Facts
- HQ
- Madrona
- Sectors
- Financial Services
- Founded
- 1995
- Employees
- 135
- Stage
- Seed
- Last fund
- MADRONA VENTURE FUND X, L.P. · $489.6M · 2025 SEC Form D
- Funds raised
- 10 funds SEC Form D filings
- Total capital
- $1.7B SEC Form D filings
Seattle Cloud Firm Skytap Raises $18M from Vistara Growth to Expand Cloud Solutions
Seattle-based cloud company Skytap raised $18 million from Vistara Growth to enhance its cloud software offerings, serving clients with traditional applications like IBM Power. Founded 16 years ago and led by CEO Bradley Schick since 2019, Skytap counts investors including Goldman Sachs and Jeff Bezos among its backers.
Founded & Funded Investor Spotlight with Maria Gilfoyle
Get 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.
Using AI to read the room with Read.ai CEO David Shim
In this episode of Shift AI, David Shim CEO at read.ai shares his experience as a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and running one of the most exciting Madrona backed AI startups based in Seattle. Below is a summary of the topics covered: Transitioning from a political science major to identifying untapped opportunities in the stock trading market. Acquiring foundational customer service skills in the early stages of a career. The influence of a family of Korean immigrant entrepreneurs on work ethic and problem-solving. The journey of founding and scaling startups like Placed and read.ai in emerging markets. Adapting product focus…
Seattle Startup NoxuData Wins $250K from Madrona Venture Labs to Expand AI Data Platform for CPG Companies
Seattle-based startup NoxuData, which provides an AI platform to help consumer packaged goods companies analyze fragmented data, won $250,000 in pre-seed funding after winning the Madrona Venture Labs competition. Led by co-founders Dae Kim and David Lee, the company offers a conversational dashboard that delivers context-driven insights beyond financial metrics to improve decision-making.
Seattle Recruiting Startup SeekOut Cuts 7% Staff Amid Restructuring, Plans Growth to 225 Employees in 2024
Seattle-based recruiting software startup SeekOut laid off 16 employees (7% of its workforce) in a restructuring but plans to grow its team to 225 employees by year-end. The company, valued at over $1.2 billion after raising $115 million last year, uses AI technology and serves over 1,000 clients including Salesforce and McKinsey.
First Row Partners Launches $150K–$200K Startup Competition to Revive Pacific Northwest Angel Investing
Seattle venture capital firm First Row Partners has launched The Ensemble Event Fund, a startup competition offering $150,000–$200,000 to early-stage companies nationwide, aiming to revitalize the Pacific Northwest's angel investor network. The competition engages over 15 angel investors to boost capital deployment amid declining venture funding and a shrinking local angel community.
Pulumi Raises $41M Led by Madrona to Expand Infrastructure as Code Platform and AI Innovations
Seattle-based cloud startup Pulumi raised $41 million in a Series C round led by Madrona Venture Group to expand its infrastructure as code platform and develop new AI-powered products. Pulumi serves over 2,000 customers including half of the Fortune 50, with revenues doubling in the past year.
Investor Spotlight with Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru
Get 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 roles (00:05:44) What Karan looks for in founders (00:06:52) Visionary founders (00:07:34) The role of grit and intellectual honesty (00:08:50) How Founders should select partners/investors (00:11:36) Biggest changes Karan's…
Seattle Logistics Unicorn Flexe Lays Off 131 Employees, Cutting 33% Amid Freight Market Slowdown
Seattle-based logistics startup Flexe, valued at $1 billion, laid off 33% of its workforce (131 employees) due to a freight industry slowdown. This follows a challenging market environment affecting several logistics startups despite previous pandemic-driven growth.
Bellevue VC Fuse Raises $250M Second Fund, Reaching $420M Total Since 2020
Bellevue-based venture capital firm Fuse raised $250 million for its second fund, bringing its total raised to $420 million across two funds since launching in 2020. The firm will continue investing in Pacific Northwest and western Canada B2B tech startups, leading seed and Series A rounds with $1 million–$10 million checks.
Seattle VC Firm Fuse Raises $250M Second Fund to Back 30-35 Pacific Northwest Startups
Seattle-based venture capital firm Fuse raised $250 million for its second fund to invest in early-stage enterprise software startups across the Pacific Northwest, aiming to back 30-35 companies despite a broader venture capital slowdown. Founded in 2020 with an initial $170 million fund, Fuse credits its growth to the strong local talent and entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Seattle’s Oldest Angel Group Puget Sound Venture Club Merges with Alliance of Angels After Nearly 40 Years
Puget Sound Venture Club, Seattle's oldest angel group founded by Gary Ritner in 1985, is merging its membership with Alliance of Angels to create a larger impact on the Pacific Northwest startup ecosystem. The merger involves around 30 members, no financial transaction, and plans for Ritner to remain actively involved in the combined group.
Seattle Startup MotherDuck Raises $52.5M Series B at $400M Valuation to Expand DuckDB-Based Analytics Platform
MotherDuck, a Seattle-based analytics startup founded by former Google engineer Jordan Tigani, raised $52.5 million in a Series B round at a $400 million valuation to advance its collaborative serverless analytics platform built on DuckDB. The funding follows prior rounds led by Andreessen Horowitz and Redpoint Ventures and aims to offer a simpler, cost-effective SQL analytics solution for businesses without petabyte-scale data.
Statsig Founder Vijaye Raji on Product Building, Launching a Startup, and AI
Today, 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 lane, talking about Microsoft's Small Basic. But then they dive into what it's like transitioning from big tech to…
NYSE's Lynn Martin on Capital Markets, IPOs, and the Role AI Is Playing in the Markets
In 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 come at a better time now that we're seeing a number of tech companies teeing up…
Madrona’s Matt McIlwain Highlights Seattle as a Leading AI Hub on Shift AI Podcast
Matt McIlwain of Madrona Venture Group discusses Seattle's emergence as a top AI hub, attributing its success to a strong ecosystem of ideas, talent, and experimentation. He shares insights on AI's future and Seattle's role in tech innovation on the Shift AI Podcast hosted by Boaz Ashkenazy.
Shift AI Podcast: Seattle's place at the center of the AI universe, with Madrona's Matt McIlwain
On this week’s GeekWire Podcast, we're featuring an episode of Shift AI, a podcast hosted by Boaz Ashkenazy, CEO of AI solutions provider Simply Augmented, with guest Matt McIlwain of Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group. A thriving tech hub requires access to ideas, people, and experiments that produce collective lessons sooner and with greater fidelity than anywhere else. This is what made the Seattle area the cloud capital of the world. It also positions the region as one of the world’s top centers of excellence for artificial intelligence. That’s one of the insights from Matt McIlwain, managing director…
Cohere's Ivan Zhang on Foundation Models, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and Feedback Loops
In 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 "Attention Is All You Need," which actually introduced the Transformer, the architecture behind…
Hope Cochran - Madrona Venture Group - What Fuels You
Hope Cochran is currently a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group. Previously, she served as the CFO of King Digital, the creators of Candy Crush. At King, she not only led the company through an IPO and acquisition to Activision but also became a rockstar Candy Crush player. Prior to that she was the CFO of Clearwire through its sale to Sprint in 2013 and was the founder of her own company, SkillsVillage which she went on to sell to PeopleSoft. In 2013 Fortune named her to the top 10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming and in 2018 Women’s Inc…
Hope Cochran
Hope Cochran is currently a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group. Previously, she served as the CFO of King Digital, the creators of Candy Crush. At King, she not only led the company through an IPO and acquisition to Activision but also became a rockstar Candy Crush player. Prior to that she was the CFO of Clearwire through its sale to Sprint in 2013 and was the founder of her own company, SkillsVillage which she went on to sell to PeopleSoft. In 2013 Fortune named her to the top 10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming and in 2018 Women’s Inc…
Madrona Leads Inaugural Seattle Tech Week July 31-August 4 Featuring AI-Focused Panels and Networking
Seattle venture firm Madrona, along with other local firms and tech leaders, is launching the inaugural Seattle Tech Week from July 31 to August 4 to connect the city's tech ecosystem through various events focused on AI and innovation.
Google's James Phillips and Former Tableau CEO Mark Nelson on PLG and Scaling in the Face of Stiff Competition
This 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 respectively. And today, we have the rare treat of them together sharing their learnings and experiences about modern app development…
Seattle Biotech Startup A-Alpha Bio Raises $22.4M to Advance AI Platform for Protein Interaction Analysis
Seattle biotech startup A-Alpha Bio raised $22.4 million to advance its AI-driven platform that measures protein interactions, partnering with major drug companies like Bristol Myers Squibb and Gilead Sciences to accelerate therapeutic development. Its platform combines computational tools and yeast experiments to analyze nearly 500 million protein-protein interaction measurements for drug discovery.
Seattle AI Startup Tangibly Raises $6.5M Seed Round to Protect Trade Secrets with Patent X-Ray Tool
Seattle-based security software startup Tangibly raised $6.5 million in a seed round to advance its AI-powered trade secret protection tools. Founded in 2021, the company helps clients secure intellectual property with features like its Patent X-Ray for patent drafting.
IBM Acquires Apptio for $4.6B After 16-Year Journey Including 2016 IPO and $1.94B Vista Buyout
Apptio's 16-year journey from a challenging IPO in 2016 to a $4.6 billion acquisition by IBM in 2023 exemplifies perseverance and long-term vision in enterprise tech. Originally valued at over $500 million at IPO, the company rebounded after setbacks, was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $1.94 billion, and then sold to IBM, highlighting its growing impact in tech spending management.
Fund History
People
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Bill Ruckelshaus Founder, Founder and Strategic Director
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Paul Goodrich Founder
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Steve Singh Founder, Co-founder of Concur and Managing Director
