Team Profiles Archive

Jon Turow

Jon Turow joined Madrona as a partner in 2022 and transitioned to venture partner in 2026. He is now a member of the technical team at Anthropic. As a venture partner, Jon helps identify new investments and provides strategic and operational advice to Madrona portfolio companies.

Journey to Madrona

Jon is an experienced product leader, having spent over a decade in cloud computing. Most recently, Jon led the product teams for AWS Computer Vision AI services, including Amazon Textract (AI for intelligent document processing) and Amazon Rekognition (highly accurate image and video analysis). He also wrote the original product and business plans for AWS IoT and AWS Greengrass, which extend AWS services to run locally on edge devices. Jon launched more than five new services and countless features in AI/ML, edge computing, IoT, and messaging during his time at Amazon. Jon co-founded and led a cloud telephony startup prior to Amazon.

Lessons learned

“Hair on fire” customers make for great products. Imagine someone’s hair is on fire. What she really wants is a bucket of cold water to dump on her head and extinguish the flame. But what if you don’t have a bucket of cold water? You only have a tennis racket. Guess what – she’ll take the tennis racket too, and she will beat herself over the head to put the fire out. That’s the kind of customer you want — someone with a problem so urgent she will accept even an imperfect product and then hold you accountable to improve that product every day.

When he’s not in the office…

In his spare time, Jon loves history books and movies with great dialog, but his young children have biased the selection in recent years. He also believes that conversations held outdoors while walking are almost always the best ones.

Noteworthy

Jon brings a wealth of experience in achieving product-market fit, scaling teams and businesses, and deep technical acumen — he holds 28 patents! Most importantly, Jon has obsessive customer focus and the ability to “work backward” from customers’ most important problems. Jon also holds a bachelor’s from Wharton and an MBA from Kellogg, and he spent time as a strategy consultant at Accenture before diving headlong into the world of tech, products, and startups.

Birkan Uzun

Birkan Uzun passed away from a tragic skiing accident in Oregon on December 31, 2021. Read our blog post for more insight into Birkan’s life.

While at Madrona, Birkan focused on sourcing and evaluating new investment opportunities across Madrona’s investment themes, as well as worked with portfolio companies to develop strategies for growth and success. Birkan was particularly interested in software infrastructure, intelligent applications, and the intersection of machine learning and life sciences.

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 had experience throughout the entire product cycle, from prototyping to development and into delivering for general availability, as he helped launch four products at Amazon: Amazon Go, Alexa for Business in AWS, Amazon Halo, and Amazon’s COVID-19 Response.

During his last year at Amazon, Birkan was also a Venture Fellow at Castor Ventures, part of the Alumni Ventures Group.

Outside of work, Birkan liked to travel and participate in endurance sports. He was on a quest to become the first Cypriot to climb the Seven Summits, and completed his fifth in December of 2021. In addition to the the mountaineering, Birkan enjoyed skiing and hiking and all the Pacific Northwest has to offer.

Birkan received his Bachelor of Science and Masters of Engineering degrees in Computer Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction.

Matt Witt

Matt joined Madrona in 2016 and works directly with senior leadership teams to recruit executive talent and strengthen recruiting infrastructure. Matt executes a thorough role specing process and provides a deep understanding of what good looks like. He builds rapport with top executive talent in the Pacific Northwest and develops strong relationships with executive search partners. He is a thought partner for the portfolio on recruiting best practices and compensation.

Journey to Madrona

Matt began his recruiting career at APT Medical, focusing on scientific affairs and R&D for the pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical diagnostic industries. He worked with leaders and principal scientists developing cutting-edge medicines and technologies. Matt then transitioned to technology and joined Urgenci, where he led high-impact senior management and executive searches in engineering, product, sales, and marketing.

Lessons learned

Lead by example and always act with integrity and unwavering ethics. In the talent industry, your character and reputation is your brand.

When he’s not in the office…

A true Seattleite, Matt was born and raised in West Seattle. He’s now raising a family just a stone’s throw away from where he grew up. As an athlete and avid sports fan, you can find Matt playing soccer and softball or coaching his two kids in their sporting endeavors. He also invests a great deal of time watching the Seahawks, Huskies and March Madness. Go Dawgs!

Noteworthy

Matt earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Washington.

Eric Wong

Eric joined Madrona in 2025 to help portfolio companies accelerate go-to-market execution, increase growth, and build the systems needed to scale efficiently. He works directly with founders and operating teams to identify market opportunities, then translates those into focused strategy and action.

Journey to Madrona

Eric has spent his career focused on early- and growth-stage companies. He was an early employee at DocuSign, where he helped pioneer the company’s self-serve (PLG) and demand generation engines. He later held go-to-market leadership roles at Tier 3 (acquired by CenturyLink) and Conga, where he helped scale ARR from $14M to over $100M (acquired by Apttus).

Across these roles and others, Eric has led nearly every customer-facing and operational function, giving him firsthand experience with the resource constraints, cross-functional challenges, and speed of decision-making required during the early stages of company building.

Lessons learned

Acceleration comes from trust, alignment, and focus. It’s not enough to hire the right people; you have to be decisive on strategy and then give them the space to run, build, and own outcomes.
The symptom you see is almost never the root cause. Ask “why?” a few more times. Digging deeper drives faster, more impactful, durable solutions.
There’s no universal best practice or single right answer. The key is understanding the context and then designing solutions that match the circumstances.

When he’s not in the office…

Eric enjoys learning, exploring, and taking on new challenges, especially when they’re shared with family and friends. His favorite routines include date nights with his wife and either cooking or participating in sporting activities with his daughters.

Noteworthy

Eric holds degrees in business and economics from the University of Washington.