Ascend
Facts
- HQ
- Seattle, WA, US
- Sectors
- Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
- Founded
- 2019
- Employees
- 23
- Last fund
- Ascend Venture Capital III, LP · 2025 SEC Form D
- Funds raised
- 3 funds SEC Form D filings
- Total capital
- $12.5M SEC Form D filings
Seattle VC Fuse announces $170 million inaugural fund, backing 17 Pacific Northwest B2B startups
Seattle-based early-stage VC firm Fuse disclosed its inaugural fund is $170 million, which has backed 17 Pacific Northwest B2B software startups and plans 25–30 total investments.
Kirby Winfield, ex-founder and exec, raises $15M for Ascend.vc to back Pacific Northwest early-stage startups
Kirby Winfield, a longtime Seattle startup leader who experienced burnout after multiple exits, founded Ascend.vc to invest in early-stage Pacific Northwest tech companies and raised a $15 million first fund after recovering his health and shifting from founder roles to venture investing.
Anthony Bontrager of WestRiver Group says he makes 3–5 PNW SaaS/AI investments yearly with $500k–$5M initial checks and $10M follow-on capacity
Anthony Bontrager, a former adtech founder and current investor at WestRiver Group, favors hands-on board involvement and invests in PNW SaaS/AI/ML companies with initial checks of $500k–$5M, targeting 3–5 new deals yearly and about 15–20 monthly pitches. He highlights Qorus Software as a standout portfolio company and emphasizes governance, go-to-market support, and follow-on reserves of ~$10M per company.
Madrona leads $1.5M round for Battlesnake, the competitive coding game with a 10,000-developer community
Battlesnake, a Victoria, B.C.–based company that runs a competitive coding game used by mid-career programmers to experiment with new technologies, raised $1.5 million led by Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group to expand its reach. The community grew to about 10,000 developers after moving online during the pandemic and has hosted events including an AWS internship tournament.
Solo, founded by ex-Uber and Convoy vets, raises $5.5M seed to predict and guarantee gig workers' earnings
Seattle startup Solo, founded by ex-Uber and Convoy employees, raised a $5.5 million seed round to provide hour-by-hour earnings predictions and a guarantee to top up gig workers' pay if predictions fall short, with plans to expand into insurance, taxes, and mileage tracking.
Zulily co-founders Darrell Cavens and Mark Vadon back Seattle ID-verification startup Vouched with $4.5M investment
Seattle startup Vouched raised $4.5 million in a round led by Zulily co-founder Darrell Cavens and investor Mark Vadon to expand its AI-based identity verification software used by over 150 companies for real-time fraud detection across industries.
730 - Kirby Winfield, Founding Partner at Ascend.vc
Kirby Winfield is a seasoned startup operator and investor, and is currently the Founding General Partner at Ascend.vc, a pre-seed stage venture fund investing in marketplace, e-commerce/DTC, and B2B software startups in the Pacific Northwest. ★ Support this podcast ★
018 - Kirby Winfield, Founding Partner at Ascend.vc
About KirbyKirby Winfield is a seasoned startup operator and investor, and is currently the Founding General Partner at Ascend.vc, a pre-seed stage venture fund investing in marketplace, e-commerce/DTC, and B2B software startups in the Pacific Northwest. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit words.seedscout.com
018 - Kirby Winfield, Founding Partner at Ascend.vc
About KirbyKirby Winfield is a seasoned startup operator and investor, and is currently the Founding General Partner at Ascend.vc, a pre-seed stage venture fund investing in marketplace, e-commerce/DTC, and B2B software startups in the Pacific Northwest.
Candidate launches out of beta, raises $4M seed to pay $2,400–$6,000 for referral hires
Seattle startup Candidate launched out of beta and closed a $4 million seed round to pay $2,400–$6,000 to external referrers who submit hired candidates, keeping roughly 20% as revenue. The platform lists roles in major cities and remote positions, aims to diversify hiring beyond internal referrals, and has attracted investors including Voyager and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest.
Bean Box raises $2.4M Series A as pandemic drives specialty coffee demand to homes, CEO says growth near 200%
Seattle startup Bean Box raised $2.4 million in a Series A round as pandemic-driven home coffee demand sharply increased; the 2014-founded company reports ~200% year-over-year growth, over 40% gross margin, doubled subscribers, and expansion beyond the Pacific Northwest.
Coinbase IPO Soars to $85 Billion, Nets Windfalls for Early Backers Including Version One Ventures
Coinbase’s IPO pushed its valuation to $85 billion and delivered major returns to early investors like Version One Ventures, which made a highly profitable bet years ago. The article examines how Seattle and Pacific Northwest investors view crypto and blockchain as the region seeks to grow its fintech presence amid emerging local startups and initiatives.
Seattle VCs Report 28% Women in Senior Roles, Nearly Double U.S. Average of 14.2%
Seattle-area venture capital firms have nearly double the national share of women in senior roles (28% vs. 14.2%), with 25 women among 88 partners across 21 Washington firms, though overall parity remains distant and 61% of U.S. VC firms still have no women in key decision-making roles.
Founders’ Co-op raises $50M fifth fund to back 20–25 Pacific Northwest early-stage startups
Seattle venture firm Founders’ Co-op raised a $50 million fifth fund, its largest to date, to invest in 20–25 early-stage startups across the Pacific Northwest. The larger fund reflects growing deal sizes and outside LP interest as the region sees record startup funding and more unicorns.
Fabric announces $43 million Series A led by Norwest Venture Partners to scale its headless commerce platform
Fabric, a headless commerce platform, announced a $43 million Series A funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners on February 9, 2021 to scale its platform; the company is led by former Amazon, Google, eBay and Staples executives and counts brands like GNC, abc carpet & home and Juicy Couture as customers.
Seattle’s Worksphere launches platform to manage COVID-era office returns, raises $550,000 pre-seed
Seattle startup Worksphere, launched in September by Aakhil Fardeen and co-founders, offers a software platform to help companies manage office returns during COVID-19 by automating scheduling, capacity limits, wellness surveys and contact tracing; the company raised $550,000 in pre-seed funding led by Ascend.vc.
Yesler raises $3.3M to scale Seattle B2B lumber marketplace, led by Tech Square Ventures
Seattle-based B2B lumber and building materials marketplace Yesler raised $3.3 million in a funding round led by Tech Square Ventures to scale marketing and engineering after spinning out of Pioneer Square Labs in 2019. The company, founded by CEO Matt Meyers, aims to digitize lumber purchasing and optimize end-to-end supply chains, and currently has 10 employees while competing with MaterialsXChange.
Vouched raises $3M to expand AI ID-verification as COVID-19 drives demand; will expand to Europe
Seattle startup Vouched raised $3 million to expand AI-powered ID verification services as COVID-19 boosts demand for remote identity checks; the company has 80+ customers and has verified over 850,000 people across 50 countries.
Recurrent raises $3.5M seed round led by Wireframe Ventures to scale battery data science for used EV reports
Recurrent, a Seattle startup that issues independent battery-condition reports for used electric vehicles, raised $3.5 million in a seed round led by Wireframe Ventures to expand the data science behind its reports. The company launched in September, has over 2,500 EV owners providing data and 10 dealer partners, and has collected more than 1 million data points to train its machine-learning models.
Kirby Winfield
Kirby is a seasoned startup operator and angel investor. He is currently the Founding General Partner at Ascend.vc, a pre-seed stage venture fund investing in marketplace, e-commerce/DTC, and B2B software startups in the Pacific Northwest. He is also a Techstars mentor, passionate Board member, and Board Chair-elect at Special Olympics of Washington, where he helped bring the 2018 Special Olympics USA Games to Seattle. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Kirby Winfield (Ascend VC) on shifting mindset, investing in founders, and finding love in the game
Kirby Winfield is a 3x founder with 3x exits who turned VC. But his journey was not all unicorns and rainbows even after his repeated success. He goes behind the scenes on his path to finding love in the game, what he looks for in startups, and his unique approach to investing in founders at Ascend.vc.
WhyLabs, AI2 Spinout Led by Ex-Amazon Engineers, Raises $4M from Madrona, Bezos Expeditions and Others
WhyLabs, an AI monitoring startup spun out of the Allen Institute for AI, emerged from stealth after raising $4 million from investors including Madrona, Defy Partners, Bezos Expeditions and Ascend VC to commercialize a platform for monitoring ML data and models. The company is led by CEO Alessya Visnjic, joined by former Amazon ML engineers Andy Dang and Sam Gracie plus ex-Madrona principal Maria Karaivanova.
Panda AI, spun out of AI2, raises $3.3M with AI2 as first investor from its new pre-seed fund
Panda AI, a stealth startup spun out of the Allen Institute for AI (AI2), raised $3.3 million in a round led by PSL Ventures with participation from AI2 and others; it is the first company to receive funding from AI2’s new pre-seed fund.
Survey of 70 Seattle Founders: Local Angels Are Risk-Averse, Hidden and Losing Deals to Seed Funds
A February survey of 70 Seattle-area tech founders found widespread frustration with local angel investors, who are described as risk-averse, conservative, hidden, and out of touch; founders say angels must be more visible, faster, and willing to take bigger risks to compete with active local and Bay Area seed funds.
Ex-Microsoft Executive Kirt Debique Launches SyncFloor Marketplace with 9,000 Independent Tracks, $1.25M Raised
SyncFloor, founded by former Microsoft executive Kirt Debique, is a marketplace that helps creative professionals find and license independent music; it launched with a 9,000-title catalog, partnerships with labels like Sub Pop, eight employees, and $1.25 million raised to date.
Fund History
People
See all 6-
Kirby Winfield Founder, Founder and Founding General Partner
-
Court Lorenzini LP Investor
-
Jen Haller Partner and Chief Of Staff
