Madrona Venture Labs

Karan Mehandru is a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, where he leads the firm's first office outside the Pacific Northwest, in Palo Alto, California. He began his investing career doing acceleration-stage investing at Scale Venture Partners, then spent a decade at Trinity focusing primarily on early-stage investing. Most recently he headed venture capital investing at STEADFAST, where he did acceleration and growth-stage investing. Over his career he has worked with companies including Auth0, Outreach, and Cohesity. Auth0, based in greater Seattle, was acquired by Okta for $6.5 billion, while Outreach and Cohesity closed rounds at valuations well over $4 billion. At Madrona he focuses on acceleration and growth-stage company building across North America.

Scott Jacobson is a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, which he joined in 2007. Before entering venture capital, he worked at Amazon.com, holding senior product and business management positions in the Amazon Kindle and Amazon Marketplace groups, where he led initiatives including the international rollout of Amazon's Merchants@ platform. Earlier in his career, he was a Senior Consultant in Accenture's strategy consulting practice, working with clients in enterprise software, retail, and energy sectors. As an investor, he focuses on consumer web and apps, e-commerce, digital media, and mobile technologies that can disrupt large established markets. He has served on the boards of several portfolio companies and as a board observer for others. He also served on the board of Jambool prior to its acquisition by Google in 2010.

Steve Singh is a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group and serves as interim Chief Executive Officer of Spotnana. He has worked across multiple geographies and technology hubs, including Silicon Valley and Austin, building products and companies with various teams.

Tim Porter is a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, a Seattle-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology companies in the Pacific Northwest. Before joining Madrona in 2006, he worked in Microsoft's Corporate Development group, where he focused on acquisitions and investments for the Server and Tools business. His investment focus centers on B2B software companies, including intelligent SaaS applications, cloud native software, next-generation developer services and platforms, machine learning and data analytics, and security. He has stated a particular interest in very early-stage companies led by founders building around differentiated technology. He has served on the boards of numerous portfolio companies and has seen several exits, including buuteeq (acquired by Priceline) and Appature (acquired by IMS Health). He also participates in the Seattle technology community through roles with angel investing and industry organizations.

Chris Picardo is a partner on the investment team at Madrona, which he joined in 2017. He helps lead the firm's investments in companies combining wet lab science with machine learning at the intersection of life and computer science, as well as consumer technology, commerce, marketplaces, and Web3. Before Madrona, he led finance, business intelligence, and strategy at Rockets of Awesome, a kids' clothing subscription company, and previously worked on the investment team at Invus covering consumer and life science deals. He began his career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company in Seattle.

Sabrina Albert (Wu) is a Partner at Madrona Venture Group, where she invests in tech companies focused on intelligent and agentic applications (applied AI/ML) and B2B/enterprise applications. She invests from incubation through early growth, primarily at pre-seed, seed, and Series A–C stages, across the United States with a focus on Seattle and Palo Alto. Before joining Madrona in 2021, she worked as a Private Equity Associate at Vector Capital and as an Investment Banking Summer Analyst at Deutsche Bank. She co-authors the biweekly newsletter Aspiring for Intelligence, which covers the future of intelligent applications. Her portfolio includes companies such as Shaped, Typeface, Finpilot, Gradial, Tesorio, Pulumi, SeekOut, and Clarify. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and is based in Seattle.

Vivek Ramaswami is a Partner at Madrona based in San Francisco, focusing on early-stage investments in AI tools and security. He shares perspectives on artificial intelligence through his Substack publication, Aspiring for Intelligence.

Bill Richter is the CEO of Qumulo and a venture partner at Madrona, where he helps identify new investments and advises portfolio companies on strategy and operations. He built more than 20 years of leadership experience in technology, including serving as president of EMC's Isilon Storage Division, which he grew to $1.5 billion in annual revenue, and as COO of EMC's Midrange Storage business. Earlier, he was Isilon's public company CFO through its $2.5 billion sale to EMC in 2010, and before that a finance director at Amazon.com. He began his career with eight years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, focused on the technology industry in Seattle and later London.

Dan Li is the CEO and cofounder of Plus, a software tool for getting data where it's needed, and a venture partner at Madrona Venture Group. He grew up near Philadelphia and studied finance and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He writes the DL, a newsletter covering technology and startups in the Pacific Northwest, and is active as an early-stage investor focused on low-code platforms, collaborative "multiplayer" productivity apps, and community-driven companies. He is based in Seattle.

Hope Cochran is a CFO with experience in both private and public companies. She serves as an independent director on the boards of Hasbro, MongoDB, and New Relic, and participates on audit committees. Cochran is also a Managing Director at Madrona Ventures.

Jon Turow is a product leader who spent over a decade in cloud computing before moving into venture investing. At Amazon Web Services he led the product teams for computer vision AI services, including Amazon Textract for intelligent document processing and Amazon Rekognition for image and video analysis. He also authored the original product and business plans for AWS IoT and AWS Greengrass, which extend AWS services to run locally on edge devices. During his tenure at Amazon he launched more than five new services along with numerous features across AI/ML, edge computing, IoT, and messaging. Prior to Amazon, he co-founded and led a cloud telephony startup. He is affiliated with Madrona Venture Group.

Loren Alhadeff is a Venture Partner at Madrona with extensive experience in sales leadership, having built sales organizations and led teams across small business through enterprise markets. His background spans software as a service, e-procurement, government procurement, and business intelligence, with demonstrated expertise in market analysis, marketing, and quality assurance functions.

Mark Nelson is a Venture Partner at Madrona. Over a career spanning more than 30 years, he has worked as a software engineer, an executive, and a CEO.

Mike Fridgen is a venture capitalist and entrepreneur with experience in AI product development and company scaling. As founder and Managing Director of multiple Madrona venture studio funds, he established an investment thesis focused on enterprise and consumer AI, raising approximately $40M and creating over 30 portfolio companies that collectively secured more than $270M in funding and exceeded $700M in combined valuation. Earlier, he was a founding member of Farecast and Decide.com, both acquired by major technology companies, where he built AI-powered consumer products and subsequently led product platform teams serving millions of users globally.

Oren Etzioni is a computer science professor at the University of Washington since 1991 and served as CEO of the Allen Institute for AI from its founding in 2013 through September 2022. He holds positions as a venture partner at Madrona Venture Group and columnist at GeekWire, and has founded multiple organizations including the AI2 Incubator and TrueMedia.org. His earlier ventures—Farecast, Decide, and Vercept—were acquired by Microsoft, eBay, and Anthropic respectively, and his academic honors include AAAI Fellow status and multiple test of time awards.

Patrick Ennis is a Venture Partner at Madrona Venture Group with over 30 years of experience across science, engineering, and venture capital. He previously spent more than a decade at Intellectual Ventures, where he led startup incubation and technology commercialization and served as founding CTO of the spinout Xinova, and earlier was a Managing Director at ARCH Venture Partners, with investments including Impinj and Innovalight. Ennis holds a PhD, MS, and MPhil in Physics from Yale, an MBA from Wharton, and a BS in Mathematics and Physics from the College of William and Mary, and currently sits on the boards of companies including Wipro Ltd, Yoodli, and Tangibly.

Sid Shenai joined Madrona as a venture partner in early 2019, where he focuses on life sciences investing. He is co-founder and CEO of Proof Diagnostics, a Broad Institute spin-out building a portable system for molecular disease detection. Before that, he was a portfolio manager and head of developed market rates at Bracebridge Capital, where he built the firm's interest rates business and co-led its FX derivatives and Western European sovereign credit strategies. Earlier in his career, he consulted at McKinsey & Company, worked with TechnoServe in Swaziland and Ghana, and advised on financial markets and fiscal policy at the White House National Economic Council. He holds a joint JD/MBA from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, and AB and AM degrees in Physics from Harvard.

Ted Kummert is a venture partner at Madrona, which he first joined in 2013 after a 23+ year career at Microsoft, where he led development organizations building operating systems, enterprise security, and data platforms — ending as corporate vice president of the Data Platform Group responsible for products including SQL Server and SQL Azure. Between stints at Madrona, he served as a product and engineering leader at two Madrona portfolio companies: Apptio, through its 2016 IPO, and UiPath as chief product development officer, through its 2021 IPO. He rejoined Madrona in early 2023, where he evaluates new investments and advises portfolio company leaders, focusing on enterprise infrastructure and platforms, data and analytics, and intelligent applications. Earlier in his career he worked as an engineer at Apple and Hewlett-Packard.

Anna Schmitz is an Office Administrative Assistant at Madrona. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies with a minor in Business Administration from the University of Washington, where her interdisciplinary coursework spanned policy, science, equity, and economics. Her stated interests include sustainability consulting, environmental health and safety, and circular economy strategy.

Charlotte Hubbert is a Kauffman Fellow, a member of Class 14 of the two-year venture capital leadership program run by Kauffman Fellows. The program's member directory lists them at Lineage Cell Therapeutics in United States.

Coral Garnick Ducken is Content Marketing Manager at Madrona, where she supports the firm's venture capitalists in sharing thought leadership and company success stories. Before joining Madrona, she spent seven years covering business news in the Seattle area as a writer and editor.

Joanna Black is General Counsel at Madrona Venture Group. Her work covers investment management, private funds, venture and private equity transactions, and firm and fund governance, as well as securities regulation, fiduciary duties and conflicts, M&A, board counseling, and risk management. She advises investment firms, boards, executives, investors, and both privately held and public companies.

Joseph Horsman is an investor at Madrona focused on early-stage biotech. He has experience in genomics business development, product management, and venture capital investment at the W Fund, with doctoral research on hydrogen sulfide signaling pathways in C. elegans. Horsman works on translating research technology into commercial applications across new fields.

Matt Witt is a Talent Scout and Advisor at Madrona Venture Group, where he works with founders from initial funding through Series C to build teams and operating foundations. His work spans Engineering, Product, Sales, Marketing, and Finance across Madrona's portfolio companies in AI/ML, infrastructure, developer tools, the Modern Data Stack, and security. He focuses on early hiring, supporting leaders scaling their teams, and assisting founders through growth transitions.

Nicole Roze is an Executive Assistant at Madrona. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies and Sociology from Western Washington University, which she completed in August 2019.

Nina Kapur is the Operations and Compliance Manager at Arable Capital Partners, a private equity firm focused on the agriculture sector. Her experience spans venture capital, private equity, fund management, and accounting, including work on early-stage technology investments and support for fund operations, investors, and internal teams. She holds an MBA from the University of Washington Foster School of Business.

Rasik Parikh is a Professor of Robotics at the University of Washington, where his work focuses on robotic manipulation and autonomous mobility, including systems that integrate perception, planning, and control. He also serves as a Venture Partner at Madrona. His work includes developing open hardware and software for robotics and building robotics products that combine robotics and AI.

Rolanda Fu is a Talent Scout and Advisor at Madrona Venture Group, where she works across the firm's portfolio companies in areas including AI/ML, infrastructure, developer tools, the Modern Data Stack, and security. She supports founders from initial investment through Series C on hiring and team building across functions such as Engineering, Product, Sales, Marketing, and Finance.

Stella Fosberg is Content Marketing Manager at Madrona, where she supports the firm's venture capitalists in sharing thought leadership and company stories. Before joining Madrona, she worked as a writer and editor covering business news in the Seattle area for seven years.

Sunny Gupta is General Partner of Generative Capital, a private equity firm focused on late-stage SaaS companies. He previously co-founded and served as CEO of Apptio, which he grew from a 2007 startup to a public company later acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $1.96 billion in 2019, and subsequently by IBM for $4.6 billion in 2023. Gupta has held multiple founder and executive roles including EVP of Products at Opsware and co-founder of iConclude, and currently serves on boards including Gainsight and Securonix.

Anthony Bontrager is a Managing Director at WestRiver Group with over 29 years of experience in executive leadership, board governance, corporate development, and investment management. He works as a technology investor and allocator, serving on multiple boards. His background includes driving company and fund growth through innovation, team development, and strategic partnerships.

Kelci Zile is Chief Executive Officer at Envest, a company focused on early-stage venture and nature-related initiatives. She works on directing innovation toward regenerative outcomes.