Building Biotech in Seattle: Madrona Investor Spotlight with Joe Horsman
Release Date: 06/11/2025
Twitter's Ex-CEO: The Web Was Built for Humans — Let's Make it Work for AI Agents
Founded & Funded
What happens when AI agents — not humans — become your primary customer? That's not a hypothetical. It's already happening, and the founders who recognize it earliest are rebuilding their entire infrastructure stacks from scratch. In this live episode of Founded & Funded from our IA Summit in Seattle, Madrona Venture Partner Jon Turow sits down with Parag Agrawal, former CEO of Twitter and founder of Parallel Web Systems, and Nikita Shamgunov, who led Neon through a rapid AI pivot before its acquisition by Databricks. What they cover: Why Parag is building a new search index from the...
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How to Sell AI Into the Enterprise: Pilots, Pricing, and Closing 12-Month Deals
Founded & Funded
What does it really take to sell an AI-native product into the Fortune 500? In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain sits down with two founders deep in the trenches of enterprise AI adoption, Esha Joshi (Co-founder, Yoodli) and Anup Chamrajnagar (Co-founder, Gradial.) Their companies are selling into some of the world’s most complex organizations, like Google, SAP, Snowflake, Databricks, and more. And they break down what founders often underestimate about enterprise AI sales. They dive into: Why most AI pilots fail and how to prevent it The...
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The Infrastructure of Intelligence: Inside Crusoe’s Massive AI Factory in Texas
Founded & Funded
In this episode of Founded & Funded, Ben Gilbert, co-host of the Acquired podcast, sits down with Chase Lochmiller, co-founder and CEO of Crusoe-AI, the company building what it calls AI factories, including its massive campus in Abilene, Texas, which are designed to power this new era of intelligence. In this conversation, Ben and Chase explore the physical reality behind today's AI revolution. Why modern AI workloads demand entirely new infrastructure. How energy has become the primary bottleneck to scaling intelligence. What it takes to compress multi-year building timelines into...
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Can We Trust AI? The Future of Verified Reasoning in High-Stakes Systems
Founded & Funded
In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Jon Turow hosts a live conversation with Carina Hong, Founder & CEO of Axiom, and Byron Cook, VP & Distinguished Scientist at AWS. Carina is building foundation models trained on verified proofs instead of human-written reasoning. Byron leads AWS’s automated reasoning group, which secures massive infrastructure with mathematically proven systems. During this live IA Summit conversation, they explore what it means to build AI that actually reasons and why verified intelligence is critical for domains where being right really...
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Microsoft's Agent Factory: The Future of AI Software with EVP of Core AI Jay Parikh
Founded & Funded
In this live episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar sits down with Jay Parikh, EVP of Core AI at Microsoft, to unpack the company's evolution from a software factory to an agent factory Jay leads the team responsible for Microsoft’s core AI stack, the systems that power Copilot, the tools developers rely on, like GitHub, and the infrastructure that makes large-scale AI possible. In short, his group builds the underlying tech that Microsoft and thousands of companies use to create AI-powered applications and agents. In this conversation, Soma and Jay dive...
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How — and What — to Build in the Age of OpenAI
Founded & Funded
Where is OpenAI going, and what does it mean for the broader AI and tech ecosystem? Madrona Partner Vivek Ramaswami sits down with Jason Kwon, Chief Strategy Officer at OpenAI, for a rare behind-the-scenes look at the decisions shaping one of the most influential AI companies in the world. In this live conversation from the 2025 IA Summit, Jason shares what OpenAI will build, what it won’t, and how founders can use that as a roadmap to go big without going head-to-head. They unpack OpenAI’s ecosystem-first mindset, what “full-stack AI” really means, and how the rise of agentic AI is...
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The Analyst Mindset in Venture: Madrona Investor Rasik Parikh's story
Founded & Funded
In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Digital Editor Coral Garnick Ducken sits down with Investor Rasik Parikh to unpack his journey from public markets to venture capital and what makes a founder stand out. Rasik shares how working across institutional investing, M&A, and now enterprise AI at Madrona has shaped his analytical mindset and founder-first approach. They dive into how to build information asymmetry as an early-stage investor, why storytelling matters more than metrics in early fundraising, and what Rasik looks for in founders. Founders building in security, agentic...
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Redefining Communication: Yoodli Founders on AI Roleplays, Confidence & Building in Seattle
Founded & Funded
In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Venture Partner Patrick Ennis sits down with Varun Puri and Esha Joshi, co-founders of Yoodli, an AI-powered communications coach helping people become more confident speakers. Varun and Esha share their leap from Big Tech into startup life, eating noodles on secondhand couches while chasing a bold mission: making effective communication accessible to everyone. They dive into: The origin story behind Yoodli, (and where the name came from!) How AI roleplays bring “exposure therapy” to speaking practice. Use cases ranging from sales training...
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From Google and Amazon to NewDays: Why These Tech Vets Bet on AI for Dementia
Founded & Funded
In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter sits down with Babak Parviz and Daniel Kelly, co-founders of NewDays, a platform purpose-built for older Americans living with cognitive change to help them reclaim abilities, preserve independence, and keep being themselves. Babak and Daniel share how their experience at Amazon and Google led them to apply AI in the most human way: helping people with dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) with scalable solutions. They dive into: Why we chose to build at the intersection of AI and cognitive health How to...
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The Future of Biology Is Generative: Inside Synthesize Bio’s RNA AI Model
Founded & Funded
In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Investor Joe Horsman sits down with Jeff Leek and Rob Bradley, co-founders of Synthesize Bio, a foundation model company for biology that’s unlocking experiments researchers could never run in the lab. Jeff, chief data officer at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and Rob, the McIlwain Family endowed chair in data science, share: •Why a startup the right fit for generative genomics •How generative genomics could reshape research, drug trials, and more •Why RNA is the right starting point for a generative AI model in biology •What this...
info_outlineWhat 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 world-changing science.
- Why weekend adventures fuel Monday creativity