Firm also promotes Daniel Li to Senior Associate
SEATTLE, WA – January 12, 2017 — Madrona Venture Group, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Seattle, today announced the promotion of Julie Sandler to Partner and Daniel Li to Senior Associate.
Sandler has led investments in several companies including Integris, Poppy, and Julep, serving on boards across the Madrona portfolio as a board director and observer. Sandler is a prominent voice in the Pacific Northwest startup ecosystem supporting entrepreneurs, founders and students.
“Julie is invaluable to our team. Her strategic, analytical and passionate approach makes her a champion for entrepreneurs and at the same time a steward for our investors,” commented Tim Porter, managing director, Madrona Venture Group. “She dives in and does everything it takes to help founders succeed, and this hands-on approach exemplifies what we strive for in all our companies. She embodies the Madrona culture, and we are excited to recognize her with this promotion.”
Sandler launched the Seattle Entrepreneurial Women’s Network, an informal forum for women entrepreneurs, startuppers, and aspiring entrepreneurs to connect in the greater Seattle area. She is an adjunct lecturer at the University of Washington Foster School of Business and teaches an MBA course on Entrepreneurship for which she has been named a UW “star teacher” several years running. In 2016, Sandler was named by Governor Inslee to the Board of Directors for Washington State Opportunity Scholarship, an innovative private public partnership that has helped fund higher education for thousands of Washington State students annually in STEM fields.
Prior to joining Madrona, Sandler was a senior product manager at Amazon where she managed digital marketing for Kindle Books and led the design and implementation of new web and mobile shopping experiences for Kindle Content. She also worked in product management at TeachStreet (a Madrona portfolio company acquired by Amazon) and Accenture where she designed and launched worldwide Disaster Response operations for Microsoft’s Volume Licensing division.
Sandler earned an MBA with Honors from Harvard Business School and a BA and Masters in Psychology from Stanford University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
Madrona also promoted Dan Li to Senior Associate. Li joined Madrona in 2015, where he helps develop investment themes, sources and evaluates new investment opportunities and works with portfolio companies to develop strategies for success. Dan has helped drive the firm’s investment strategy in areas like autonomous transportation and virtual reality, and is an inventor, having developed both internal tools and a mobile game called Babel. Li serves as a board observer for several Madrona portfolio companies, including Matcherino, SayKara, and Eventbase.
“Dan is a force of nature inside of Madrona. From developing mobile applications to make us more productive, to analyzing the role of autonomous vehicles in our regional transportation system, to helping an entrepreneur think through her pricing strategy, he does it all,” said Scott Jacobson, managing director, Madrona “We are lucky to have him and look forward to his next investment recommendation – or invention — in 2017.”
Prior to joining Madrona, Li worked in the Seattle office of the Boston Consulting Group. At BCG, Li worked on a variety of strategy and operations projects, ranging from developing go-to-market strategies for cloud services to deploying new technology systems to improve the quality and speed of insurance claims processing.
Li graduated summa cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with majors in Finance, Psychology, and International Studies.
About Madrona Venture Group
Madrona (www.madrona.com) has been investing in early-stage technology companies in the Pacific Northwest since 1995 and has been privileged to play a role in some of the region’s most successful technology ventures. The firm invests predominately in seed and Series A rounds across the information technology spectrum, including consumer Internet, commercial software and services, digital media and advertising, networking and cloud computing, and mobile. Madrona manages approximately $1 billion and was an early investor in companies such as Amazon.com, Apptio, Rover.com, and Redfin.
Media Contact: Erika Shaffer, [email protected], 206-972-5514
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