Mike Fridgen

Mike Fridgen

Venture Partner at Madrona
Seattle, Washington, United States

Mike Fridgen is Venture Partner at Madrona, Founder and CEO at a stealth startup, Advisory Board Member for the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship at University of Washington, and Chief Operating Officer at Rover. He previously served as Director of Interactive Marketing at Alaska Airlines, President & CEO at Decide, General Manager at eBay, Partnerships Manager at Expedia Group, and VP Marketing & Product at Farecast.com. He founded Decide.com and Farecast, both acquired, Madrona Venture Labs, TripHub, and his current stealth startup. His expertise is in consumer travel startups and building technology products in the travel industry.

News 12 Podcasts 2 Videos 2
GeekWire Podcast

Live show: Amazon, Meta and the fight over the future of AI; Plus, is Seattle still the place to build?

This week: Amazon is blocking Meta's new Muse AI assistant from shopping on Amazon.com, saying the agent doesn't identify itself and violates the site's conditions of use. We explain why the standoff is an early sign of a much bigger fight over whether AI agents can use websites and apps on people's behalf, and why Amazon has so much riding on the answer. For the definitive word on the issue, we ask Muse what it has to say for itself, and get an impressively sophisticated and evenhanded answer. We recorded this week's show live at Daniel's Broiler in downtown Seattle…

52 min
TiE Seattle Guest

Gen AI Series - The AI agent redefining travel: Managing Director Mike Fridgen, Madrona Venture Labs

New episode location: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO5SOfXRduE&list=PLqH2XogpwLRmYvCCxOj-W-eOAlCrhrk7i&index=22 Learn about the founding of Otto from Mike Fridgen, the Managing Director of Madrona Venture Labs where this concept was incubated. Otto is your personal AI travel agent that seeks to be as valuable and insightful as a dedicated personal assistant. Otto offers enterprise-grade travel booking and servicing capabilities through an easy-to-use AI travel agent that autonomously plans, books, and manages your travel, even during your trip. As Managing Director of Madrona Venture Labs (MVL), Mike Fridgen leads the studio's mission to partner with founders from day one to create extraordinary companies. Mike co-founded multiple MVL…

43 min
Taylor Soper / GeekWire

Otto Startup, Led by Expedia Veteran and Madrona Chairman, Raises $6M to Develop AI Assistant for Business Travel Booking

Seattle-based startup Otto, led by Expedia veteran Michael Gulmann and chaired by Steve Singh of Madrona Ventures, is developing an AI virtual assistant using GPT-4 to simplify business travel booking. The company raised $6 million in a seed round led by Madrona and aims to offer its product for free while earning revenue through booking facilitation.

Taylor Soper / GeekWire

Pack Ventures Seeks $30M for Second Fund to Invest in University of Washington-Linked Startups

Pack Ventures, a venture capital fund focused on University of Washington-linked startups, raised $5 million for its first fund and is now aiming to raise $30 million for a second fund to expand its investments. The firm has established a preferred partnership with UW and co-invests with other Seattle VCs in companies across life sciences, software, and healthcare sectors.

Startup Project Guest

#20 Mike Fridgen: Seattle based Startup Incubator Madrona Venture Labs

In this Episode of Startup Project, Nataraj talked to Mike Fridgen, Managing Director at Madrona Venture Labs a Seattle based tech startup incubator. Some of the companies incubated include Style Genome (Acq by Wayfair), Chatitive (Acq by MailChimp), Message Yes (Acq by Nordstrom) & more. Before joining Madrona Venture Labs Mike was part of founding teams at Farecast (Acq by Microsoft) & Decide (Acq by Ebay) where he led product and growth strategies. Full Conversation includes: Farecast.com (Predicting prices) - Acquired by Microsoft Decide.com (next gen consumer reports) - Acquired by Ebay Through line across being part of multiple acquisitions…

32 min
John Cook / GeekWire

Pack Ventures launches Seattle syndicate to back UW-linked startups, pledges 10% of future profits to University of Washington

Pack Ventures, a new early-stage Seattle VC, will invest $100K–$200K checks in startups tied to the University of Washington and has already backed five companies including Jeeva Wireless, Talus.bio and Monod Bio; the firm will return 10% of individual future profits to UW. The syndicate includes more than 35 founding investors from the Seattle VC and entrepreneur community and will target AI, robotics, computational biology, enterprise software and other high-growth areas.

Taylor Soper / GeekWire

Madrona Venture Labs raises $8M and turns investors like Spencer Rascoff into co‑founders of spinouts

Madrona Venture Labs has raised $8 million for its fourth fund and introduced a model that makes investors — including Spencer Rascoff, Julie Larson-Green and Elena Donio — co-founders, board members, and advisors of its spinouts to attract talent and accelerate startup formation. Founded in 2014, the Seattle-based studio has spun out more than a dozen companies, including recent spinouts Zeitworks, Simplata, and Stratify.

Alison McCulloch / Madrona

Madrona Venture Labs Raises $8M Led by Madrona, Adds Former CEOs and Operators as Investors

Madrona Venture Labs (MVL), the incubation arm of Madrona Venture Group, has raised $8M with Madrona leading the round and brought on a roster of experienced operators and former CEOs as investors to help build spun-out companies. MVL will continue partnering closely with Madrona’s investment professionals on startups like Stratify and Strike Graph as it expands its incubation efforts.

Taylor Soper / GeekWire

Madrona Venture Labs launches Founders Unite to connect startup founders with veteran execs through AMAs during pandemic

Seattle-based Madrona Venture Labs launched Founders Unite, a community and AMA series connecting startup founders with veteran tech leaders for advice and peer support during the pandemic. MVL — which raised $11 million for its third fund last year and has launched around ten companies — organized the initiative after polling 100+ founders about what they value most.

Julie Bort / Business Insider

eBay acqui-hires Decide.com as Oren Etzioni scores sixth straight exit; FareCast founder's startups attracted $17M in funding

Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington CS professor and Madrona partner, has co-founded a string of successful tech startups culminating in Decide.com being acqui-hired by eBay, marking his sixth consecutive exit. His prior ventures include MetaCrawler, NetBot, ClearForest, FareCast (sold to Microsoft for $110M), and Decide.com, which raised about $17M before the eBay deal.

Organizations

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Education

  • Harvard Business School MBA · 2001–2003
  • Foster School of Business Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneurial Studies · 1993–1997

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