Home Madrona Venture Labs Raises $8M for Startup Studio Innovation

Madrona Venture Labs Raises $8M for Startup Studio Innovation

Madrona Venture Labs (MVL), a Seattle-based startup studio, lands $8M in new funding for its fourth fund. They plan to innovate on their venture studio model for their spinout companies. MVL will continue to build its close relationships and partnerships with the investment teams at Madrona and new founders.

MVL will partner with the most experienced and successful operating executive investors:

Spencer Rascoff, former Zillow CEO; Elie Seidman, former Tinder CEO; Court Lorenzini, co-founder DocuSign; Elena Donio, former Axiom CEO; Elissa Fink, former Tableau CMO; Julie Larson-Green, former Qualtrics CXO; Erik Blachford, former Expedia CEO; Mike McSherry, Xealth CEO; Jon Gelsey, former Auth0 CEO; Chad Cohen, Adaptive Biotech CFO; and Ralph Pascualy, former Swedish Medical Group CEO.

Tech-Vet-Investors

These highly experienced tech-vet-investors and operators will be co-founding board members and advisors. They’ll leverage their talent networks for recruiting, customer development, idea validation, coaching, and offering fundraising support to teams.

Elena Donio, former Axiom CEO, with a vast array of experience in this arena says, “I’m excited about this opportunity because we are never done innovating. MVL gives us a chance to think critically about what’s next and to partner with fantastic leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors to make vision reality.”

About Madrona Venture Labs

Madrona Venture Labs, founded in 2014, possesses an internal innovation team in its incubation arm. They are tasked with bringing to life startups and businesses providing a full-scale range of services. MVL partners with founders to build venture-scale companies. They claim a 100% operator-led studio that partners from day one with founders.

The MVL Talent Studio Model

MVL is committed to bring more talent to the studio and offer the chance to work directly, side-by-side with the fund investors. MVL has built its model to be faster and more efficient in time to seed by helping to derisk making the leap to start a company.

Managing Director and MVL CEO, Mike Fridgen says, “Our obsessive focus on building founder value has made MVL the obvious choice for founders building a company in the PNW. Our next group of founders will benefit from a 100% operator-led team with a proven company building process; successful operators as co-founders and partners; and funding and support from Madrona, the leading VC in the PNW.”

The Madrona Venture Labs team — clockwise from left: Flora Ku, Keith Rosema, Maria Hess, Henry Huang, Mike Fridgen, Jay Bartot, Jason Flateboe

Image Credit: Madrona Venture Labs Photo; thank you!

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Brad Anderson
Former editor

Brad is the former editor who oversaw contributed content at ReadWrite.com. He previously worked as an editor at PayPal and Crunchbase.

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