Oren Etzioni joined Madrona as a venture partner in 2000. He is an adviser and board member for The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the technical director of the AI2 Incubator. He is also a professor emeritus at the University of Washington Allen School. Oren is an acknowledged expert on not just the technology of building with AI but the societal impacts. He is quoted widely in popular science and business publications, from Wired to the New York Times, and he speaks often on this topic in public forums.
Journey to Madrona
Oren was the founding CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, building the organization for over nine years before stepping down in 2022. While at AI2, Etzioni built the AI2 incubator and worked with Madrona, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and Two Sigma to set up the AI2 fund. During his tenure, more than 20 companies spun out, including xnor.ai (funded by Madrona and acquired by Apple).
Oren has founded and co-founded several companies, including Farecast (sold to Microsoft in 2008) and Decide (sold to eBay in 2013), and he is the author of over 200 technical papers that have garnered roughly 50,000 citations.
Lessons learned
- Life is too short to work on a project you’re not incredibly excited about.
- The best way to predict the future is to invent it (Alan Kay).
- An ounce of data is worth a pound of my intuition.
When he’s not in the office…
He plays basketball and bughouse (a four-person variant of Chess).
Noteworthy
Oren received his bachelor’s from Harvard in 1986 and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991. He has received several awards, including the ACL’s 10-year Test-of-Time Paper Award for two separate papers published in 2012 (2022), GeekWire’s Hire of the Year (2014), Seattle’s Geek of the Year (2013), the Robert Engelmore Memorial Award (2007), the IJCAI Distinguished Paper Award (2005), AAAI Fellow (2003), and a National Young Investigator Award (1993).