Listen to conversations between Madrona investors and entrepreneurs, founders, and startup personalities who talk about some of the key moments in building a company. Designed to give would-be founders and others interested in working with or for startups a view into the struggle and the lessons learned, these conversations are informal and informative. With more than 25 years of investing in early-stage technology companies, Madrona has worked with founders from day one to help build their ...
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Founderjourney Podcasts
The Chronicle is a podcast about stories, creativity, and the incredible journey of childhood literacy—from the very first book a parent shares with their child to the moment a young reader discovers the magic of storytelling for themselves. Hosted by Charles "Dave" Jameson, founder of Chronicle Creations and creator of Dreambook, this show blends research-based insights into children’s development with real-life reflections on building an educational startup. Join Dave as he navigates the u ...
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Tired of startup hype? So are we. Ranked in the top 2.5% of podcasts globally and a top 5 startup podcast in Europe, Founded & Grounded gives unseen founders the mic, where real stories rise above the noise. Our unique 3-part format blends founder interviews, co-host reflections, and actionable takeaways you can use right now. We go beyond the highlight reel to explore the human, unvarnished side of building a business, from emotional well-being strategies to exploring the paradoxes of entre ...
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🎙️ The First Stage Show | Where Music Meets Entrepreneurship 🎸💼 Welcome to The First Stage Show — the podcast for musician entrepreneurs, early-stage founders, and creative rebels grinding through the messy middle of building something great. Whether you’re playing dive bars for gas money, launching your first offer, or bootstrapping your dream with nothing but belief and duct tape — this is your stage. We talk: 🎤 The gigs nobody sees 💡 The business moves behind the music 🧱 The brick-by-bric ...
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Autonomous CRM: How Clarify Is Reinventing a $100B Category
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36:11Thompson and Austin Hay, co-founders of Clarify, the startup that’s pioneering the idea of autonomous CRM. Their vision? A CRM that actually does the work for sellers of driving outreach, managing pipeline, and surfacing insights without constant manual input. Patrick and Austin share: • Their journey from Iteratively, Ramp, and Amplitude to foundi…
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Bridging Strategy and Startups: Madrona Investor Rolanda Fu’s Story
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16:35In this Investor Spotlight episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona’s Coral Ducken sits down with Investor Rolanda Fu to explore her journey to VC — from playing violin at weddings to advising startups in Chicago. Rolanda shares what drew her back to Seattle and Madrona, how her generalist background helps her spot strong founders across sectors, and w…
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Can Stories Make Kids Kinder? The Science Behind Reading and Empathy | The Chronicle Podcast Ep.4
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45:58In this episode, we explore the surprising power of storytime to shape who children become. Grounded in rigorous research from Mar, Lee, Larsen, and Chen, we unpack how reading storybooks to children aged 3 to 8 can measurably boost empathy, honesty, and kindness. Through clever experiments — from broccoli vs. cookie mind games to sticker-sharing c…
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V0's Creator on What's Next for AI Dev Tools
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35:17In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami sits down with Jared Palmer — designer, developer, and founder of Turborepo (acquired by Vercel), and former VP of AI at Vercel. Jared walks through his unique path from Goldman Sachs to Vercel, and how he combined finance, design, and engineering to create beloved developer tools…
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Why Boys Struggle With Reading — And What the Science Says We Can Do About It | Chronicle Podcast Ep.3
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52:04In this episode, I explore why boys struggle with reading from an early age and what we can do to help. I unpack the science behind the gender gap, from brain development to classroom expectations, and share practical, research-backed strategies for parents and educators. We’ll cover phonics, movement-based learning, reading role models, screen tim…
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Engineering in the AI Era: Qodo Founder on the AI-Powered SDLC
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35:14In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Investor Rolanda Fu is joined by Dedy Kredo, the co-founder and chief product officer of QodoAI — formerly CodiumAI, a 2024 IA40 winner and one of the most exciting AI companies shaping the future of software development. Dedy and his co-founder, Itamar, are entrepreneurs who have spent their careers bui…
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Wise Beyond Their Years: How Reading Nurtures Children's Empathy | Chronicle Podcast Ep.2
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39:40Wise Beyond Their Years – How Reading Nurtures Children's Empathy In this episode, I explore the link between reading and empathy — and why some kids seem to carry emotional insight well beyond their age. It turns out, reading doesn’t just help with language — it reshapes the way we understand others, make decisions, and handle life’s challenges. I…
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Breaking into Enterprise: How Anagram Landed Disney with Cold Outbound
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39:05In the latest episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami sits down with Harley Sugarman, founder and CEO of Anagram, to unpack how one pivot, a flood of cold outreach, and relentless focus on behavior change transformed a niche tool into an enterprise platform serving companies like Disney and Pfizer. From landing enterprise logos…
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What Is Dreambook & The History Of Chronicle Creations | The Chronicle Podcast Ep.1
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1:05:40Welcome to The Chronicle. A little over two years ago, I founded Chronicle Creations. Since then, we've defined our flagship product and assembled an incredibly talented team to bring it to life. That product is Dreambook — a story creation app that harnesses the power of generative AI to help children imagine, create, and explore their own narrati…
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Building Biotech in Seattle: Madrona Investor Spotlight with Joe Horsman
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16:35What happens when a scientist becomes a VC? We sat down with Madrona’s Joe Horsman to find out. In this episode, Joe shares his journey from late nights in the lab to helping biotech founders bring life-changing science to market. You’ll hear: Why Seattle’s biotech + AI ecosystem is heating up What founders need beyond funding to commercialize worl…
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The End of Biz Apps? AI, Agility, and The Agent-Native Enterprise from Microsoft CVP Charles Lamanna
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28:23In 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…
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Building AI That Sells: Scaling Smarter with Luminance CEO Eleanor Lightbody
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38:22Entrepreneurs 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…
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Customer Obsession & Agentic AI Power Ravenna’s Reinvention of Internal Ops
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40:46Most 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…
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Reinventing Recruiting: SeekOut’s Anoop Gupta on the Rise of Agentic AI
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31:09In 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…
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🎙️ The First Stage Show | Where Music Meets Entrepreneurship 🎸💼 Welcome to The First Stage Show — the podcast for musician entrepreneurs, early-stage founders, and creative rebels grinding through the messy middle of building something great. Whether you’re playing dive bars for gas money, launching your first offer, or bootstrapping your dream wit…
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Unscripted: What Happened After the Mic Went Off with Douwe Kiela
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10:04This 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…
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AI, Ambition, and a $3 Trillion Vision: Satya Nadella on Microsoft’s Bold Bet
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31:34Microsoft 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…
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RAG Inventor Talks Agents, Grounded AI, and Enterprise Impact
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45:26What 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…
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Jordan Schwarzenberger: The creator economy is a lie, here’s the model that works
2:09:27
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2:09:277 billion views and counting: the growth secrets of Sidemen's creative mastermind, Jordan Schwarzenberger. Managing one of the world’s biggest creator collectives is no small feat. We dive deep with the man behind Arcade Media and the Sidemen’s explosive rise, blending sharp self-awareness, cultural intuition, and a bold approach to building in pub…
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Dropzone’s Edward Wu on Solving Security’s Biggest Bottleneck
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36:14The 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…
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18Sixty: How to create standout podcasts that captivate and keep audiences hooked
1:17:58
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1:17:58What separates a great podcast from the noise? We uncover the secrets of podcasting success with Gareth Evans, founder of 18Sixty, an agency that helps brands connect with their audience through high-quality audio storytelling. From working with Virgin/Absolute Radio and BBC Radio to launching his own agency, Gareth shares his journey through the e…
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AI+Data in the Enterprise: Lessons from Mosaic to Databricks
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47:18The 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…
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Airtasker: From hustle to IPO – the truth about scaling a marketplace
1:24:18
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1:24:18From $0 to $400 Million Valuation: The Incredible Journey of Tim Fung and Airtasker. From humble beginnings to a marketplace giant. But Tim's journey is much more than just success. Through resilience, identifying mutual benefit, and embracing change, he has created a company that has changed the future of work. Tim delves into his upbringing, the …
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Scaling, AI, and Leadership after Big Tech: Lessons from Highspot's Bhrighu Sareen
51:16
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51:16Thinking 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…
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Brilliant Labs: How AI glasses are shaping the future
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1:43:00What do Stephen Hawking, AR glasses, and open-source design have in common? Join us as we chat with Bobak Tavangar, co-founder of Brilliant Labs, about his remarkable journey and insights into innovation. From leadership lessons to fundraising advice, this episode is packed with valuable gems for entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts. Bobak discusses …
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Serial Entrepreneur Mohit Aron on Founding, Scaling, and Leading Category-Leading Companies
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36:45What 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…
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Optimise AI: Spinout success uncovered, strategies that work!
1:20:44
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1:20:44From academia to entrepreneurship: The remarkable story of Nick Tune and the secrets to converting research into commercial success, with his spinout company Optimise AI. Gain valuable insights on the mindset shifts necessary for transitioning from corporate to startup life, the importance of support networks, and how to embrace failures. Uncover t…
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Terray’s Jacob Berlin on The AI-Powered Future of Medicine
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44:04Terray 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…
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Curt Medeiros on Revolutionizing Precision Medicine and Scaling Ovation
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37:07Imagine 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.…
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Breaking Conventional Wisdom: Jama Software's Blueprint for Profitable Growth
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29:53In 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…
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Archon's Jamie Lazarovits on Unlocking the Full Power of Antibodies With AI
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40:38What 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…
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Beyond the Model: Taking AI From Prototype to Production with Unstructured’s Brian Raymond
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23:03In 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…
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Perseverance Over Speed: Creating a New Category with Impinj's Chris Diorio
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40:21In 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…
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Startup to Scale: A Mini Masterclass in Efficient Growth and GTM
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43:15In 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 …
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From Dark Matter to Voice AI with Deepgram Founder Scott Stephenson
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31:20Today 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…
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Temporal Founders Bet on Open Source and Developers to Enable Invincible Applications
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35:27Madrona 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…
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Investor Spotlight: Chris Picardo on Cross-Disciplinary Innovation and Finding Unique Founders
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16:47In 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…
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Transforming TV Advertising: iSpot’s Sean Muller on the Role of AI and the Future of Streaming
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34:13In 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…
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Investor Spotlight: Sabrina Wu on Founder Grit, Authenticity, and Building Intelligent Applications
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11:26In 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…
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Building Predibase: AI, Open-Source, and Commercialization with Dev Rishi and Travis Addair
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41:46Madrona 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, …
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Alfa Technology: From celebrity magician to startup founder
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1:13:46From performing magic for prime ministers and billionaires to gracing stages on shows like Britain's Got Talent. Alfie Whattam shares his unorthodox journey from entertainment to launching his own recruitment startup, Alfa Technology. Alfa builds software engineering teams for businesses operating in cutting-edge technologies like AI and Web3. Unco…
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Read AI's David Shim on Making Meetings More Efficient With Intelligent Agents
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37:47In 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…
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Connectd: Embracing delusion, neurodiversity, and self-awareness in startup success
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1:16:14How this entrepreneur overcame ADHD and dyslexia and used these diagnoses as his superpower to build two businesses worth millions. Hear the inspiring story of Roei Samuel, who discusses the importance of self-belief, transparency, and resilience in entrepreneurship. Roei got an exit with his first business, Real Sport, and has gone on to build the…
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