Patrick joined Madrona Venture Group in 2019 following many years as an investor, scientist, and inventor.
Journey to Madrona
Prior to Madrona, Patrick was at Intellectual Ventures for more than a decade, running startup incubation and technology commercialization with a focus on Asian markets. His investments included Evolv Technology (Nasdaq: EVLV), of which he was a founding board member. Patrick was also the founding CTO of Xinova, a startup that pioneered an international open-innovation market network.
Previously Patrick was a Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners, where he funded and built early-stage startups for ten years. His investments included Impinj (Nasdaq: PI), Innovalight (acquired by DuPont), and Kotura (acquired by Mellanox/NVIDIA).
Before joining the venture capital industry as a Kauffman Fellow in 1998, Patrick worked at AT&T and Bell Labs, leading engineering projects in software development, speech recognition, and network design. He also worked as a product manager in optical networking and a marketing manager for consumer telecom services.
Before joining Bell Labs, Patrick researched nuclear physics at government labs in North America and Europe. During this time, he published many articles in scientific journals, including The Physical Review, Zeitschrift für Physik, and Nuclear Instruments and Methods.
Lessons learned
- Integrity matters most, followed by work ethic. Both are more important than intelligence and experience.
- The entrepreneurial ecosystem is characterized by relationships and trust, not transactions.
- Learning never stops. One must be on a mission to seek out new ideas by learning from everyone.
When he’s not in the office…
Patrick loves to do anything with his three sons, including skiing, rock climbing, basketball, chess, or reading “The Hardy Boys” canon.
Noteworthy
Patrick has served on the board of directors of more than 20 companies. His current board seats include Yoodli, Wipro Ltd, the University of Helsinki Commercialization Board, and the Cybereason Advisory Board. Additionally, he is a Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute. Patrick is an inventor on several patents, has written about innovation, and is a frequent speaker at conferences.
In the last decade, Patrick has spent more than 1,000 days abroad conducting business in 31 countries and developing relationships with technology, corporate, and academic leaders.
Patrick holds a Ph.D., MS, and MPhil in physics from Yale, an MBA from Wharton, and a bachelor’s in mathematics and physics from the College of William and Mary, where he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.