Best Founderjourney Podcasts (2024)

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

8d 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
Read AI's David Shim on Making Meetings More Efficient With Intelligent Agents 37:47

22d 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

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

2M 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
How Bobsled is Revolutionizing Cross-Cloud Data Sharing 33:23

3M 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

4M 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

4M 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

4M 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
From Creating Kubernetes to Founding Stacklok: Open-Source and Security with Craig McLuckie 34:20

5M 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

5M 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
Investor Spotlight: A Conversation with Madrona’s Tim Porter 17:19

6M ago17:19

17:19

Hear from Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter as he discusses his path to venture capital by way of mechanical engineering and Microsoft. He shares invaluable insights about what he looks for in a founder, the importance of customer focus, and the high priority he places on integrity. Tim also shares Madrona's core principles, his favorite books f…

1
Navigating the Dynamics of Startup Boards: Managing Disagreements & Effective Governance 16:08

7M ago16:08

16:08

In this episode, Madrona Managing Director S. Somasegar and General Counsel Joanna Black discuss the fundamental role of a board in a startup's growth and development. They touch upon the importance of aligning strategic views with board members, managing disagreements, and effective governance to ensure that the organization is run efficiently. Th…

1
Karan Mehandru & Anna Baird on Go-To-Market Strategy, and Navigating Sales, Growth, and Leadership 27:48

7M ago27:48

27:48

This week, Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru hosts Madrona Operating Partner Anna Baird. The operating partner role is a new one for Madrona, and we're excited to have her on the team to advise our founders. Before transitioning to board positions in the last couple of years, Anna was most recently the CRO at Outreach. Before that, she was t…

1
Tigera CEO Ratan Tipirneni On Commercializing Open Source 26:15

8M ago26:15

26:15

Madrona Partner Aseem Datar hosts Tigera CEO Ratan Tipirneni. Tigera is in the business of preventing and detecting security breaches in cloud-native applications, and its open-source offering Calico is one of the most widely adopted container networking and security solutions out there. Aseem and Ratan dive into whether or not you should open sour…

1
Founded & Funded Investor Spotlight with Maria Gilfoyle 11:02

8M ago11:02

11:02

Get to know Madrona Investor Maria Gilfoyle. Learn how she pivoted from wanting to become an artist into venture capital, her design-first mindset focus, what she looks for in founders, and what she enjoys doing outside the office.By Madrona

1
Troop Travel Founders on the Startup Journey and Relationships That Matter 33:35

9M ago33:35

33:35

Today, managing director Steve Singh sits down with Troop Travel Co-founders Dennis Vilovic and Leonard Cremer. Madrona invested in Troop and its corporate travel meeting management platform in 2021. These three talk about looking for the right problem to solve, to launch a company, and how you decide if it's the right time. They also discuss when …

1
Investor Spotlight with Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru 18:16

9M ago18:16

18:16

Get to know Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru. Learn what drew him to venture capital and working with founders, what he looks for in founders, what he thinks founders should look for in VC partners, and what he enjoys doing outside the office. (00:00:00) Introduction (00:01:00) Madrona Managing Partner Karan Mehandru's background (00:01:33)…

1
Statsig Founder Vijaye Raji on Product Building, Launching a Startup, and AI 35:35

9M ago35:35

35:35

Today, Madrona Managing Director S. Somasegar talks with Statsig founder and CEO Vijaye Raji, who spent 20 years at Microsoft and Facebook before launching Statsig as a way to bring the powerful tools he was used to using inside Facebook to all builders. Statsig experimentation platform and automated AB testing helps companies make product decision…

1
NYSE's Lynn Martin on Capital Markets, IPOs, and the Role AI Is Playing in the Markets 31:01

9M ago31:01

31:01

In this week's episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain hosts NYSE Group President Lynn Martin ahead of our Intelligent Applications Summit on October 10th and 11th. Lynn will be speaking at the Summit, but we thought it would be great to have her on the show to talk more about her background, the NYSE, capital markets, …

1
Chroma's Jeff Huber on Vector Databases and Getting AI into Production 39:08

10M ago39:08

39:08

This week, Vivek Ramaswami talks with Chroma Co-founder and CEO Jeff Huber. Chroma is an open-source vector database, and vector databases have taken the AI world by storm recently, with Chroma quickly emerging as one of the leading offerings in the space. Jeff's background is in machine learning, and for him and his co-founder, starting Chroma was…

1
Cohere's Ivan Zhang on Foundation Models, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, and Feedback Loops 21:51

10M ago21:51

21:51

In this episode, Madrona Partner Jon Turow and Cohere CTO and Co-founder Ivan Zhang dive into the world of foundation models for the enterprise. Cohere was founded in 2019 — a time when even the most passionate believers did not realize how soon the world would be struck by the capabilities of foundation models. The company announced a $270 million…

1
Data Visionary Bob Muglia on Data, AI, and New Book — 'The Datapreneurs' 34:34

11M ago34:34

34:34

This week we have the pleasure of having former Snowflake CEO Bob Muglia on the show again. Bob is an active investor and sits on the boards of many next-generation data platform companies, and more recently, he launched his first book — "The Datapreneurs." Given the long history between Bob and Madrona Managing Partner Soma, we had to have Bob joi…

1
Google's James Phillips and Former Tableau CEO Mark Nelson on PLG and Scaling in the Face of Stiff Competition 37:49

11M ago37:49

37:49

This week, investor Aseem Datar is possibly making app dev and product development history with his guests. We've got former Tableau CEO Mark Nelson and James Phillips, the former president of Microsoft who drove the creation of many of the company's most successful products, including, of course, Tableau's number one competitor — Power BI. James w…

1
Typeface Founder Abhay Parasnis on Shaping Enterprise GenAI Strategy 42:07

12M ago42:07

42:07

In this episode, Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar talks with Typeface Founder and CEO Abhay Parasnis. Typeface combines generative AI platforms with its own brand-personalized AI, so all businesses can create content that is multimodal and on-brand. Typeface just announced $100 million in new funding, and Madrona couldn’t have been happier …

1
Founded & Funded Investor Spotlight with Vivek Ramaswami 15:19

12M ago15:19

15:19

Get to know Madrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami. Learn what drew him to venture capital and working with founders, what he looks for in founders, where he focuses, and what he enjoys doing outside the office. (00:00:00) Introduction (00:00:15) Vivek Ramaswami’s background (00:00:55) Why venture capital (00:02:47) What Vivek looks for in founders (00:04…

1
Airtable's Howie Liu on Product-Led Growth & Embedding a 'Little LLM Brain' in Every Cell 35:37

1y ago35:37

35:37

In this week's IA40 spotlight episode of Founded & Funded, Investor Sabrina Wu talks with Airtable Co-founder and CEO Howie Liu. Airtable is a low-code platform that enables teams to easily build workflows that modernize their business processes. The company launched in 2012 and has been on a product-led journey since then. Last year, Airtable rank…

1
Numbers Station Founders on Applying Foundation Models to Data Wrangling 35:26

1y ago35:26

35:26

This week, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter talks to Numbers Station Co-founders Chris Aberger and Ines Chami. We announced our investment in Numbers Station’s $17.5M Series A in March and are very excited about the work they’re doing with foundation models, which is very different than what has been making headlines this year. It isn’t content…

1
Investor Spotlight with Jon Turow 9:38

1y ago9:38

9:38

Get to know Madrona Partner Jon Turow. Learn why he got into VC, what he looks for in founders, where the opportunities lay for founders when it comes to generative AI, and what he enjoys doing outside the office. (00:00:00) Introduction (00:00:39) Jon Turow's background (00:01:19) Why venture capital (00:02:27) Why Madrona (00:03:20) Opportunities…

1
Panther Labs Founder Jack Naglieri on Cloud-Native SIEM and Self-Growth 35:37

1y ago35:37

35:37

This week on Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami talks to Jack Naglieri, Founder and CEO of 2022 IA40 winner Panther Labs. Jack founded Panther, a leading cloud-native security information and event management platform, because he had experienced first-hand the threat detection challenges companies have at cloud scale. Growing frustra…

1
MotherDuck's Jordan Tigani and DuckDB's Hannes Mühleisen on partnerships and commercializing open-source projects 30:37

1y ago30:37

30:37

This week, Madrona Partner Jon Turow brings us a story about a great partnership forming between two people, who had never even met, when they each find themselves on a mission to focus on what it is they do best. You’ll hear from Hannes Mühleisen, creator of the DuckDB open-source project, and Jordan Tigani, the database leader who saw an opportun…

1
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke on Generative AI-powered Developer Experiences 23:03

1y ago23:03

23:03

Today we have the pleasure of hosting GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke! He and Madrona Partner Aseem Datar talk about how Thomas got into working with computers and coding and the work he's been doing since becoming GitHub CEO in November 2021, including the recent launch of Copilot X. But these two discuss so much more, including the rise of generative AI…

1
IA40 Spotlight: Credo AI's Navrina Singh on ‘AI-First, Ethics Forward’ Responsible AI 43:11

1y ago43:11

43:11

In this week’s IA40 Spotlight Episode, Madrona Investor Sabrina Wu talks with Credo AI Founder and CEO Navrina Singh. Founded in 2020, Credo’s intelligent responsible AI governance platform helps companies minimize AI-related risk by ensuring their AI is fair, compliant, secure, auditable, and human-centered. The company announced a $12.8M Series A…

1
Acquired Hosts Ben and David on Getting Started at Madrona and Tom Alberg’s Legacy 37:24

1y ago37:24

37:24

This week, we’re excited to release a special live episode recorded during the community event portion of the Madrona 2023 annual meeting. Managing Director Matt McIlwain talks with Madrona Alumni and Acquired Podcast Hosts Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. The three reflect on Acquired episode No. 28, which dove into the Amazon IPO with the late Ma…

1
Common Room's Viraj Mody on Building Community, Foundation Models and Being Relentless 29:16

1+ y ago29:16

29:16

Madrona Managing Director Soma dives into the world of intelligent applications and generative AI with Common Room Co-founder and CTO Viraj Mody. Madrona first invested in Common Room in 2020 — and we had the pleasure of having the founders join us on Founded & Funded the following year. Common Room is an intelligent community growth platform that …

1
Investor Spotlight with Matt McIlwain 13:25

1+ y ago13:25

13:25

Get to know Madrona Managing Partner Matt McIlwain. Learn where he gets his spark to work with entrepreneurs, what he looks for in founders, where the opportunities lay for founders when it comes to generative AI, and what he enjoys doing outside the office.By Madrona

1
Leaf Logistics CEO Anshu Prasad on Applying AI to Freight and Transportation Logistics 35:54

1+ y ago35:54

35:54

In this episode of Founded & Funded, partner Aseem Datar talks with Leaf Logistics Co-founder and CEO Anshu Prasad. Leaf is applying AI to the complexities of the freight and transportation industry, connecting shippers, carriers, and partners to better plan, coordinate, and schedule transportation logistics. This enables network efficiencies and u…

1
Lexion's Gaurav Oberoi on Applying AI to Change an Industry 39:08

1+ y ago39:08

39:08

In this week's IA40 Spotlight Episode of Founded & Funded, Investor Elisa La Cava talks to Lexion Co-founder and CEO Gaurav Oberoi. Lexion was one of the first spinouts from AI2, and Madrona invested in the first round the company raised in 2019. Like many companies that come from AI2 – Lexion is focused on applying AI to change an industry. Specif…

1
Magnify's Josh Crossman on Incubating a Startup and Bringing AI to the Customer Experience 27:37

1+ y ago27:37

27:37

In this episode, investor Elisa La Cava talks with Josh Crossman, CEO of Magnify, which was incubated at Madrona Venture Labs. Josh was actually recruited by Madrona Venture Labs to help launch a business that would bring AI to the customer experience. He was quickly persuaded and signed on in 2021, spinning out of MVL in less than three months wit…

1
IA40 Spotlight: A-Alpha Bio's David Younger on machine learning in biotech, building cross-functional teams 32:03

1+ y ago32:03

32:03

This week on Founded & Funded, Partner Chris Picardo is talking with A-Alpha Bio Co-founder and CEO David Younger for our first Intelligent Application 40 Spotlight episode of 2023. We announced the 2022 IA40 winners in October, and A-Alpha was the first biotech company to make the list, which was no surprise to us. As one of our portfolio companie…

1
IA40 Spotlight: dbt Labs Founder Tristan Handy on the modern data stack, partnerships, and creating community 37:32

1+ y ago37:32

37:32

In this week's IA40 Spotlight episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona partner Jon Turow talks with dbt Labs Founder and CEO Tristan Handy. Here at Madrona, we just announced our 2022 IA40, and dbt Labs is one of our two-time winners. The company has positioned itself as the industry standard for data transformation in the cloud, and it raised $222 mil…

1
Data Visionary Bob Muglia on the Modern Data Stack and Lessons from Snowflake 43:11

1+ y ago43:11

43:11

In this week's episode which is leading up to our Intelligent Applications Summit on November 2nd, Soma speaks with Bob Muglia. Bob has thought deeply about the Modern Data Stack and they speak about it here - what is needed in the data stack to enable Intelligent Applications (or data driven apps as Bob calls them) and the opportunities for new co…

1
IA40 Spotlight: Fivetran CEO George Fraser on Data Replication and Connectors 33:42

1+ y ago33:42

33:42

This week Madrona Investor Sabrina Wu talks with Fivetran Co-founder and CEO George Fraser. Fivetran is fundamentally a data replication company — that’s how George explains it. But the company actually started out trying to solve a completely different problem when it was founded in 2012 and pivoted to strictly data integration in 2015 after multi…

1
Stack Co-Founder and CEO Will Rush on Teen Crypto Investing 30:24

1+ y ago30:24

30:24

This week, Investor Aseem Datar is talking with Will Rush, co-founder and CEO of Stack, a teen crypto platform to educate a young crypto-curious generation — and their parents — about responsible investing. After working at a company, building a banking app for teens, Will took his decade-long experience in securities and finance and applied it to …

1
Battlesnake Founder Brad Van Vugt on Creating Community Through Programming Competitions 33:31

2y ago33:31

33:31

This week, Investor Maria Gilfoyle talks to Brad Van Vugt, founder and CEO of Battlesnake, a multiplayer programming game for experienced web developers where your code is your controller. Battlesnake builds games for programmers that encourage self-directed learning and are challenging to master. In this episode, Maria and Brad dive into where the…

1
IA40 Spotlight: Tesorio Co-founders Carlos Vega and Fabio Fleitas on Automating Accounts Receivable 36:55

2y ago36:55

36:55

In this IA40 spotlight episode, Managing Director Hope Cochran talks with Tesorio Co-founders Carlos Vega and Fabio Fleitas about getting finance teams out of the world of manual, error-prone and inefficient spreadsheets and equipping them with intelligent applications more common in other parts of a company. That’s where Tesorio comes in — they of…

1
IA40 Spotlight: Cresta Co-founder and CEO Zayd Enam on Using AI to Empower People to be More Productive 30:30

2y ago30:30

30:30

We've all struggled with call center experiences. Madrona's Ishani Ummat talks with Cresta Co-founder and CEO Zayd Enam about the unique angle Cresta takes to leverage AI to drive a better customer experience in real time. The two dive into the important topic of how AI can be used to help empower people to be more productive. we hear the story of …

1
CommerceIQ's Guru Hariharan on Pivoting When You're in the Wrong Market 28:45

2y ago28:45

28:45

In this episode of Founded and Funded, Managing Director Scott Jacobson is talking with CommerceIQ CEO Guru Hariharan. CommerceIQ is a retail e-commerce management platform that automates and unifies category analytics, retail media management, and sales and operations all under one roof. The company secured $115 million in funding in March and jus…

1
Top Tier's David York on Limited Partners, Market Conditions 32:21

2y ago32:21

32:21

In this episode of Founded and Funded, we stray a little from our typical format to answer some questions that often come up in discussions between founders and our investors. Madrona Managing Director Matt McILwain talks with one of our Limited Partners — or the partners of ours that are not the day-to-day investors — Top Tier Capital Partners Fou…

1
Sila Co-founder and CEO Shamir Karkal on Crypto and Web3 25:41

2y ago25:41

25:41

In this episode of Founded and Funded, Madrona Partner Chris Picardo dives into the world of crypto and Web3 with Sila Co-Founder and CEO Shamir Karkal. Sila is a FinTech platform that provides payment infrastructure as a service and sits at the intersection of crypto rails and traditional financial services infrastructure — because as much as some…

1
IA40 Winner Spotlight: Snorkel Co-founder Alex Ratner on data-centric AI, culture, and 'one of the most historic opportunities for growth in AI' 39:20

2y ago39:20

39:20

In this episode of Founded and Funded, we spotlight IIA40 winner Snorkel AI. Managing Director Tim Porter not only talks with Snorkel Co-founder and CEO Alex Ratner all about data-centric AI and programmatic data labeling and development, but they also dive into the importance of culture — especially now — and how to take advantage of what Alex cal…

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