This bonus episode of Founded & Funded is a follow-up to Madrona Partner Jon Turow's conversation with Douwe Kiela, CEO of Contextual AI and co-inventor of RAG. In this quick chat, they dive into: 1) Why storytelling—not just GTM—needs to be vertical 2) How to build a platform by showing what's possible 3) The tension between "doing one thing well" vs. building the whole stack 4) Multimodal content moderation at Meta & what it taught Douwe This 10-minute post-show chat is a must-listen for founders thinking deeply about where to plant your flag — and when to break the rules.

Reinventing Recruiting: SeekOut's Anoop Gupta on the Rise of Agentic AI

Listen to conversations between Madrona investors and entrepreneurs, founders, and startup personalities who talk about some of the key moments in building a company. Designed to give would-be founders and others interested in working with or for startups a view into the struggle and the lessons learned, these conversations are informal and informative. 

With more than 25 years of investing in early-stage technology companies, Madrona has worked with founders from day one to help build their company for the long run. We invest in seed and Series A  companies in the Pacific Northwest building across the information technology spectrum and in Acceleration (B and beyond) stage companies building with AI, regardless of geography.