Podcasts in Seattle
Shows
Founded & Funded
IA40 Spotlight: Credo AI's Navrina Singh on 'AI-First, Ethics Forward' Responsible AI
In this week's IA40 Spotlight Episode, Madrona Investor Sabrina Wu talks with Credo AI Founder and CEO Navrina Singh. Founded in 2020, Credo's intelligent responsible AI governance platform helps companies minimize AI-related risk by ensuring their AI is fair, compliant, secure, auditable, and human-centered. The company announced a $12.8M Series A last summer to continue its mission of empowering every organization in the world to create AI with the highest ethical standards. Navrina and Sabrina dive into this world of governance and risk assessment and why navrina wanted to make governance front and center rather than an afterthought in the…
CCoral Garnick Ducken
SSabrina Wu
NNavrina Singh
Founded & Funded
Acquired Hosts Ben and David on Getting Started at Madrona and Tom Alberg's Legacy
This week, we're excited to release a special live episode recorded during the community event portion of the Madrona 2023 annual meeting. Managing Director Matt McIlwain talks with Madrona Alumni and Acquired Podcast Hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. The three reflect on Acquired episode No. 28, which dove into the Amazon IPO with the late Madrona Co-founder and original Amazon Board Member Tom Alberg, and the early days getting the show off the ground from the Madrona offices.
MMatt McIlwain
BBen Gilbert
DDavid Rosenthal
Microsoft, OpenAI, and startups, with Neo CEO Ali Partovi
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we're joined by Ali Partovi, a technology investor, entrepreneur, and mentor who is the CEO of Neo, a startup accelerator, mentorship community, and venture firm. Neo's accelerator this week announced a new AI track, working in collaboration with OpenAI and Microsoft to help startups build businesses on newly emerging artificial intelligence capabilities. Partovi, who grew up in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war, sold his startup LinkExchange to Microsoft in 1998, was an early investor in companies including Airbnb, Dropbox, Facebook, and Uber, and 10 years ago co-founded Code.org with his twin brother Hadi Partovi…
TTodd Bishop
AAli Partovi
SVB aftermath; remote work 'affliction'; and Microsoft puts AI to work
This week on the GeekWire Podcast ... We catch up on the latest on the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, and consider the long-term implications of the meltdown on the startup ecosystem and the U.S. financial system. Then, a point-counterpoint on the issue of the return to office, as Downtown Seattle Association President Jon Scholes laments the "affliction" of remote work, and Zillow Group CEO Rich Barton says the ways we work (and the places we work) have changed forever. And finally, we catch up on the latest in the world of generative artificial intelligence, listening to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's…
TTodd Bishop
JJohn Cook
Founded & Funded
Common Room's Viraj Mody on Building Community, Foundation Models and Being Relentless
Madrona Managing Director Soma dives into the world of intelligent applications and generative AI with Common Room Co-founder and CTO Viraj Mody. Madrona first invested in Common Room in 2020 — and we had the pleasure of having the founders join us on Founded & Funded the following year. Common Room is an intelligent community growth platform that combines engagement data from platforms like LinkedIn, Slack, Twitter, Reddit, GitHub, and others with product usage and CRM data to surface insights from across an organization's entire user community. Customers like Figma, OpenAI, and Grafana Labs use Common Room to better understand…
CCoral Garnick Ducken
VViraj Mody
Incubating the Next Big Ideas | with Elizabeth Scallon (Co-Founder Find Ventures, Director HP, WeWork)
In this episode of Shift AI we feature Elizabeth Scallon, a prominent figure in the Seattle startup scene who discusses her experiences and insights on co-working, mentorship, and the future of work. Elizabeth highlights the potential of AI and co-creation in scaling and accelerating work processes. and shares her expertise on funding structures for underrepresented small businesses. In this episode of Shift AI, we cover: Elizabeth discusses her first experience working and her family’s relationship to work growing up in Bellevue Washington. Elizabeth’s background as a leader in the Seattle startup accelerator scene, as a mentor and champion for small…
What's next in the Silicon Valley Bank saga
Startups and investors cheered the U.S. government's promise this weekend to fully protect deposits after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. But the move left many unresolved questions and challenges for the U.S. financial system and the tech industry. Our guests on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast discuss their recent experiences and offer their informed opinions on what could come next. Speaking with GeekWire co-founder John Cook are: Kirby Winfield, founding general partner of Seattle venture capital firm Ascend; and Aviel Ginzburg, general partner at Seattle VC firm Founders’ Co-op. They both reflect on what happened last week, explaining how…
JJohn Cook
KKirby Winfield
AAviel Ginzburg
The Collapse of Silicon Valley Bank
What was previously a point of pride on Silicon Valley Bank's website now reads like a warning sign: nearly half of U.S. venture-backed technology and life sciences companies bank with the financial institution. Financial regulators on Friday morning shut down Silicon Valley Bank and put it in the hands of the FDIC, a jaw-dropping move that has created a crisis for startup founders and their financial backers. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., Silicon Valley Bank has long been a key player in the Seattle region. GeekWire's reporting suggests that the percentage of tech startups in the Seattle area that used…
TTodd Bishop
JJohn Cook
Founded & Funded
Investor Spotlight with Matt McIlwain
Get to know Madrona Managing Partner Matt McIlwain. Learn where he gets his spark to work with entrepreneurs, what he looks for in founders, where the opportunities lay for founders when it comes to generative AI, and what he enjoys doing outside the office.
CCoral Garnick-Deckin
MMatt McIlwain
Grin Lord
Dr. Grin Lord is a clinical psychologist and AI empathy innovator. She is the founder/CEO of mpathic.ai - AI empathy at scale - and of Therapists in Tech, a collaborative of 3k+ digital mental health experts who are defining the digital mental health revolution together. Grin was previously the Chief Clinical Officer of Lyssn.io, a Clinical Product Psychologist at Youper.ai, and a Research Scientist at the University of Washington where she studied the key ingredients in conversation that make therapy effective and promote change. Her areas of expertise include conversational design, using machine learning to augment human connection, evidence-based therapy…
SSam Okafor
GGrin Lord
Founded & Funded
Leaf Logistics CEO Anshu Prasad on Applying AI to Freight and Transportation Logistics
In this episode of Founded & Funded, partner Aseem Datar talks with Leaf Logistics Co-founder and CEO Anshu Prasad. Leaf is applying AI to the complexities of the freight and transportation industry, connecting shippers, carriers, and partners to better plan, coordinate, and schedule transportation logistics. This enables network efficiencies and unlocks a forward view of tomorrow's transportation market while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions. Leaf Logistics was founded in 2017, and Madrona joined Leaf's $37 million series B in early 2022. From the beginning, Leaf has been fighting the one-load-at-a-time way that trucking has historically been conducted. The company analyzes shipping…
SSam Okafor
AAseem Datar
AAnshu Prasad
Founded & Funded
Lexion's Gaurav Oberoi on Applying AI to Change an Industry
In this week's IA40 Spotlight Episode of Founded & Funded, Investor Elisa La Cava talks to Lexion Co-founder and CEO Gaurav Oberoi. Lexion was one of the first spinouts from AI2, and Madrona invested in the first round the company raised in 2019. Like many companies that come from AI2 – Lexion is focused on applying AI to change an industry. Specifically, Lexion helps legal teams at enterprises manage contracts – and they are one of the companies that have added features using OpenAI's GPT technology.
How AI's new era is inspiring one startup founder
This podcast features Kirill Zubovsky, a startup founder and consultant, who is now working with AI to create applications. He talks about his journey over the past few months with AI, his experience with generative AI and GPT-3, and the application of AI he has been working on, Smartynames, a domain and business name finder. He also talks about his experience living in a van with his two kids and two pets and his thoughts on the current "App Store moment" for artificial intelligence. (This summary was produced by SwellAI.com based on its AI analysis of the content in this…
KKirill Zubovsky
Founded & Funded
Magnify's Josh Crossman on Incubating a Startup and Bringing AI to the Customer Experience
In this episode, investor Elisa La Cava talks with Josh Crossman, CEO of Magnify, which was incubated at Madrona Venture Labs. Josh was actually recruited by Madrona Venture Labs to help launch a business that would bring AI to the customer experience. He was quickly persuaded and signed on in 2021, spinning out of MVL in less than three months with a $6 million seed round. Josh and Elisa discussed the incubation process and how Magnify's intelligent application to improve customer retention, expansion, and adoption is solving one of the biggest pain points of the customer experience — focusing on…
EElisa La Cava
JJosh Crossman
JJoshua Crossman
Fuse
This week on Finding PROOF, Jenny and Thanasis talk with Cameron Borumand. Cameron is a General Partner at Fuse, an early-stage fund based in Seattle that invests in enterprise software companies in the Pacific Northwest.
CCameron Borumand
Founded & Funded
IA40 Spotlight: A-Alpha Bio's David Younger on machine learning in biotech, building cross-functional teams
This week on Founded & Funded, Partner Chris Picardo is talking with A-Alpha Bio Co-founder and CEO David Younger for our first Intelligent Application 40 Spotlight episode of 2023. We announced the 2022 IA40 winners in October, and A-Alpha was the first biotech company to make the list, which was no surprise to us. As one of our portfolio companies, we know the work David and his team are doing at the intersections of biological and data/computer sciences will change the world — but having a group of judges agree with us makes us all the more certain. Protein interactions…
CChris Picardo
DDavid Younger
What we're thankful for in tech
It doesn't always come naturally to us, as cynical reporters, but every Thanksgiving week on the GeekWire Podcast, it's our tradition to take a step back and take stock of the positive things in technology, business, and science. This year's installment offers several reminders of the technologies that we might take for granted, gradual advancements that we incorporate into our lives over time, to the point that we suddenly can't remember what we did without them: automated scoring for sports pools among friends; remote printing over the internet; natural language processing; language translation; mobile ticketing; and drone photography; to name…
TTodd Bishop
JJohn Cook
When Mark Zuckerberg met Seattle
The year was 2011, Facebook was serving a mere 600 million users, and Mark Zuckerberg was making his pitch to a crowd of prospective hires inside the company's office near Pike Place Market — explaining why the social network had chosen Seattle for its first remote engineering hub. "We were like, alright, at some point, we should probably think about opening up offices in other places," he said. "And we figured that Seattle would be a good starting place, because it's culturally pretty similar to the Bay Area, pretty close by. ... It's the same time zone. So it's easier…
Founded & Funded
IA40 Spotlight: dbt Labs Founder Tristan Handy on the modern data stack, partnerships, and creating community
In this week's IA40 Spotlight episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona partner Jon Turow talks with dbt Labs Founder and CEO Tristan Handy. Here at Madrona, we just announced our 2022 IA40, and dbt Labs is one of our two-time winners. The company has positioned itself as the industry standard for data transformation in the cloud, and it raised $222 million at the beginning of the year, which was led by Altimeter, but Databricks and Snowflakes both participated in the round, further solidifying dbt's place and the modern data stack. Jon and Tristan dive into the concept of epistemic truth…
The road ahead for autonomous vehicles: Aurora CEO Chris Urmson on the future of cars and trucks
Fully autonomous vehicles are closer to commonplace than you might expect, as cars and big rigs gain the ability to operate safely on our streets and highways. As one of the pioneers in the field, Chris Urmson has been there from the beginning, competing in the landmark DARPA Grand Challenge before going on to lead Google’s self-driving car initiative. Now he’s following through on the vision as the CEO of Aurora, which is developing self-driving technology for use by a variety of car and truck makers. On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're playing highlights from our conversation with…
TTodd Bishop
CChris Urmson
Founded & Funded
Data Visionary Bob Muglia on the Modern Data Stack and Lessons from Snowflake
In this week's episode which is leading up to our Intelligent Applications Summit on November 2nd, Soma speaks with Bob Muglia. Bob has thought deeply about the Modern Data Stack and they speak about it here - what is needed in the data stack to enable Intelligent Applications (or data driven apps as Bob calls them) and the opportunities for new companies to innovate. Bob is also well known as the CEO that took Snowflake from a promising application for the public cloud to success by focusing on the problem of scaling a data warehouse in the cloud, and building…
CCoral Garner Ducken
BBob Muglia
Founded & Funded
IA40 Spotlight: Fivetran CEO George Fraser on Data Replication and Connectors
This week Madrona Investor Sabrina Wu talks with Fivetran Co-founder and CEO George Fraser. Fivetran is fundamentally a data replication company — that's how George explains it. But the company actually started out trying to solve a completely different problem when it was founded in 2012 and pivoted to strictly data integration in 2015 after multiple customers started asking for help. But in attacking that problem differently than it had ever been done before — by only focusing on replicating people's data into the desired destination w/o getting sucked into any of the workflows that the user intended to do…
SSam Okafor
SSabrina Wu
GGeorge Fraser
WestRiver Group
This week on Finding PROOF, our hosts Jennifer Schretter and Thanasis Delistathis sit down with Anthony Bontrager, Managing Director at WestRiver Group, a firm that invests in seed and early-stage companies in the US Pacific Northwest.
AAnthony Bontrager
GeekWire's Elevator Pitch: Analyzing the four winning pitches in advance of the upcoming live finale
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we hear the pitches made by four startup CEOs in the 32 seconds it takes to get to the top of Seattle's historic Smith Tower, on their way to winning their respective episodes on this season of GeekWire's Elevator Pitch series. It's a preview of the upcoming season finale, in which each of the four will make a final pitch at the GeekWire Summit next week, live on stage. Episode 1 winner: Amina Moreau, CEO of Radious, an online marketplace that turns houses, apartments and other residential properties into workspaces, rentable by the day…
EErin Quick
AAmina Moreau
DDevin Miller
KKatherine Sizov
