S. "Soma" Somasegar
S. 'Soma' Somasegar is Managing Director and Board Member at Madrona Venture Group. He previously held executive roles at Microsoft.
The End of Biz Apps? AI, Agility, and The Agent-Native Enterprise from Microsoft CVP Charles Lamanna
In this Founded & Funded episode, Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar sits down with Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, to unpack his journey from startup founder to corporate leader. They dive into what it takes to build a successful AI-transformed organization, how the nature of business applications is evolving, and why AI agents will fundamentally reshape teams, tools, and workflows. From "customer obsession" to "extreme ownership," Charles delivers insight after insight for startup founders and enterprise leaders navigating the age of AI. They dive into: Why business apps as we know them are dead How AI agents and…
Temporal Founders Bet on Open Source and Developers to Enable Invincible Applications
Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar hosts Temporal Co-Founders Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev in studio. Temporal was founded in 2019 based on an open-source microservices orchestration engine project but is the result of a more than decade-long partnership between the two co-founders that spanned their time working on different iterations of the same thing at AWS, Microsoft, and Uber. In this episode, Soma, Samar, and Maxim dive into the challenges of building an open-source ecosystem while also working on a commercial offering and scaling a successful company, how to navigate and adjust a product roadmap in an ever-changing world of…
Navigating the Dynamics of Startup Boards: Managing Disagreements & Effective Governance
In this episode, Madrona Managing Director S. Somasegar and General Counsel Joanna Black discuss the fundamental role of a board in a startup's growth and development. They touch upon the importance of aligning strategic views with board members, managing disagreements, and effective governance to ensure that the organization is run efficiently. The duo offers numerous insights into the intricacies of board structure at different stages of a startup lifecycle, drawing parallels from recent events at OpenAI. The conversation covers the need for transparency, both in sharing good and bad news, and the necessity for a functional board reflecting a functional…
Organizations
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Madrona Managing Director and Board Member, Former Microsoft Executive · current -
Madrona Venture Labs Managing Director · current
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Microsoft and Madrona Venture Group Leader · current
