Patrick Ennis
Patrick Ennis joined Madrona in 2019 as a venture partner after more than a decade at Intellectual Ventures running startup incubation and technology commercialization, including serving as a founding board member of Evolv Technology. He was earlier a managing director at ARCH Venture Partners for ten years and the founding CTO of Xinova, and began his career at AT&T and Bell Labs after research in nuclear physics.
Madrona Leads Investment in Vinci’s $250M Series B to Build a Foundation Model for Physics
Madrona is investing in Vinci’s $250M Series B because Vinci is building a ‘foundation model for physics’ to speed and lower the cost of hardware design by enabling faster, continuous simulation, validation, and optimization across physical domains.
Impinj CEO Chris Diorio rings Nasdaq bell as RFID chipmaker marks 10th IPO anniversary after growing to $4.2B market cap
Impinj, maker of tiny battery-free RFID chips embedded in over 160 billion items, celebrated the 10th anniversary of its IPO as CEO Chris Diorio rang the Nasdaq bell; the Seattle company commands about two-thirds of its market, grew from a $250 million IPO valuation to a $4.2 billion market cap, but has reported only one profitable year and carries a $400 million accumulated deficit.
Patrick Ennis Joins Madrona Venture Group; Veteran Investor-Scientist with History at Intellectual Ventures, ARCH, Xinova
Patrick Ennis joined Madrona Venture Group in 2019 after a long career as an investor, scientist, and inventor, with prior roles at Intellectual Ventures, Xinova, ARCH Venture Partners, AT&T, and Bell Labs. He has funded and founded multiple startups, served on 25+ boards, emphasizes integrity and continuous learning, and enjoys outdoor and family activities with his three sons.
By Patrick
See all 6Madrona celebrates Impinj’s 10th IPO anniversary, remembering founders Carver Mead and Chris Diorio and their low-power transistor breakthrough
Impinj marked the 10th anniversary of its IPO, and Madrona celebrates its long partnership with the company dating back to its founding in 2000 by Carver Mead and Chris Diorio. The piece highlights Mead's influential contributions to semiconductor industry and neuromorphic computing and explains that Impinj originated from their work on low-power, low-cost field-tunable transistors.
Yoodli Raises $40M Series B Led by WestBridge Capital to Scale Conversational-AI Experiential Learning
Yoodli raised a $40M Series B led by WestBridge Capital to scale its conversational-AI experiential learning platform, expanding AI Roleplays from an experiment into an enterprise training standard used by customers like Google and Databricks.
Redefining Communication: Yoodli Founders on AI Roleplays, Confidence & Building in Seattle
In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Venture Partner Patrick Ennis sits down with Varun Puri and Esha Joshi, co-founders of Yoodli, an AI-powered communications coach helping people become more confident speakers. Varun and Esha share their leap from Big Tech into startup life, eating noodles on secondhand couches while chasing a bold mission: making effective communication accessible to everyone. They dive into: The origin story behind Yoodli, (and where the name came from!) How AI roleplays bring "exposure therapy" to speaking practice. Use cases ranging from sales training to doctors having end-of-life conversations. The decision to build in…
