Kirby Winfield on Growth of Seattle's Venture Ecosystem

Kirby Winfield speaks about his experience being an operator in Seattle over the past 30 years, how the venture ecosystem has evolved throughout the years and some similarities and differences between the venture landscape in the 90s/early 2000s and today. Kirby Winfield is a Seattle-based founder, operator and now investor. From 1996-2015, Kirby led 4 startups, either as a co-founder and/or executive from start to exit (2 IPOs and 2 acquisitions). He then began angel investing and in 2019 he launched Ascend VC, which is now the most active pre-seed VC firm in the Pacific Northwest investing out of their $25m fund 2. The talk was moderated by Joaquin Gallardo, VP of Tech Banking at SVB. Seattle Venture Day was hosted on July 12th, 2023 by OneSixOne Ventures, a preseed VC firm investing in enterprise SaaS and GovTech startups. The event was made possible with support from Fenwick, SVB, WTIA and Madrona Venture Labs.