Witnessing the Seattle tech community rally around more than 70 fantastic events for Seattle Tech Week 2024 was energizing. This week proved once again that Seattle is a world-class hub for founders, investors, innovators, and startups of all sizes.
Last year, we launched the inaugural Seattle Tech Week to celebrate our city’s vibrant and innovative tech ecosystem. Our goal was to highlight the incredible talent, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit that define Seattle. The response exceeded our expectations and continued to do so again this year, with more than double the number of events around the city. The way the community came together this year is inspiring. It wouldn’t have been possible without the support of everyone who hosted, sponsored, and attended events — and especially not without our counterparts at JP Morgan, Ascend, and Google Cloud, and community builder Sarah Studer, who all helped organize and make this year’s Seattle Tech Week successful.
We look forward to an even bigger event next year!
What was planned as a week of events spilled into the weekend, with a weight training session and underrepresented founder panel discussion slated for Saturday. Connecting with hundreds of tech enthusiasts and innovators was a highlight of this year’s Seattle Tech Week. And the diversity of our city’s tech scene was on full display — far beyond what we typically encounter at other events like happy hours and hackathons. The week truly showcased the vastness and vibrancy of the tech scene in the Pacific Northwest.
A huge announcement came out at AI2 Incubator’s summer BBQ with a surprise visit from Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announcing the launch of AI House in downtown Seattle to serve as a hub for AI startups and entrepreneurs.
Seattle has a ton of AI talent, but there’s not “a culture of talking about it or gathering at events,” Yifan Zhang, managing director at the AI2 Incubator, told GeekWire. “It doesn’t happen often enough. So we’re putting together a space where people can gather, and we can really create that type of culture here.”
We launched Seattle Tech Week with the same intent — building community, one conversation at a time, bringing together people across tech — execs at the big tech companies, startup founders, investors, students, and even people in local government. We’re excited about another dedicated space for this community!
On the theme of incubators, don’t miss this LinkedIn post from Jacob Caggiano, which shares one interesting fact from each of the Seattle startup accelerators that presented at the Sunny Side Up with Seattle Accelerators + Incubators event at Seattle Tech Week. One of this year’s Tech Week events was the Future AI Builders Demo & Pitch Competition hosted by Future/Builders, B.E.L.L.E, Mentor X, and the Seattle Entrepreneurs Club. Participants presented their innovations to an audience of investors, industry experts, and fellow Tech Week attendees. Out of 15 AI company pitches, Certifi AI landed first place.
From entrepreneurs getting potentially the “biggest break” of their career during a poker tournament to learning more about one of the hardest parts of the startup journey (building a great team) to discussing AI ethics with Father Benanti to making connections while running around Green Lake, the week had it all!
Fitness was quite the theme this year. In addition to the more than 100 folks who joined Ascend’s Pitch & Run for the 2.5-mile sprint, jog, or walk around Green Lake, there was rock climbing, pickleball, numerous walk & talk events, pickup basketball, and weight training — there was also a daily cold plunge!
Our friends at Ascend also hosted the Valley VCs Love Seattle Startups event. The main takeaway: Seattle’s startup scene is growing, but we still have some work to do. Four VCs analyzed Seattle’s startup landscape from an outsider’s perspective with active Seattle investments. They see a city rich in technical talent but with several missing pieces. Go-to-market strategies often lag behind technical capabilities; capital is available, but frequently from outside the region, and stronger community cohesion is needed to bridge incumbent tech leaders with founder types. You can read some of the Ascend team’s favorite quotes in their blog post.
The Statsig team also brought its roadshow, A/B Talks, to Tech Week for a special founders addition. CEO Vijaye Raji sat down with Common Rom CEO Linda Lian, OctoAI CTO Jared Roesch, and Fixie CTO Justin Uberti to talk about their journeys to the title of founder. Each shared their unique experiences, offering valuable perspectives on the startup journey. It was a great event (though they are all Madrona Portfolio company founders, so we may be biased!) You can find Statsig’s 5 key takeaways in their blog post.
Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain took the stage during OneSixOne Ventures Seattle Venture Day. This Seattle Tech Week event brought together ecosystem leaders to share how the region’s tech and venture landscape has evolved over the past 2 to 3 decades. Matt hit on many themes, one of which was how the most important AI model is actually the business model. Keep an eye out here for the recording of that conversation.
GeekWire published a story out of one of the other panels that afternoon that shared some brutally honest advice that might make people think twice about launching a startup. You can read the full story here. But Maria Colacurcio, co-founder of Smartsheet & CEO of Syndio, shared:
“If you’re a pessimist, don’t do it. You have to be such an optimist — glass half full, always another hand to play. You’ve got to be an optimist, and you’ve got to be super persistent.”
GeekWire published another story during Seattle Tech Week that came out of Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar’s great discussion with AWS VP of AI and Data Swami Sivasubramanian during our AI Unleased event. If the lead of their story doesn’t suck you in to continue reading, I don’t know what will!
“The old saying in tech is that companies date their computing vendor and marry their database vendor. So are AI models the equivalent of a one-night stand?”
Read GeekWire’s story for more details from that conversation, and stay tuned for our takeaways, plus the recording. But until then, one good insight from their discussion and many of the conversations throughout the week is that we are still in the early days of AI. According to Swami, no one model will rule the world, which is an early bet we made early on at Madrona as well. Many industries are increasingly using multimodal AI, such as images in healthcare, to go well beyond basic “text in, text out” applications and solve different and bigger problems in the process.
This year, even more events were added to the Seattle Tech Week lineup for the fantastic women of this region, from the Tech Walky Talky to a Women in Bio Coffee Walk & Talk to a Women Founders and Funders Poker Night and more. During Trilogy Equity Partner’s Women in Tech lunch, Elisa La Cava (Trilogy), Elizabeth Liu (Crowd Cow), Yoko Okano (First Row), and Amy Mezulis ( Joon Care) shared their transparent, encouraging take to a packed house. Key takeaways:
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- “Be willing to put your hand on the doorknob. Step forward with confidence.” — Amy Mezulis
- “Know yourself and know the right fit for you. Your path may not make sense for everyone, and that’s okay. It’s an earned right to exist.” — Elizabeth Liu
- “Trust your instincts. Make sure you share the same values.” — Yoko Okano
Madrona Managing Director Scott Jacobson joined a panel discussion on the fundraising experience of consumer startups in the PNW. However, the insights shared can apply to so much more than the consumer landscape.
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- Focus on building a great business first rather than on venture funding first. (It can be hard to attract venture dollars because consumer exit multiples are more limited than software.)
- Cast a wide net beyond Seattle for financing, such as in NY and LA
- Producing hardware and physical goods is not for the faint of heart, given long lead times and capital requirements. (Software delivery to devices or consumer-oriented software is more straightforward.)
- Big revenue numbers and rapid growth don’t mean you have a healthy and sustainable business (especially in an industry where customer acquisition costs are high).
- Don’t underestimate the value of a financial co-founder or leader to bring financial discipline to your business.
There is no way to share insights from all the events. But, the rooftop mixer hosted by Silicon Valley Bank was the perfect close for the week where AI ideas came to life. A quote from the Transforming HR with AI event at Humanly’s HQ in Belleuve sums it all up nicely:
“AI is a copilot, but you are the pilot.”
Virtually every founder and investor we talked to expressed optimism and excitement throughout the week for where things are headed and how the future looks for their companies and the local ecosystem. Pioneer Square Labs Managing Director Geoff Entress said it well after his Seattle Tech Week panel hosted by OneSixOne Ventures: “I think this is the most active I’ve seen our community since the late ’90s and the first internet boom … I’m excited for what’s to come in Seattle!”
So are we!
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