Madrona Partner, Chris Picardo, sits down with Dr. Ali Ansary, founder &  CEO of Ozette Technologies. Chris and Ali talk about Ozette’s mission to uncover hidden information about the immune system to help with the efficacy of cancer treatments. Ali also speaks about the unique ability of biotech companies to attract traditional tech talent. 

Founded and Funded

Building a company at the intersection of life and computer sciences with Dr. Ali Ansary of Ozette

Madrona Investor, Ishani Ummat, sits down with Shirish Nadkarni, serial entrepreneur, now angel investor and author of FROM STARTUP TO EXIT, out from Harper Collins Aug 2021.  Ishani and Shirish talk about starting a company, finding your co-founder, product market fit and how to choose your investors. 

From Startup to Exit with founder Shirish Nadkarni and Ishani Ummat

Starting a company is a lonely business. Finding co-founders can be the solution to this – but what if you don’t know anyone who fits the bill?  Linda Lian of Common Room set out to build a company and recruited her co-founders one by one.  Hear her story and theirs.  Viraj Mody, Francis Luu, Linda Lian in conversation with Madrona’s Shannon Anderson.

Linda Lian of Common Room on Building a Team of Co-Founders One by One

Investor Matt McIlwain speaks with CEO of Accolade, Rajeev Singh.  Rajeev is the CEO of Accolade, a healthcare advocacy company, but this is not his first time leading.  Matt and Rajeev talk about learning resilience, how it's not about directing but more about convincing employees of the road ahead, and how the role of the CEO has changed considerably.  They also talk about what the entrance of big tech companies into healthcare means for consumers and the industry. 

Rajeev Singh of Accolade on Resilience, the Expectations of Leaders and Building a Healthcare Company

 In this episode of Founded and Funded, Anu Sharma continues her deep dive into commercial open source projects and talks to Jeremiah Lowin, the founder and CEO of Prefect, a dataflow automation platform that is trusted to build, run, and monitor millions of data workflows and pipelines. Jeremiah talks about how he and his team built this open source community from zero to 5,000, and how the community helps the team at Prefect reach their users and intentionally break out of internal echo chambers that often trap early stage products.  

Building a Healthy Open Source Community with Jeremiah Lowin, Founder and CEO of Prefect

Going back to the archives to bring forward one of our most popular episodes which is a deep dive on Hope Cochran’s journey to investor, public board member and colleague.  She tells the story of being overlooked at her first job which spurred her to take a post in a small European country in her early 20s to take on a huge challenge.  That spirit of adventure and ambition set her on the road to entrepreneur, CFO, and founder advocate.  Dan Li, who is now a CEO of a new stealth company, Plus, sat down with her to learn her story.  

The Entrepreneurial Journey with Hope Cochran

 Knock was on the verge of raising their B round and then Covid hit. Co-founder and CEO Demetri talks with Madrona investor, Scott Jacobson, about how they successfully navigated 2020, including an inside round, and came out even stronger.  Knock raised in early 2021 from a new outside investor and is a crucial element in the big business of multifamily. 

Behind the Scenes of Raising a Round, or Two, or Three, a Conversation with Demetri Themelis of Knock Rentals

Building a company on open-source software is not easy.  As one of the creators of Kubernetes, and a founder of Heptio, Joe Beda has experience building open source, cultivating a community and founding a company.  In this conversation he talks with Madrona Partner, Anu Sharma about the varying states of open source and how founders can think about building companies around or on top of these powerful technologies.  This is a co-production with Traction, Anu’s blog and video conversations on GTM for technical products. 

Building Companies on Open Source, Conversation with co-creator of Kubernetes, Joe Beda

Strike Graph, a company started by two white tech guys, and funded in mid 2020 with just an intern, is now growing and serving customers.  It is also two thirds women or gender diverse.  The road to getting there was clear to CEO Justin Beals before he even incorporated.  In this conversation with Hope Cochran and Elisa La Cava, Justin talks about the whys and how he set out to build his company this way and what this has meant for their success as a team. 

The Whys and Hows of (Diverse) Team Building with Founder Justin Beals of Strike Graph

The path to building a company (and getting venture funding) can be varied.  Two of the paths available are Startup Studios or Accelerators.  They each offer different benefits.  Madrona investor, Elisa La Cava sat down with Madrona Venture Labs’ Mike Fridgen and FFA’s Leslie Feinzaig to dig into the differences and the types of companies that benefit from these programs. 

How are Accelerators and StartUp Labs Different? A conversation with Leslie Feinzaig of Female Founders Alliance and Mike Fridgen of Madrona Venture Labs

At the start of 2020, Barry Wark and the team at Ovation.io were on a growth path – not even they could envision 75x usage growth they ended up seeing.  Madrona investor, Chris Picardo, talks to Barry about the year and how the incredible amount of genomic data created by COVID testing will be a tailwind to academics, researchers and others looking for treatment and cures for disease.     

On a Mission: Barry Wark of Ovation.io on Building a Scientific Data Company During the Pandemic

This slightly unusual Founded and Funded is the story of the early years of Madrona as told by the founders and early team members, Tom Alberg, Paul Goodrich, Matt McIlwain and Greg Gottesman.  They recount the first meeting with Jeff Bezos, early missteps by a green investing team and the struggle to raise a fund following the dot com bust. We celebrate our 25th year by talking about the first ten!

How Do You Start a Venture Firm? Here's Our Story

 As we take a break and plan Season 4 of Founded and Funded, we bring you the first in a new podcast series from Madrona investor, Anu Sharma.  In this series, Anu speaks with experienced founders, engineers and product leaders about the mystery of GoToMarket or GTM.  Focused on uncovering not just how to measure but how to build a GTM that resonates with customers, the first episode is an interview with Jon Gelsey on the complexities when developers are your customer base.  Gelsey, who led AuthO and Xnor.ai through major periods of growth, talks in depth about how the product experience is part of the GTM especially when building a developer centric product.  For links to posts on GTM and to the podcasts- https://tractionnow.io/ and available on all podcast platforms.    

Introducing Traction, Podcast on GTM Playbooks for Enterprise Products

Daniel Li, Chris Picardo and Erika Shaffer from Madrona Venture Group  talk about the incredible number of financings in PNW in September.  40 companies raised over $450 in venture financings.  We talk about how GitLab manages their 1,300 employees who are remote, and we touch on a guerrilla approach to selling SaaS - use some SEO know how.  Sign up for the DL, Dan's weekly newsletter here. http://thedl.danielxli.com/issues/the-dl-september-2020-pnw-venture-deals-trusting-amazon-how-to-remote-work-and-how-to-sell-saas-282565 

Pacific NW Startup News with Dan and Chris

Jumping off of this week's DL, we talk about Microsoft's announcements (as we lived through the huge outage of Office 365 etc) and talk about the guy who started Snowflake and many other enterprise tech companies that are doing rather well - Mike Speiser from Sutter HIll.  Touch on drones in the home and a quick how-to on Gen Z.  You can also read it here.  http://thedl.danielxli.com/ 

Pacific NW Startup Tech News with Dan and Ishani

Listen in to conversations between Madrona Venture Group Investors and Growth Team members with entrepreneurs, founders and startup personalities who will 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. Based in Seattle, Madrona Venture Group invests mainly in early stage information technology based companies. These conversations also highlight why building a company in the Seattle region is so appealing to many founders.

hubhopper

Founded and Funded

hubhopper