From left to right: Troy Cichos, Jennifer Chambers, Tasha Tieu, Ted Kummert. January 2019.
Recognizing the achievements of employees and the expanding footprint of the firm, Madrona today announced a set of changes to the core team that administers and operates the day to day business of the firm. Additionally, the firm expanded Venture Partner Ted Kummert’s role to include Chief Product Officer in Residence.
Also announced today that Hope Cochran became Managing Director.
In the administrative team, Troy Cichos was promoted to COO and Partner, and Jennifer Chambers was promoted to Administrative Partner. The firm also welcomes a new Controller, Tasha Tieu.
Running a venture firm with nearly $1.6 billion under management is no small feat. With five active funds, a staff of 35 including a value-add team and a full administrative assistant cohort, Madrona’s administrative team has taken on bigger and bigger roles over the past several years.
Troy Cichos joined Madrona in 1999 and was most recently Administrative Partner and CFO. Over the past twenty years, Troy has provided the firm with exemplary guidance as the firm has consistently raised funds, invested in companies, expanded in staff, facilities and founded new entities such as Madrona Venture Labs and Create33. As COO, Troy manages all legal, HR, IR, Tax/Audit for the firm and for Madrona’s venture funds. He manages the team of value-add staff and back office administrators and advises Madrona’s companies on financial management, tax, and legal issues. His role encompasses all operations of the firm.
“Troy brings a unique mix of subject-matter expertise, operational excellence, great people skills, and a love for Madrona and all our constituents. His leadership and counsel is indispensable to our firm and portfolio companies in areas from structuring deal documents, advising on tax strategy, consulting on leases and real estate questions, working with our investors, and providing leadership for all our firm’s operations. Troy always brings his A game and is a constant positive presence in the office and with all the important partners we work with to help our companies and support the Seattle ecosystem,” Tim Porter, Managing Director.
Jennifer Chambers joined Madrona in 1997 and as Administrative Partner works on both fund and Madrona office management. During her time at Madrona, she built and scaled the back office to accommodate the growth of Madrona’s funds, portfolio, team and facilities. As part of the value-add team she assists Madrona portfolio companies with the decisions and vendors they need to successfully set up their own back office – everything from choosing a benefits provider to finding office space. She works with Madrona’s investors as part of the fund management, both distributing and calling capital as needed in the life of a fund and planning and managing the content of our quarterly and annual meetings. Additionally, she manages a team of administrative assistants and Madrona facilities. Jennifer’s prior title was Fund Administrator.
“Jennifer has been a crucial piece to the success of Madrona. There are very few if any aspects of Madrona that Jennifer does not regularly influence and she sets the tone for Madrona’s culture with her contagious positive attitude,” Paul Goodrich, Managing Director.
Tasha Tieu joined Madrona in late 2018 as a controller focused on accounting, tax and audit functions for both Madrona and Madrona’s venture funds. She comes to Madrona from four years working in audit with technology and retail clients at EY. Tasha holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Master’s in Professional Accounting from the University of Washington Michael G. Foster Business School. Tasha is also a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Washington.
Venture Partner Ted Kummert is excited to expand his role to Chief Product Officer in Residence. In this role, he works deeply with Madrona’s growing startups who are facing product, business or engineering challenges that require some hands on, in the trenches work.
Building on his over two decades at Microsoft leading the development of several of that company’s core enterprise products, Ted also spent four years at then Madrona portfolio company, Apptio, leading the transformation and creation of SaaS solutions for enterprise and federal CIOs and CFOs based on the company’s core platform. Apptio went public during his tenure and was recently acquired by Vista Equity Partners for ~$2billion.
Ted applies this and his years of management experience to work closely and, for extended periods of time, with engineering and management teams of Madrona portfolio companies in the early and growth stages to help navigate some of the difficult decisions they face as their business, product offerings and organizations grow and scale. Continuing to serve as a Venture Partner as well, Ted will also work on identifying, vetting and making new investments.
Kristina Bergman, Founder and CEO of Integris Software commented, “Ted has been an invaluable partner for our management and engineering team as we help companies comply with new data privacy laws, such as GDPR and CCPA – map data, apply policies, and automate remediation. Building for enterprises, especially in a heavily regulated area is a complex task and Ted’s years of experience helped us execute and build a highly scalable distributed solution for Data Privacy Automation that is being adopted by global brands to protect their most important assets.”
Related Insights
