitas on Automating Accounts Receivable
August 25, 2022 10:10 - 36 minutes - 33.8 MBIn this IA40 spotlight episode, Managing Director Hope Cochran talks with Tesorio Co-founders Carlos Vega and Fabio Fleitas about getting finance teams out of the world of manual, error-prone and inefficient spreadsheets and equipping them with intelligent applications more common in other parts of a company. That’s where Tesorio comes in — they offer automation solutions designed to help companies manage accounts receivable — in other words, they help companies turn their revenue into cash....
IA40 Spotlight: Cresta Co-founder and CEO Zayd Enam on Using AI to Empower People to be More Productive
August 11, 2022 10:31 - 30 minutes - 27.9 MBWe've all struggled with call center experiences. Madrona's Ishani Ummat talks with Cresta Co-founder and CEO Zayd Enam about the unique angle Cresta takes to leverage AI to drive a better customer experience in real time. The two dive into the important topic of how AI can be used to help empower people to be more productive. we hear the story of why Zayd dropped out of his Ph.D. program to pursue launching his own company based on what he explains as the "schlep blindness" of contact cen...
CommerceIQ's Guru Hariharan on Pivoting When You're in the Wrong Market
July 28, 2022 10:26 - 28 minutes - 26.3 MBIn this episode of Founded and Funded, Managing Director Scott Jacobson is talking with CommerceIQ CEO Guru Hariharan. CommerceIQ is a retail e-commerce management platform that automates and unifies category analytics, retail media management, and sales and operations all under one roof. The company secured $115 million in funding in March and just made its first acquisition — e-fundamentals — to expand into digital shelf analytics. The acquisition actually brings the company around full ...
Founded and Funded: Top Tier's David York on Limited Partners, Market Conditions
July 14, 2022 11:00 - 32 minutes - 29.6 MBIn this episode of Founded and Funded, we stray a little from our typical format to answer some questions that often come up in discussions between founders and our investors. Madrona Managing Director Matt McILwain talks with one of our Limited Partners — or the partners of ours that are not the day-to-day investors — Top Tier Capital Partners Founder and Managing Director David York. They explore different kinds of funding mechanisms, the current market conditions, and a bit of a history b...
Top Tier's David York on Limited Partners, Market Conditions
July 14, 2022 11:00 - 32 minutes - 29.6 MBIn this episode of Founded and Funded, we stray a little from our typical format to answer some questions that often come up in discussions between founders and our investors. Madrona Managing Director Matt McILwain talks with one of our Limited Partners — or the partners of ours that are not the day-to-day investors — Top Tier Capital Partners Founder and Managing Director David York. They explore different kinds of funding mechanisms, the current market conditions, and a bit of a history b...
Sila Co-founder and CEO Shamir Karkal on Crypto and Web3
June 30, 2022 11:45 - 25 minutes - 23.5 MBIn this episode of Founded and Funded, Madrona Partner Chris Picardo dives into the world of crypto and Web3 with Sila Co-Founder and CEO Shamir Karkal. Sila is a FinTech platform that provides payment infrastructure as a service and sits at the intersection of crypto rails and traditional financial services infrastructure — because as much as some people want to get away from the traditional financial system, crypto still needs to be able to plug into it. Shamir and Chris dive into the impo...
IA40 Winner Spotlight: Snorkel Co-founder Alex Ratner on data-centric AI, culture, and 'one of the most historic opportunities for growth in AI'
June 16, 2022 10:30 - 39 minutes - 36 MBIn this episode of Founded and Funded, we spotlight IIA40 winner Snorkel AI. Managing Director Tim Porter not only talks with Snorkel Co-founder and CEO Alex Ratner all about data-centric AI and programmatic data labeling and development, but they also dive into the importance of culture — especially now — and how to take advantage of what Alex calls "one of the most historic opportunities for growth in AI."
Founded and Funded: Robotics Expert Sidd Srinivasa on Trends and What's Ripe for Innovation
June 02, 2022 10:00 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBIn this episode of Founded and Funded Madrona Investors Aseem Datar and Sabrina Wu sit down with robotics expert and University of Washington Professor Sidd Srinivasa to talk about the technology and sociological trends that are leading to innovation in the robotics space, where Sidd sees opportunities for founders, and why now it is a time to pay attention to what's happening in the space. Sidd also shares why he is what he calls an "accidental roboticist" and some of the hard-learned lesson...
Robotics Expert Sidd Srinivasa on Trends and What's Ripe for Innovation
June 02, 2022 10:00 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBIn this episode of Founded and Funded Madrona Investors Aseem Datar and Sabrina Wu sit down with robotics expert and University of Washington Professor Sidd Srinivasa to talk about the technology and sociological trends that are leading to innovation in the robotics space, where Sidd sees opportunities for founders, and why now it is a time to pay attention to what's happening in the space. Sidd also shares why he is what he calls an "accidental roboticist" and some of the hard-learned lesson...
IA40 Spotlight - Madrona and PitchBook Partner for IA40
May 24, 2022 09:13 - 14 minutes - 13 MBMadrona investor, Ishani Ummat, speaks with PitchBook Data leader, Daniel Cook, about bringing machine intelligence to the IA40 list. Their new algorithm takes many data points and creates a company score to predict company outcome probability. They previewed this work by analyzing last year’s IA40 list and found that late stage companies were 60% more likely to IPO. Listen as Ishani and Daniel talk numbers and what it means for companies building intelligent applications.