Anna Baird
Anna Baird joined Madrona in 2022 and advises fast-growing portfolio companies on go-to-market, finance and operations. She was most recently chief revenue officer and earlier COO at Outreach, spent 17 years at KPMG where she became a partner, and was an SVP at McAfee.
Crusoe’s CEO Chase Lochmiller Explains AI Factories and Energy-Driven Limits to Scaling Compute at Abilene, Texas Campus
Ben Gilbert interviews Crusoe co-founder and CEO Chase Lochmiller about the company’s AI factories—including a large campus in Abilene, Texas—and how new physical infrastructure and energy management are shaping the future of AI compute.
Seattle Tech Week 2024 Draws ~75 Events, Organizers Thank JP Morgan, Ascend, Google Cloud and Sarah Studer
Seattle Tech Week 2024 featured about 75 events that brought together founders, investors, and startups, showcasing Seattle as a vibrant tech hub. Organizers thanked hosts, sponsors (including JP Morgan, Ascend, Google Cloud), community builder Sarah Studer, and noted the program expanded from last year with spillover weekend activities and large community turnout.
Karan Mehandru & Anna Baird on Go-To-Market Strategy, and Navigating Sales, Growth, and Leadership
This 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 help founders navigate any blind spots they may have. Anna and Karan, who is on the…
By Anna
AI Adoption Drives Top Tech Firms to Hire More SDRs, Not Replace Them
Contrary to predictions that autonomous AI will replace sales development reps (SDRs), top companies — especially frontier tech firms — are increasing SDR headcount as they adopt AI, because automation augments rather than eliminates the need for human outreach. The article explains where automation succeeds and fails, the key AE-to-SDR metric to watch, how to detect gaming of conversion rates, and a domain risk that can undermine outbound programs.
Why AI Made Your Buyers Harder to Sell To
After leaving a long sales career, David Rubenstein spent a year meeting more than 300 founders across 41 countries and turned what he heard into a framework for how companies sell now. In this episode of Founded & Funded, David sits down with Madrona's Anna Baird and Eric Wong to dig into why AI left buyers with more information and less clarity, why deals stall out of fear rather than disinterest, and how founders can cut through. The conversation covers selling against build-it-yourself AI objections, the return of in-person selling, and why the founder's own brand is more important to…
Organizations
Education
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CSU, Fresno BS, Accounting
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Executive courses at Harvard and Wharton
