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 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…
Investor Reinvests in Yoodli as Company Raises $13.7M Series A, Total Funding Tops $20M
The author explains why they reinvested in Yoodli after founders Varun Puri and Esha Joshi built the AI-native platform into a leader in ‘AI Roleplays’ for communication coaching, joining a $13.7M Series A that brings total funding to over $20M and signals enterprise traction.
Perseverance Over Speed: Creating a New Category with Impinj's Chris Diorio
In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter and Venture Partner Patrick Ennis host Chris Diorio, co-founder and CEO of Impinj, the pioneer and world leader in RFID technology. Patrick and Chris have known each other for more than 24 years — since Madrona and ARCH Venture Partners co-led Impinj's first round of financing in the summer of 2000. In this episode, these three reminisce about old times and share some fun stories while diving into what it takes to truly launch a new category — and the patience required by both entrepreneurs and investors when…
Ben and Patrick Lead Seed Round for Tangibly to Build AI Platform Protecting $7T in Trade Secrets
Ben and Patrick lead Tangibly’s Seed round to fund an AI platform that helps companies identify, protect, and manage trade secrets, addressing a $7 trillion asset class and $1.7 trillion in estimated theft. Regulatory changes and current ad-hoc practices make enterprises prime customers for a dedicated platform to organize and monetize confidential information.
