Tag: Announcement

Welcome to Alice Ryder and Maria Karaivanova – New Madrona Team Members

Today we are announcing two new team members at Madrona. Alice Ryder is our new head of Investor Relations and Business Development and Maria Karaivanova is joining as a Principal. Each of them brings a wealth of experience to the firm that will translate directly to helping portfolio companies succeed, and contribute to the Seattle Innovation Ecosystem.

We first met Maria more than five years ago, and we were continually impressed with her deep network and knowledge of technology companies and trends. She started her career at Boeing and then moved onto Intel and Intel Capital where she got a taste of venture investing. After five years of helping to build and scale highly successful cloud security company, Cloudflare, in San Francisco, she is returning to Seattle to bring her many talents to Madrona. She is particularly interested in investing in enterprise cloud, security and infrastructure. We are excited to have her on board!

Alice worked side by side with Hope Cochran, our new Venture Partner, on growing very successful businesses in wireless, Clearwire, and in gaming, King Digital. She ran Investor Relations at those companies and previously held similar roles at Expedia and Nextel. Throughout her career, Alice has had a broad role in building strategic business relationships, and we are thrilled to have her talents in both IR and Biz Dev to deploy for our companies. She will continue to build Madrona’s program to connect CEOs, CIOs and CTOs of larger companies with portfolio companies to foster partnerships, customer relationships and strategic advisory.

Please join us in welcoming Maria and Alice! Below is a press release we issued today.

Madrona Venture Group Announces Two New Investment Professionals

Maria Karaivanova Joins as Principal and Alice Ryder as Director of Investor Relations and Business Development

SEATTLE, WA – March 20, 2017 – Madrona Venture Group, an early-stage venture capital firm, announced today two new additions to the team. Maria Karaivanova is joining Madrona as a Principal focused on sourcing and evaluating new investment opportunities, working with portfolio companies to explore and evaluate business strategies and developing investment themes for the firm. Alice Ryder is joining as Director of Investor Relations and Business Development and will work with Madrona’s investors, as well as continue to develop Madrona’s program for connecting C-level executives with portfolio companies for partnerships, customer relationships and advisory roles. Each brings a deep background of business, technology and finance experience to the firm, and has helped rapidly scale very successful businesses like Cloudflare, King Digital and Clearwire.

“Both Maria and Alice embody what we look for at Madrona, experts in their field who have a passion for working effectively with entrepreneurs and innovative ideas,” said Tim Porter, managing director, Madrona. “While they have been on board just a short time, each of them has already made meaningful contributions, and we are looking forward to working together in the coming years.”

Maria has nearly a decade of deep technology experience, garnered through roles at some of the world’s leading technology companies, including Cloudflare, Intel and Boeing. Maria comes to Madrona after five years as head of business development and an executive team member at Cloudflare, a San Francisco-based web performance and security company, where she helped build the company from 25 employees to unicorn status.

While at Cloudflare, Maria built a global ecosystem of over five thousand partners and launched strategic partnerships with Google, Rackspace and other leading cloud platforms, delivering significant revenue and distribution. Prior to Cloudflare, Maria was an investor at Intel Capital with a focus on enterprise technologies and cloud security. She was also part of the Intel-McAfee strategic engagement team helping to integrate security into firmware. Before that, Maria held various positions at Boeing specializing in intellectual property management and international business development for the Chinook, Apache and F-15 programs, and unmanned aircraft. She started her career as an analyst at Citibank.

“Seattle has emerged as the cloud capital of the world and Madrona Venture Group is at the core of its innovation fabric,” commented Maria. “I couldn’t be more excited to work alongside the Madrona team to bring innovative ideas to life across the Pacific Northwest and to support the remarkable entrepreneurs across our portfolio.”

Maria has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BSBA in Finance with high honors from Saint Louis University. She is a frequent speaker at technology conferences and an occasional angel investor. Maria lives in Seattle with her husband and son.

As Director of Investor Relations, Alice Ryder will work with Madrona’s limited partners who have invested nearly $1.3 billion into funds that are more than 85% invested in the Pacific Northwest. Additionally, she will help foster business development by continuing to build out the C-suite program that connects CIOs, CTOs and CEOs with Madrona portfolio companies. Through this program over the past two years, portfolio companies have engaged new customers and made valuable partnerships with national brand name companies. Alice comes to this role with a strong background in finance and partnerships, built over 10 years in companies representing a diverse set of businesses in the technology industry.

Alice was most recently VP of Investor Relations at King Digital Entertainment, the maker of Candy Crush and other successful mobile games, where she helped ready the company for its IPO and worked closely with King’s global investor base through its public life, which culminated in a $5.9 billion sale to Activision Blizzard. Prior to King she was VP of Investor Relations for Clearwire. She has also held similar roles at Expedia and Nextel Partners. Alice began her work in technology investing as a banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.

“I’m excited to dive into the world of venture investing which is so important to the continuing growth of the technology industry,” said Alice. “The Pacific NW is full of engineering, entrepreneurial and business talent from wireless to software to infrastructure, and Madrona is at the center of it all. I’m looking forward to working with the team to help create new opportunities for growth in the area.”

Alice holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BS in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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

Investing in Suplari – Madrona’s Latest Investment in Intelligent Applications

Suplari, which announced their $3.1 million funding round today, is our newest investment in an area we helped define – Intelligent Applications. Intelligent Apps combine data and machine learning to provide real-time, actionable insight into business and consumer applications. Going back 4-5 years, we were investing in more horizontal machine learning platforms like Dato/Turi, Algorithmia and MightyAI to help companies combine the talents of their business users, data scientists and programmers to design, text and build intelligent apps. More recently we have been focusing on building vertical or functionally focused intelligent applications including Amperity, Saykara, and Placed.com.
Continue reading “Investing in Suplari – Madrona’s Latest Investment in Intelligent Applications”

Xnor.ai – Bringing Deep Learning AI to the Devices at the Edge of the Network

Photo – The Xnor.ai Team

Today we announced our funding of Xnor.ai. We are excited to be working with Ali Farhadi, Mohammad Rastegari and their team on this new company. We are also looking forward to working with Paul Allen’s team at the Allen Institute for AI and in particular our good friend and CEO of AI2, Dr. Oren Etzioni who is joining the board of Xnor.ai. Machine Learning and AI have been a key investment theme for us for the past several years and bringing deep learning capabilities such as image and speech recognition to small devices is a huge challenge.

Mohammad and Ali and their team have developed a platform that enables low resource devices to perform tasks that usually require large farms of GPUs in cloud environments. This, we believe, has the opportunity to change how we think about certain types of deep learning use cases as they get extended from the core to the edge. Image and voice recognition are great examples. These are broad areas of use cases out in the world – usually with a mobile device, but right now they require the device to be connected to the internet so those large farms of GPUs can process all the information your device is capturing/sending and having the core transmit back the answer. If you could do that on your phone (while preserving battery life) it opens up a new world of options.

It is just these kinds of inventions that put the greater Seattle area at the center of the revolution in machine learning and AI that is upon us. Xnor.ai came out of the outstanding work the team was doing at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2.) and Ali is a professor at the University of Washington. Between Microsoft, Amazon, the University of Washington and research institutes such as AI2, our region is leading the way as new types of intelligent applications takes shape. Madrona is energized to play our role as company builder and support for these amazing inventors and founders.

Investing in People – Developing and Adding to our Team at Madrona

At Madrona we are regularly encouraging our portfolio companies to hire and develop talented people. As organizations grow and change, including our own, it is important to continually be assessing your talent needs and promoting and adding team members. As we embark on a new year of innovation, invention and investment in our region and beyond, Madrona is pleased to announce several promotions and a new addition at the firm today.

All of these appointments speak to the growing opportunity that Madrona sees in our region to build lasting and large technology businesses. We had two successful IPOs last year – Impinj and Apptio – both of which are substantial forces not only here in the Seattle area but in the technology industry at large. In addition, the continued industry leadership of companies like Amazon and Microsoft and incredible talent in our region highlight the huge potential of our innovation ecosystem to create more great companies and products.

Today we are pleased to announce that S. “Soma” Somasegar has been promoted to Managing Director, Julie Sandler to Partner, Daniel Li to Senior Associate and that Hope Cochran is joining us as Venture Partner.

Soma joined us in 2015 as a Venture Partner. Since then he has added greatly to our existing portfolio companies with his deep, developer-centric understanding of both technological and management experience, and has also become a powerful voice internally and externally on key investment areas including DevOps, Machine Learning and Virtual Reality. Soma brings over 25 years of technology operating experience building world-class platforms at Microsoft that fuel cloud, mobile and client/server applications, and he is a passionate and experienced angel investor. Since joining Madrona, he championed investments including Pixvana, Heptio, Shyft and CloudCoreo. He will be a great addition to our Managing Director team.

Julie came to Madrona from Amazon, and has been a valued and invaluable member of the Madrona investment team for more than five years. Today we are excited to promote her to the role of Partner. At Madrona, Julie has led investments including Integris and Poppy, served on boards, helped companies navigate the challenges of finding initial product market fit and then scaling for growth. She has always been a strong and persistent voice supporting entrepreneurs and the community around us. She is a steward for our investors and a mentor to a growing number of people in the Seattle region. She recently completed the year-long Presidential Leadership Scholar program which brings together select national leaders from many disciplines to learn from the great political leaders of our country, and she is deeply committed to ensuring that the innovation ecosystem provides positive impacts for the broadest number of people. We look forward to a new year of company building guided by Julie’s leadership.

Daniel Li joined us in 2015 as an Associate, from the Seattle office of The Boston Consulting Group, and since then has had a tremendous and immediate impact, diving in to leverage communication platforms to help the firm communicate, penning many interesting pieces covering such diverse topics as eSports and autonomous vehicles, and helping our portfolio companies navigate business decisions. Dan is even known to code a few applications himself including a text polling app and a mobile game called Babel. Dan’s energy and attitude is appreciated by our companies and we are happy to recognize his accomplishments with the promotion to Senior Associate.

Finally, we are also announcing that Hope Cochran is joining Madrona as a Venture Partner. Hope most recently was the CFO of London-based, King Digital, which we all know as the creator of Candy Crush and other successful mobile games. At King, she helped lead the company through explosive revenue and employee growth, a successful IPO and a $5.9 billion acquisition by Activision. She has long been a friend and informal sounding board to us at Madrona and recently returned to the Seattle area from London.

Prior to King she was CFO at Clearwire where she worked closely with Craig McCaw, John Stanton and other innovators in our community. Prior to Clearwire, she started a company that grew to 200 employees, $10 million in revenue, and was acquired by enterprise software pioneer, PeopleSoft. Throughout these experiences she has navigated company growth, management and financing situations including raising more than $12 billion, driving two IPOs and a multibillion dollar acquisition. Hope was a popular speaker at our recent CFO conference and we are excited to have her on board to work directly with our portfolio companies. In addition, as a Venture Partner she will be investing time in developing our corporate development and later stage financing programs that connect portfolio companies with strategic partners and potential late-stage investors across a broad set of sectors.

Overall these promotions and additions are a great way to dive into 2017! Madrona is incredibly optimistic about the outlook for the technology industry and having these additions to our core team is crucial to our ability to help our companies grow as well as build the ecosystem in the region.

Julie Sandler Named Partner at Madrona Venture Group

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.” Continue reading “Julie Sandler Named Partner at Madrona Venture Group”

Finance and Technology Leader, Hope Cochran, Joins Madrona Venture Group as Venture Partner

Former CFO of King Digital and ClearWire Brings Management, Operating Experience to Venture and Startup World

SEATTLE, WA – January 12, 2017 – Madrona Venture Group, an early-stage venture capital firm, announced today that Hope Cochran has joined the firm as Venture Partner. Cochran brings a deep wealth of knowledge based on her experience as an entrepreneur, board member and CFO of public and private companies. As Venture Partner, Cochran will help identify new investments, provide strategic and operational advice to Madrona portfolio companies, and foster corporate and strategic business development relationships with larger companies and investors.

“I’m excited to jump back into the startup world and work directly with exec teams at some of the most innovative companies in the technology industry,” said Cochran. “Madrona is a leader in the community and I’m looking forward to being part of the team that helps their portfolio companies realize their full potential.” Continue reading “Finance and Technology Leader, Hope Cochran, Joins Madrona Venture Group as Venture Partner”

Madrona Venture Group Names S. Somasegar Managing Director

Experienced Technologist, Executive and Investor Expands Role

SEATTLE, WA – January 12, 2017 – Madrona Venture Group, an early-stage venture capital firm, announced today the appointment of S. “Soma” Somasegar to the role of Managing Director.

Soma joined Madrona in November 2015 as a Venture Partner, following a more than twenty five year career at Microsoft leading the company’s Developer Division and responsible for the Visual Studio and .NET family of products that enable tens of millions of developers to build applications and services for client, server, mobile and cloud platforms. Soma was also responsible for Microsoft’s R&D labs in Boston, China, India and Israel.

As a Venture Partner at Madrona, Soma became a powerful voice at the table on key investment areas including Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality, next generation cloud infrastructure and intelligent applications. Soma led investments in Shyft and CloudCoreo, and he is also the Board Chair at Pixvana. Continue reading “Madrona Venture Group Names S. Somasegar Managing Director”