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.
Madrona Builders Summit (May 15) finds GenAI reshaping full software lifecycle; leaders report shifted bottlenecks and broader tool adoption
A May 15 Madrona Builders Summit with 100+ engineering and product leaders explored how generative AI is transforming the entire software product lifecycle beyond code generation, highlighting reduced toil across tasks and shifting bottlenecks such as code review. Speakers from CircleCI, Kong, TalkDesk, QA Wolf, and AWS and a pre-event survey revealed growing tool adoption across lifecycle stages and surprising underuse for test code generation.
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.
Madrona Hires Babak Parviz as Venture Partner; Former Google Glass and Amazon Grand Challenge Leader to Advise Portfolio
Madrona announces Babak Parviz as a new Venture Partner, highlighting his leadership at Google (including founding the Google Glass team and Verb Surgical) and eight years at Amazon leading the Grand Challenge organization focused on healthcare, devices, and machine learning applications.
Brooke Bachesta of JLL Technologies on Building Sales Training That Sticks for Women: Practical Tips and Career Lessons
Brooke Bachesta, Head of Commercial Learning Design at JLL Technologies, discusses her accidental entry into sales, practical advice for addressing workplace problems, and building sales training that supports women in sales. The episode features tips like proactively tackling broken processes and highlights both hosts’ recognition on Demandbase’s list of powerful women in sales.
Smartsheet CFO Jennifer Ceran joins Auth0 board; Auth0 hires three execs; Outreach opens NYC office led by David Rubinstein
Smartsheet CFO Jennifer Ceran joined the board of Bellevue identity provider Auth0 as she prepares to retire, and Auth0 added three senior hires: Holly Files (SVP customer success), Cassio Sampaio (VP product) and Ken Oestreich (VP product marketing). Separately, Seattle sales-engagement firm Outreach is opening a New York City office led by David Rubinstein as part of its U.S. and international expansion.
Outreach Moves Unleash 2020 Summit Online, Streaming May 4–7 with Eric Yuan and AWS Sales Executive
Outreach is converting its annual Unleash summit into a virtual event streaming May 4–7 instead of the originally planned April 7–9 in San Diego, keeping its keynote speakers, product updates, and expert sessions. The online format lets more sales, operations, and marketing leaders attend and includes appearances from Outreach executives and guests like Zoom CEO Eric Yuan and AWS sales leader Mike Clayville.
Organizations
Education
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CSU, Fresno BS, Accounting
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Executive courses at Harvard and Wharton
