Terray Therapeutics CEO Jacob Berlin returns to Founded & Funded after three years to share how the company has scaled from an ambitious startup to an industry leader in AI-driven biotech. Learn how Terray's proprietary hardware combined with the world's largest chemistry data set is powering new discoveries in small molecule drug development.

 Jacob also discusses how the company’s $120M Series B fundraise will prepare their internal programs for clinical trials and further enhance their AI platform. He shares insights on where he sees the future of AI and drug design and dives into how founders can balance internal innovation and high-profile partnerships.

Don’t miss this deep dive into the intersection of AI, biotech, and innovation!

Transcript: https://www.madrona.com/terray-jacob-berlin-on-the-ai-powered-future-of-medicine

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction 00:39 The Evolution of Terray Therapeutics (02:08) Understanding Small Molecule Therapies (04:12) The Journey of Data and AI (07:58) Series B Fundraise and Future Plans (11:20) Biotech Platform vs. Product Debate (14:20) Building a Long-Term Vision (16:39) Deep Dive into Terray’s AI and Science (36:05) The Importance of Partnerships (39:20) High-Performance Culture at Terray

Imagine a future where healthcare isn’t just reactive but deeply personalized — where every patient gets the right treatment at the right time based on a precise understanding of their biology. This is the future Ovation is building, and on this week’s Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Chris Picardo dives into it all with Ovation CEO Curt Medeiros.

From transforming underutilized clinical data into rich multiomics datasets to forging industry-leading partnerships with companies like Illumina, Curt shares how Ovation is shaping the future of precision medicine. He also opens up about the challenges of building a scalable, privacy-first platform, the lessons he’s brought from leading large healthcare businesses, and why collaboration and diversity are key to solving complex problems in healthcare.

Transcript: https://www.madrona.com/curt-medeiros-on-revolutionizing-precision-medicine-and-scaling-ovation

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction (01:32) Ovation's Role in Precision Medicine(03:17) The Importance of Data in Precision Medicine(06:12) Challenges and Opportunities of Genomic Data (11:17) Privacy and Pharmaceutical Applications (16:42) Ovation's Unique Approach and Partnerships (17:00) Expanding Research Beyond Pharma(18:28) Recent Successes and Future Plans(26:36) Curt Medeiros' Journey to Ovation(29:56) Leadership Philosophy and Company Culture(33:21) Future of Precision Medicine

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter and Jama Software CEO Marc Osofsky discuss the intentional strategies that fueled Jama’s transformation from $20M ARR to a $1.2 billion acquisition by Francisco Partners. Marc shares his blueprint for scaling with purpose, challenging conventional wisdom, and embedding efficiency into the DNA of a company.

Key Takeaways Include:

Accelerating Growth Conventional Wisdom: Scale your sales team rapidly to hit growth targets. Intentional Wisdom: Focus on improving win rates to double or 2.5x your capacity without adding headcount. 

TAM Conventional Wisdom: Prioritize the total size of your market potential. Intentional Wisdom: Target activated TAM—the demand being addressed in a given year—and aim to capture a larger share. M&A Strategy Conventional Wisdom: Burn cash and rely on strategic buyers for exits. Intentional Wisdom: Achieve profitable growth and rule-of-40 metrics to attract financial sponsors, giving you more control over the process. 

Transcript: https://bit.ly/49mMKhp

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction  (00:52) Challenging Conventional Wisdom (03:48) Focusing on Win Rates (06:13) Efficiency and Culture at Jama (08:45) Vertical Market Focus (10:49) Geographic vs. Vertical-focused GTM Teams (15:28) Culture: Jama's Focus on Habits (19:00) Customer Success Strategies (21:02) The Francisco Partners Acquisition (26:12) Focusing on a GM structure (28:30) Advice for Founders

What does it take to move from cutting-edge academic research to launching a biotech company that could transform medicine? In this week’s episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Partner Chris Picardo sat down with Jamie Lazarovitz, CEO and co-founder of Archon Biosciences, to uncover the story behind their groundbreaking protein-based biologics and their unique Antibody Cages (AbCs).

From bootstrapping deep tech investments as a student to navigating the challenges of commercializing revolutionary science, Jamie shares the pivotal moments, tough decisions, and key lessons that led to Archon’s creation.

This isn’t just a story for biotech enthusiasts — every founder can take away valuable insights on:

1) Asking for help and building teams with complementary skills — no founder succeeds alone. 2) Applying AI thoughtfully — it’s a tool, not a magic wand. 3) Patience — ensure your foundation is strong before scaling. 4) Partnering with investors you trust and who align with your mission. 5) Setting a high bar for talent and culture — great people build great companies. 6) Communicating your differentiation — make your value clear to all stakeholders. Full Transcript: https://www.madrona.com/archon-unlocks-antibodies-with-ai-jamie-lazarovits Chapters: (00:00) Introduction  (00:55) Jamie Lazarovitz's Journey from Deep Tech to Biotech (01:45) Early Ventures and Lessons Learned (05:03) The Motivation Behind Jamie’s Biotech Passion (07:40) Joining the Institute for Protein Design - David Baker (09:40) Meeting Co-Founder George Ueda and the Birth of Archon (12:46) Revolutionary Protein Design at Archon: Antibody Cages (AbCs) (25:23) The Role of AI in Protein Design (27:50) Building a Successful Biotech Company (38:47) Future Prospects

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Karan Mehandru hosts Brian Raymond, founder and CEO of 2024 IA40 winner Unstructured. Unstructured turns raw, messy, unstructured data into something AI tools can actually process — a typically expensive and time-consuming process for companies hoping to save money with the tools themselves.

Brian and Karan explore some of the biggest trends in AI, including moving from prototype to production, the rise and fall of vertical applications, the shift toward powerful horizontal solutions, whether the ROI will be there on all this capital investment into AI, and the trough of disillusionment and why expectations in AI often don't match reality. They also discuss how an unlikely source, the public sector, is driving AI innovation today.

It's a conversation you won't want to miss.

Full Transcript: https://www.madrona.com/prototype-to-production-ai-insights-unstructured-brian-raymond

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction  (01:14) Trends in AI: From Vertical to Horizontal Solutions  (01:47) The First Mile of AI: Preprocessing and Data Ingestion  (03:43) Displacement of knowledge graphs for RAG  (06:19) The AI Stack: Layers and Competition  (08:55) Is the current level of investment in AI justified?  (11:19) The Speed of Change in AI(12:47) Public Sector vs. Private Sector Roles in AI Innovation(16:52) "Two completely incongruous narratives"(19:15) Advice for AI Entrepreneurs(21:49) Unstructured's Future

In this episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter and Venture Partner Patrick Ennis host Chris Diorio, co-founder and CEO of Impinj, the pioneer and world leader in RFID technology. Patrick and Chris have known each other for more than 24 years — since Madrona and ARCH Venture Partners co-led Impinj's first round of financing in the summer of 2000. In this episode, these three reminisce about old times and share some fun stories while diving into what it takes to truly launch a new category — and the patience required by both entrepreneurs and investors when doing so. They also discuss developing new speculative technology, navigating channel partner relationships, making it through an IPO during uncertain times, and how Impinj became the least known $4.6 billion public company in Seattle. This is a must-listen for any entrepreneurs out there.

Full transcript: https://www.madrona.com/perseverance-over-speed-creating-a-new-category-with-impinjs-chris-diorio

Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction  (02:01) Creating a category, early days of Impinj  (03:22) Pivot to RFID(04:40) Struggles and Breakthroughs(08:50) Principles and Company Culture(13:01) Struggles with RFID Standards  (14:27) Surviving and Thriving  (15:11) Adoption and Scaling Challenges (18:01) End Customer Scenarios and Partnerships (20:52) Financing Strategy and Key Partnerships(23:27) Patrick Meeting Morris Chang: A Career Highlight(24:50) Remembering Tom Alberg's Influence(27:55) The Art of Hiring and Mentorship(33:13) The Journey to IPO(36:42) Strategic Partnerships and Investments  (37:01) Company Principles and Future Outlook (38:35) Balancing Work and Life

In the latest episode of Founded & Funded, Madrona Managing Director Tim Porter hosts Pradeep Rathinam, a seasoned software executive with over three decades of leadership experience. Paddy was the Founder and CEO of Madrona portfolio company AnswerIQ, which Madrona invested in back in 2017. It was one of the early machine learning applied to SaaS companies that Madrona invested in. Paddy sold AnswerIQ in 2020 to Freshworks, where he started out as chief customer officer, helped take the company public, became chief revenue officer, and really drove a series of incredible accomplishments for Freshworks.

Today, Tim and Paddy dive into that world of SaaS go-to-market. Paddy shares his experiences on how to not just grow a company, as every company needs to do, but how to grow efficiently and how that includes reducing churn, expanding accounts, and landing new logos. This is something that all go-to-market leaders and startup founders have a lot of questions about how to unlock, so it is a must-listen for founders.

 

View the full transcript here: https://www.madrona.com/startup-efficient-growth-gtm-pradeep-rathinam/

You can find Paddy's writings on these topics here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paddyrathinam/recent-activity/articles/

Chapters: 

(00:00) Introduction

(00:31) Meet Pradeep Rathinam

(01:36) The AnswerIQ Journey

(04:06) Joining Freshworks: Tackling Churn and Growth

(05:25) Efficient Growth Strategies

(06:10) Framework for Efficient Growth

(09:09) Challenges and Solutions in Sales Transformation

(14:12) Change Management and Organizational Alignment

(17:28) New Business Development

(23:01) Customer Retention Strategies

(36:05) Driving Expansion Within Accounts

(41:10) When to Hire a CRO

Today Madrona Managing Director Karan Mahandru and Scott Stephenson, Co-Founder and CEO of Deepgram, a foundational AI company building a voice AI platform providing APIs for speech-to-text and text-to-speech. From medical transcription to autonomous agents, Deepgram is the go-to for developers of voice AI experiences, and they're already working with over 500 companies, including NASA, Spotify, and Twilio.

Today, Scott and Karan dive into the realities of building a foundational AI company, meaning they're building models and modalities from scratch. They discuss the challenges of moving from prototype to production, how startups need to out-fox the hyperscalers while also partnering with them, and, of course, how Scott went from being a particle physicist working on detecting dark matter to building large language models for speech recognition. This is a must-listen for anyone building in AI.

Full Transcript:  http://www.madrona.com/founded-funded-deepgram-scott-stephenson

Chapters: 

(00:00) Introduction (01:15) From Particle Physics to Voice AI (03:16) The Birth of Deepgram (03:40) Building a Developer-Centric AI Company (06:11) Challenges and Early Decisions (09:49) Navigating the AI Market (13:33) OpenAI's Whisper and Deepgram's Response (17:30) The Future of AI and Speech Recognition (21:59) Deepgram's Real-World Applications (31:19) From Prototype to Production

Madrona Managing Director Soma Somasegar hosts Temporal Co-Founders Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev in studio. Temporal was founded in 2019 based on an open-source microservices orchestration engine project but is the result of a more than decade-long partnership between the two co-founders that spanned their time working on different iterations of the same thing at AWS, Microsoft, and Uber.

In this episode, Soma, Samar, and Maxim dive into the challenges of building an open-source ecosystem while also working on a commercial offering and scaling a successful company, how to navigate and adjust a product roadmap in an ever-changing world of AI and large language models, and how to successfully build an early startup team, navigate through a CEO transition, and bring on a startup's first independent board member. It's a very compelling conversation and a must-listen for every builder out there. 

Full transcript available here: 

(00:00) Introduction(01:55) What is Temporal?(04:30) Temporal's Unique Advantages(07:37) Building a Commercial Entity from Open Source(11:15) Balancing Open Source and Commercial Goals(14:51) Temporal's Annual Developer Conference: Replay(16:41) Impact of AI on Temporal's Roadmap(22:35) Choosing the Right Co-Founder(25:56) Seamless CEO Transition(31:27) Bringing on an Independent Board Director

In this episode of Founded & Funded, host Coral Garnick Ducken interviews Madrona Partner Chris Picardo for the latest Investor Spotlight. With degrees in math and English, Chris shares his unique journey into venture capital. Chris highlights the importance of cross-disciplinary skills in understanding and communicating complex concepts and what he looks for in founders, emphasizing unique worldviews and innovative approaches, particularly in AI, biotech, and consumer verticals. This is a great episode for entrepreneurs interested in working with VCs.

 

(00:00) Introduction to Madrona Partner Chris Picardo

(00:46) Chris Picardo: From Math and English to Startups

(01:26) Chris's Transition to Madrona and Venture Capital

(03:20) Joining Madrona and Early Stage Ventures

(05:50) Chris on AI-Enabled Biotech

(08:28) Chis's Cross-Disciplinary Approach

(11:24) What Madrona Looks for in Founders

(14:49) Book Recommendations and Personal Interests