New directors bring critical experience building technology and life sciences companies & teams; we also add to our core investment team.
Today, we are excited to announce the appointment of three new Strategic Directors.
Sunny, Charlotte and Mark will work with Madrona portfolio company founders and executives, sharing their insight and operating experiences as leaders in their industries. Additionally, they will work closely with the Madrona investment team as the team builds their investments from early to acceleration stage.
In late 2020, Madrona raised over $500 million in new funds, between an eight seed and Series A fund focused in the Pacific NW and a second acceleration stage (Series B and C) fund to invest primarily in innovative companies based anywhere in the U.S. leveraging cloud computing and applied machine learning. Today the company also announced an additional $120 million fund for existing portfolio companies.
“One of the unique elements of the Seattle tech community is that it is a place where people are community builders and we are excited to have these three talented executives and builders join Madrona as Strategic Directors,” commented Matt McIlwain, Managing Director, Madrona Venture Group. “Each of these individuals brings unique insight and a willingness to jump in and help our founders develop their products, go-to-market strategies and company infrastructure.”
Sunny Gupta is the Co-founder and CEO of Apptio. Since founding Madrona-backed Apptio in 2007, he pioneered a market category, Technology Business Management, and led Apptio to an IPO in 2016 and through its subsequent acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in January 2019 for $1.94B. Prior to Apptio, Sunny was the co-founder & CEO of Madrona – backed company, iConclude, which was an early IT and automation solution, acquired by Opsware and subsequently acquired by HP in 2007. Sunny also worked with Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain and Venture Partner Oren Etzioni at University of Washington spin out, Performant, over twenty years ago. He is a current board member at Gainsight.
Dr. Charlotte Hubbert is Senior Director of Business Development and Strategic Alliances at Nanostring. Charlotte has over fifteen years basic science research background and over ten years biotech venture investment experience across a broad range of sectors, therapeutic modalities, and stages. Charlotte was previously Partner and head of Gates Foundation Venture Capital, a $500mm initiative at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Strategic Investment Fund where she oversaw investing in innovative technologies that supported the foundation’s programs in global health and agriculture. Prior to joining the foundation, Charlotte was a vice president at H.I.G. BioVentures, investing broadly in healthcare. Charlotte began her career in early-stage biotech, investing at Accelerator Corporation. Charlotte currently holds board seats at City of Hope, LUCA Biologics and Entrinsic Health Solution.
Mark T. Nelson is the President & CEO of Tableau, a Salesforce company. He sets the vision and direction for Tableau, and oversees company strategy, business activities and operations. Mark was previously the EVP of Product Development for Tableau, leading the global engineering and product teams. Prior to Tableau, Mark was the CTO at Concur, working closely with Madrona Managing Director Steve Singh, where he was responsible for all aspects of product development. Mark started his career as a developer and spent 17 years at Oracle finishing as Vice President and Architect.
New Investment Professionals Round out Madrona team
Madrona has also added new full time investment professionals to the team in the past months.
Aseem Datar, Partner joined Madrona after a successful and innovation filled 17-year career at Microsoft with his most recent role as GM/COO of Microsoft Cloud. Aseem brings a depth of experience to Madrona that spans developer to sales to international operations to leading major product groups. He has already led a seed investment in Spice.ai, a company enabling developers to integrate AI into their applications.
Maria Gilfoyle, Investor – Prior to Madrona, Maria was an Associate at K50 Ventures and a Fellow at Armory Square Ventures, prior to joining Madrona. There she focused on Pre-Seed through Series A investments. Maria is particularly focused on consumer technology investments.
Sabrina Wu, Investor – Prior to joining Madrona, Sabrina was an Associate at Vector Capital, a technology-focused private equity firm. At Vector, Sabrina focused on sourcing and evaluating growth investments, buyouts, carve-outs, and take-privates, as well as supporting portfolio companies with strategic M&A and growth initiatives. She was also active in Vector’s SPAC efforts. While at Vector, Sabrina focused on software, security, and internet investing.
Birkan Uzun, Investor – Prior to joining Madrona, Birkan was a Software Engineer at Amazon where he worked on a variety of domains such as devices, mobile applications, cloud services, and machine learning. Birkan is interested in software development and low code/no code focused companies.
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