Palak Goel

Investor

Palak Goel
"Madrona has been by our side since Yoodli was just an idea. Palak is the hardest-working investor I've ever met. Everyone at Yoodli thinks of Palak as one of our team leads — he spends hours each week helping us stay abreast of generative AI advancements, recruiting candidates, and serving as a sounding board for our GTM. He's the one person we call when things are tough. Palak has an uncanny ability to be candid and kind while pushing us personally and professionally."
— Varun Puri, Co-founder & CEO, Yoodli

Palak Goel

Investor

Palak joined Madrona in 2022. He focuses on sourcing and evaluating new investment opportunities across Madrona’s investment themes and supports the growth and strategy of current portfolio companies. Palak is particularly interested in working with technical founders building AI/ML-powered applications, open-source projects, and cloud and data infrastructure.

Journey to Madrona

Before joining Madrona, Palak worked as a product manager at Microsoft. At Microsoft, Palak worked on a variety of products, including Outlook, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Teams, Windows, Visual Studio, and Bing. Most recently, Palak worked on Microsoft Turing, an initiative to build best-in-class deep learning models and productize them across the Microsoft product family.

Lessons learned

  1. Before starting a business, it is important to ask yourself why — Why us? Why this? And why now?
  2. There is nothing more important in product/company building than solving customers’ problems. Customer empathy should always be at the center of every business decision.

When he’s not in the office…

Outside of work, Palak can be found on a squash or pickle ball court (depending on the weather), listening to an audiobook, trying out a new recipe, or learning to ski.

Noteworthy

Palak graduated from Brown University with a dual concentration in computer science and economics. At Brown, Palak captained the Varsity Squash team.

Insights

Palak on Madrona

"At Madrona, I am inspired every day by the brilliance, grit, and humility of the countless people we have the pleasure to meet. As a firm, we are fully committed to the success of every entrepreneur we partner with."