Best Madrona Ventures Podcasts (2025)

1
The End of Biz Apps? AI, Agility, and The Agent-Native Enterprise from Microsoft CVP Charles Lamanna 28:23

2d ago28:23

28:23

In this Founded & Funded episode, Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar sits down with Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, to unpack his journey from startup founder to corporate leader. They dive into what it takes to build a successful AI-transformed organization, how the nature of business applications is evolving, and why…

1
Building AI That Sells: Scaling Smarter with Luminance CEO Eleanor Lightbody 38:22

16d ago38:22

38:22

Entrepreneurs often ask: When do I know it’s time to scale? Or, how do I lead when I wasn’t the original founder? In this week’s Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Chris Picardo sits down with Eleanor Lightbody, CEO of Luminance, who shares how she took a promising AI product and built a company culture, go-to-market motion, and product strategy tha…

1
Customer Obsession & Agentic AI Power Ravenna’s Reinvention of Internal Ops 40:46

1M ago40:46

40:46

Most startups bolt AI onto old products. ⁨@ravennahq⁩ reimagined the entire workflow. When we first met Kevin Coleman and Taylor Halliday, it was clear they weren’t just chasing the hype cycle. They were pairing AI-native architecture with deep founder-market fit, and rebuilding how internal ops work — from first principles. Their new company, Rave…

1
Reinventing Recruiting: SeekOut’s Anoop Gupta on the Rise of Agentic AI 31:09

1M ago31:09

31:09

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar sits down with Anoop Gupta, co-founder and CEO of @SeekOut — an AI-first company transforming how organizations discover, hire, and manage talent. They explore: 1) SeekOut’s evolution from LLM-powered workflows to the launch of SeekOut Spot, their agentic AI solution that…

1
Unscripted: What Happened After the Mic Went Off with Douwe Kiela 10:04

1M ago10:04

10:04

This bonus episode of Founded & Funded is a follow-up to Madrona Partner Jon Turow's conversation with Douwe Kiela, CEO of Contextual AI and co-inventor of RAG. In this quick chat, they dive into: 1) Why storytelling—not just GTM—needs to be vertical2) How to build a platform by showing what’s possible3) The tension between “doing one thing well” v…

1
AI, Ambition, and a $3 Trillion Vision: Satya Nadella on Microsoft’s Bold Bet 31:34

2M ago31:34

31:34

Microsoft Chairman & CEO Satya Nadella sat down with Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar at Madrona’s 2025 Annual Meeting to discuss the key inflection points in his leadership journey, Microsoft’s AI strategy, and the massive economic impact AI will have on the world. From redefining company culture to betting big on AI and OpenAI,Satya shar…

1
RAG Inventor Talks Agents, Grounded AI, and Enterprise Impact 45:26

2M ago45:26

45:26

What does it take to invent a foundational AI paradigm — and then build a company to bring it to the enterprise? In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Jon Turow sits down with Douwe Kiela, co-founder and CEO of Contextual AI and the co-inventor of RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation). They dive into the origins of RAG, its misunderst…

1
Dropzone’s Edward Wu on Solving Security’s Biggest Bottleneck 36:14

3M ago36:14

36:14

The security industry has a math problem: 12 million job postings, only 7 million qualified professionals. The solution? AI. Edward Wu spent nearly a decade at ExtraHop, pioneering AI-driven security detection. But instead of just alerting security teams about potential threats, he saw a bigger opportunity — what if AI could act as an actual securi…

1
Gen AI Series: Gen AI in Security, Sumedh Barde, Chief Product Officer, Simbian 1:01:07

3M ago1:01:07

1:01:07

Learn about Simbian, an AI security company. Simbian is the first security company to accelerate security by empowering every member of a security team, from the C-Suite to frontline practitioners, to craft tailored insights and workflows for their unique security needs - ranging from complex investigation and response to governance and reporting. …

1
AI+Data in the Enterprise: Lessons from Mosaic to Databricks 47:18

3M ago47:18

47:18

The biggest AI breakthroughs won’t come from Ph.D. labs — they’ll come from people solving real-world problems. So how do AI founders actually turn cutting-edge research into real products and scale them? In this week’s episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Jon Turow sat down with Jonathan Frankle, Chief AI Scientist at Databricks to talk ab…

1
Scaling, AI, and Leadership after Big Tech: Lessons from Highspot's Bhrighu Sareen 51:16

4M ago51:16

51:16

Thinking about leaving Big Tech for a startup? In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter sits down with Bhrighu Sareen, who took the leap from Microsoft to Highspot and has been leading AI-driven product innovation ever since. They talk about the realities of transitioning from a massive company to a high-growth star…

1
Serial Entrepreneur Mohit Aron on Founding, Scaling, and Leading Category-Leading Companies 36:45

4M ago36:45

36:45

What does it take to go from engineer to founder, from startup CEO to scale CEO? In this special live episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru sits down with Mohit Aron, founder of Nutanix and Cohesity, to uncover the lessons behind his success. Mohit shares his unique hiring strategy, how to identify product-market fit…

1
2025 Investment Outlook Panel - In the age of AI 1:10:06

4M ago1:10:06

1:10:06

Listen to our 2025 Annual Investment Outlook Panel with four top VCs based in Seattle and the Bay area. Get their perspective on the investment climate in 2025 and their plans to invest specifically in AI-based startups. See how they did with their 2024 forecast and what their big predictions are for 2025. Tim Porter, Managing Director, Madrona Ven…

1
Terray’s Jacob Berlin on The AI-Powered Future of Medicine 44:04

5M ago44:04

44:04

Terray Therapeutics CEO Jacob Berlin returns to Founded & Funded after three years to share how the company has scaled from an ambitious startup to an industry leader in AI-driven biotech. Learn how Terray's proprietary hardware combined with the world's largest chemistry data set is powering new discoveries in small molecule drug development. Jaco…

1
Gen AI Series - The AI agent redefining travel: Managing Director Mike Fridgen, Madrona Venture Labs 43:33

5M ago43:33

43:33

Learn about the founding of Otto from Mike Fridgen, the Managing Director of Madrona Venture Labs where this concept was incubated. Otto is your personal AI travel agent that seeks to be as valuable and insightful as a dedicated personal assistant. Otto offers enterprise-grade travel booking and servicing capabilities through an easy-to-use AI trav…

1
Curt Medeiros on Revolutionizing Precision Medicine and Scaling Ovation 37:07

5M ago37:07

37:07

Imagine a future where healthcare isn’t just reactive but deeply personalized — where every patient gets the right treatment at the right time based on a precise understanding of their biology. This is the future Ovation is building, and on this week’s Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Chris Picardo dives into it all with Ovation CEO Curt Medeiros.…

1
Best of 2024: From Startup to Exit 1:04:04

5M ago1:04:04

1:04:04

2024 has been an incredible year for TiE Seattle’s From Startup to Exit podcast – featuring inspiring conversations with entrepreneurial leaders, innovators, and changemakers. As the year ends, we’re excited to share the Top 4 Episodes of 2024 that you don’t want to miss! The Founding of OfferUp - Nick Huzar: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2234096/epis…

1
Breaking Conventional Wisdom: Jama Software's Blueprint for Profitable Growth 29:53

6M ago29:53

29:53

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter and Jama Software CEO Marc Osofsky discuss the intentional strategies that fueled Jama’s transformation from $20M ARR to a $1.2 billion acquisition by Francisco Partners. Marc shares his blueprint for scaling with purpose, challenging conventional wisdom, and embedding effici…

1
Founding Smartsheet and its vision: Conversation w/ Praerit Garg, President of Product & Innovation 55:31

6M ago55:31

55:31

Smartsheet is a major success story for the Seattle Tech ecosystem. Smartsheet was founded in 2005 as a workplace management system based on a spreadsheet style architecture. In this episode, Praerit Garg (PG) talks about the early product vision for Smartsheet. How, unlike dedicated product management tools like Asana, Smartsheet is very flexible …

1
Archon's Jamie Lazarovits on Unlocking the Full Power of Antibodies With AI 40:38

7M ago40:38

40:38

What does it take to move from cutting-edge academic research to launching a biotech company that could transform medicine? In this week’s episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Chris Picardo sat down with Jamie Lazarovitz, CEO and co-founder of Archon Biosciences, to uncover the story behind their groundbreaking protein-based biologics and t…

1
Gen AI Series: Legalities of scraping data to build LLMs, a conversation w/ Adam Shevell, partner at Wilson Sonsini 45:12

7M ago45:12

45:12

Many of the large language model providers have built their LLM models by scraping data from websites and open source sites. Some have licensed the content like Open AI has done with Reddit. Nonetheless, many of these LLM providers have been sued for illegally copying data for which they have no permission. In this podcast, Adam shares his thoughts…

1
Beyond the Model: Taking AI From Prototype to Production with Unstructured’s Brian Raymond 23:03

7M ago23:03

23:03

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru hosts Brian Raymond, founder and CEO of 2024 IA40 winner Unstructured. Unstructured turns raw, messy, unstructured data into something AI tools can actually process — a typically expensive and time-consuming process for companies hoping to save money with the tools themse…

1
Perseverance Over Speed: Creating a New Category with Impinj's Chris Diorio 40:21

8M ago40:21

40:21

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter and Venture Partner Patrick Ennis host Chris Diorio, co-founder and CEO of Impinj, the pioneer and world leader in RFID technology. Patrick and Chris have known each other for more than 24 years — since Madrona and ARCH Venture Partners co-led Impinj's first round of financin…

1
How Louisiana is driving innovation, A Conversation with Josh Fleig, CIO for the State of Louisiana 54:43

8M ago54:43

54:43

You may not think of the State of Louisiana as a software innovation hub but it is doing a lot to attract startups to its state. It has a $100 million seed capital fund to match VC investment dollar for dollar. It is willing to rebate 25% of your software development dollars for software development done in its state. It is also providing sales tax…

1
Startup to Scale: A Mini Masterclass in Efficient Growth and GTM 43:15

9M ago43:15

43:15

In the latest episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter hosts Pradeep Rathinam, a seasoned software executive with over three decades of leadership experience. Paddy was the Founder and CEO of Madrona portfolio company AnswerIQ, which Madrona invested in back in 2017. It was one of the early machine learning applied to SaaS …

1
Moderating foreign accents using AI, A Conversation with Soundwave team, winners of the TiE Young Entrepreneur competition 33:31

9M ago33:31

33:31

These days you will often call into customer service for a company whose product you are using and will be connected to an agent with a foreign accent. For many Americans, this can be a challenging experience as they cannot understand what the agent is saying because of their accent. Foreign agents have also complained that it can be a dehumanizing…

1
From Dark Matter to Voice AI with Deepgram Founder Scott Stephenson 31:20

9M ago31:20

31:20

Today Madrona Managing Director Karan Mahandru and Scott Stephenson, Co-Founder and CEO of Deepgram, a foundational AI company building a voice AI platform providing APIs for speech-to-text and text-to-speech. From medical transcription to autonomous agents, Deepgram is the go-to for developers of voice AI experiences, and they're already working w…

1
Gen AI Series: Using Gen AI in a startup environment, A conversation with Jay Bartot of Madrona Venture Labs 59:48

10M ago59:48

59:48

On our one year anniversary, we are releasing this terrific episode with Jay Bartot, partner at Madrona Venture Labs (MVL). Jay talks about the model that MVL uses to work with startup founders and vet startup ideas. Like many technology entrepreneurs, over the last 18 months, Jay has been deeply immersed in Generative AI technology, building exper…

1
Temporal Founders Bet on Open Source and Developers to Enable Invincible Applications 35:27

10M ago35:27

35:27

Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar hosts Temporal Co-Founders Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev in studio. Temporal was founded in 2019 based on an open-source microservices orchestration engine project but is the result of a more than decade-long partnership between the two co-founders that spanned their time working on different iterations of th…

1
Gen AI Series: Developer Joy through Generative AI. A conversation with Rajeev Rajan, CTO at Atlassian 49:24

10M ago49:24

49:24

Rajeev embarked on his career at Microsoft as a developer after a sabbatical from his Ph.D. to build upon his internship experience in Seattle the previous summer. In this episode, he delves into how his journey and interactions with various leaders have influenced his own leadership style as the CTO of Atlassian. The theme of ‘Developer Joy’ has r…

1
Investor Spotlight: Chris Picardo on Cross-Disciplinary Innovation and Finding Unique Founders 16:47

10M ago16:47

16:47

In this episode of Founded & Funded, host Coral Garnick Ducken interviews Madrona Partner Chris Picardo for the latest Investor Spotlight. With degrees in math and English, Chris shares his unique journey into venture capital. Chris highlights the importance of cross-disciplinary skills in understanding and communicating complex concepts and what h…

1
Transforming TV Advertising: iSpot’s Sean Muller on the Role of AI and the Future of Streaming 34:13

11M ago34:13

34:13

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Venture Partner Len Jordan sits down with Sean Muller, Founder and CEO of iSpot, to talk about the company's evolution in measuring TV advertising for both conventional and streaming platforms. Sean delves into strategic partnerships, acquisitions, and the rise of ad-supported streaming. They discuss the…

1
Gen AI Series: Gen AI from a VC perspective, A conversation with Vivek Ramaswami from Madrona Ventures 52:51

11M ago52:51

52:51

Generative AI has taken the industry by storm as we all know. Besides Open AI. a number of players like Meta, Google and Anthropic have announced new foundation models. In this episode, we get Vivek's perspective of the competitive landscape and how it will likely evolve. Will open source models start to match Open AI's GPT 4o in terms of capabilit…

1
Investor Spotlight: Sabrina Wu on Founder Grit, Authenticity, and Building Intelligent Applications 11:26

11M ago11:26

11:26

In this episode of Founded & Funded, host Coral Garnick Ducken interviews Madrona Investor Sabrina Wu for the latest Investor Spotlight. These two discuss Sabrina's transition from private equity to venture capital and the learnings that translate to building successful VC-backed startups, Sabrina’s focus on intelligent applications, and the charac…

1
Building Predibase: AI, Open-Source, and Commercialization with Dev Rishi and Travis Addair 41:46

12M ago41:46

41:46

Madrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami hosts Dev Rishi and Travis Addair, co-founders of 2023 IA40 Rising Star, Predibase. Predibase is a platform for developers to easily fine-tune and serve any open-source model. They recently released LoRA Land, a collection of 25 highly-performant open-source fine-tuned models, and launched open-source LoRA eXchange, …

1
Gen AI Series: Ensuring Data Transparency for Gen AI models. A Conversation with Jai Jaisimha and Rob Eleveld, The Transparency Coalition 59:05

12M ago59:05

59:05

Artificial intelligence has the potential to be a powerful tool for human progress if properly trained, harnessed, and deployed. Policies must be created to protect personal privacy, nurture innovation, and foster prosperity. The Transparency Coalition (https://www.transparencycoalition.ai/). a non-profit, is focused on creating tools, systems, and…

1
Read AI's David Shim on Making Meetings More Efficient With Intelligent Agents 37:47

1y ago37:47

37:47

In this episode, Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain hosts David Shim, founder and CEO of Read AI. These two have known each other for over two decades, having worked together at Farecast and then Placed, which David founded in 2011. They came together again in 2021, when David started Read AI, which delivers AI solutions that make meetings, em…

1
Transforming Corporate Travel: A Conversation With Steve Singh and Christal Bemont 26:02

1y ago26:02

26:02

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Steve Singh and Christal Bemont, CEO of Direct Travel, Madrona's newest portfolio company, delve into the acquisition of Direct Travel and its pivotal role in revolutionizing the $1.4T corporate travel ecosystem, along with @Spotnana , Troop, and Center. Full Transcript: https://bit.ly/…

1
Gen AI Series: Gen AI in the Enterprise with iCertis, a conversation with Sudarshan Chitre, SVP Product 57:00

1y ago57:00

57:00

Enterprise SaaS solutions are rapidly adopting Gen AI technology to solve business problems. Learn about iCertis, a leader in Contract Lifecycle Management and how they are deploying Gen AI technology to offer a number of CoPilots to allow enterprises to gain intelligent insights into their contracts and to perform risk assessments. Sudarshan Chitr…

1
Building a Modern Database: Nikita Shamgunov on Postgres and Beyond 31:01

1y ago31:01

31:01

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Investor Paul Goel and Neon Co-founder & CEO Nikita Shamgunov dive into the database market and the importance of creating a killer developer experience while balancing that experience with performance and reliability. Nikita also shares just how bullish he is on AI, his excitement for AI agents like Dev…

1
Gen AI Series: The past, present and future of Gen AI with leading industry expert Joseph Sirosh - ex- VP Amazon and Microsoft 1:09:35

1y ago1:09:35

1:09:35

2023 was a dramatic year for AI with the emergence of Gen AI and ChapGPT. Learn about the evolution of Generative AI from industry leader and expert Joseph Sirosh. Understand how enterprises will deploy Gen AI technology to make their workers more productive. Learn about how Joseph's new company CreatorsAGI will leverage Gen AI to enable creators a…

1
How Bobsled is Revolutionizing Cross-Cloud Data Sharing 33:23

1y ago33:23

33:23

Investor Sabrina Wu hosts Bobsled Co-founder and CEO Jake Graham for the latest episode of Founded & Funded. Jake is revolutionizing data sharing across platforms, enabling customers to get to analysis faster directly in the platforms where they work. Madrona co-led Bobsled's $17 million series A last year, which put the company at an $87 million v…

1
How Writer CEO May Habib Is Making GenAI Work For the Enterprise 27:52

1y ago27:52

27:52

Madrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami hosts May Habib, co-founder and CEO of Writer, a 2023 IA40 winner. Writer is a full-stack generative AI platform for the enterprise. In this episode, May shares her perspective on founding a GenAI company before the ChatGPT craze, building an enterprise-grade product and go-to-market motion with 200% NRR, whether RAG…

1
Investor Spotlight: A Conversation with Madrona’s Soma Somasegar 13:43

1+ y ago13:43

13:43

Hear from Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar as he discusses his path to venture capital by way of 27 years at Microsoft. He shares invaluable insights about what he looks for in a founder, the importance of passion in founders, the state of cloud technology, and the future of AI and Startups. Tim also shares Madrona's core principles, his fa…

1
Dust Founders Bet Foundation Models Will Change How Companies Work 36:46

1+ y ago36:46

36:46

Madrona Partner Jon Turow hosts Gabriel Hubert and Stan Polu, the co-founders of a 2023 IA40 winner, Dust, which enables information workers to create LLM-based agents that help them do their own work more efficiently. They discuss the broader AI/LLM ecosystem, the merits and potential of horizontal vs vertical solutions, limitations of AI assistan…

1
Gen AI Series: From B2B to B2C and Gen AI, a conversation with Seattle serial entrepreneur Vikram Chalana 44:05

1+ y ago44:05

44:05

Follow the journey of Vikram Chalana, a Seattle based entrepreneur who started his entrepreneurial journey with an enterprise product called Win Shuttle that allowed MS Excel users to exchange data with SAP. He grew the company to significant revenues and ultimately sold the company to a Private Equity firm. More recently, he has started a Gen AI c…

1
2024 Annual Investment Outlook 1:04:10

1+ y ago1:04:10

1:04:10

Listen to our 2024 Annual Investment Outlook Panel with four top VCs based in Seattle and the Bay area. Get their perspective on the investment climate in 2024 and their plans to invest specifically in AI/ML based startups. Tim Porter, Managing Director, Madrona Ventures Tim joined Madrona in 2006 and invests in B2B software companies in the Pacifi…

1
From Creating Kubernetes to Founding Stacklok: Open-Source and Security with Craig McLuckie 34:20

1+ y ago34:20

34:20

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter talks to Craig McLuckie, who’s most known as one of the creators of Kubernetes at Google. Madrona previously backed Craig’s company, Heptio, and was excited to back his latest company — Stacklok. Stacklok is a software supply chain security company that helps developers and o…

1
The Evolution of Enterprise AI: A Conversation with Arvind Jain 30:07

1+ y ago30:07

30:07

Madrona Investor Palak Goel talks with Arvind Jain, founder and CEO of Glean, which has raised about $155M since launching in 2019 and was named a 2023 IA40 winner. It should be no surprise that Glean is touted as the search engine for the enterprise because Arvind spent over a decade at Google as a distinguished engineer, where he led teams in Goo…

1
Special Holiday Episode: Fireside Chat with Sunny Gurpreet Singh 42:33

1+ y ago42:33

42:33

Enjoy this exclusive Fireside Chat with Sunny Gurpreet Singh, Founder of Roundglass, moderated by Akhtar Badshah. Sunny Gurpreet Singh is an entrepreneur and philanthropist based in Seattle, US. He is the founder of Roundglass, a global Wholistic Wellbeing organization established in 2014. Through his experience in the US healthcare system, Sunny r…

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