From Startup to Exit
Welcome to the Startup to Exit podcast where we bring you world-class entrepreneurs and VCs to share their hard-earned success stories and secrets. This podcast has been brought to you by TiE Seattle. TiE is a global non-profit that focuses on fostering entrepreneurship. TiE Seattle offers a range of programs including the GoVertical Startup Creation Weekend, TiE Entrepreneur Institute, and the TiE Seattle Angel Network. We encourage you to become a TiE member so you can gain access to these great programs. To become a member, please visit www.Seattle.tie.org.
Episodes
35 episodes
Startup Spotlight: Aravind Bala, CTO, SeekOut.com - How to successfully pivot your company
In this episode, we feature Aravind Bala, who is the CTO and co-founder of Seekout. SeekOut (https://seekout.io) empowers companies to go beyond LinkedIn in recruiting hard-to-find and diverse talent. Prior to SeekOut, Aravind spent 14 ye...
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Season 1
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Episode 35
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44:34
2026 Investment Outlook and Predictions
Listen to our 2026 Annual Investment Outlook Panel with four top VCs. Get their perspective on the investment climate in 2026 and their plans to invest specifically in AI based startups. See how they did with their 2025 forecast and what their ...
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Season 1
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Episode 34
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1:51:05
Building Category-Defining AI Startups with Yifan Zhang (AI2 Incubator)
We’re excited to feature Yifan Zhang, Managing Director at AI2 Incubator, one of the most successful AI incubators in the world, born out of the Allen Institute for AI and backed by a newly announced $80M Fund III.Yifan is a 2x founder ...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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42:01
Best of 2025: From Startup to Exit Podcast
Join us for a dynamic highlight reel featuring short segments from the 2025 season of From Startup to Exit, TiE Seattle’s flagship podcast showcasing world-class entrepreneurs, innovators, and industry leaders sharing candid insights from their...
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Season 1
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Episode 33
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51:19
Innovating for Impact: TYE Global Winners 2025 Share their Entrepreneurial Journey
Join us as Team Kymavi, the TYE Global winner, discusses their groundbreaking solution addressing environmental challenges through biodegradable bags, and Team Key Beauty, creators of an AI-driven makeup matching platform for women of color, sh...
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Season 1
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Episode 32
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52:29
Building Responsible AI for the New Era: A Conversation with Ece Kamar, Director of AI Frontiers Lab at Microsoft Research
In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Ece Kamar, Director of the AI Frontiers Lab at Microsoft Research, and one of the leading voices in Responsible AI.With over 15 years at Microsoft, Ece has played a pivotal role in shaping how AI sy...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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58:36
Startup Spotlight: GONE.COM - Giving Goods a Second Life for a Healthy Planet
Yashovardhan Wagh is the co-founder & CEO of Gone.com, a Seattle-based circular commerce company giving quality goods a second life through local supply chains. He previously built supply chains for Amazon and other Fortune 100 companies. H...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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31:59
Gen AI Series: Intelligent Applications in an Agentic World, A conversation with Sabrina Wu, Investor at Madrona Ventures
In this episode, we talk to Sabrina Wu who is an Investor at the famed VC firm Madrona Ventures. Sabrina shares her thoughts about closed source vs open source, agentic applications and the emergence of multi modal applications. Sab...
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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47:37
Microsoft@50: The Battle for the Internet, with Vice President for MSN, Laura Jennings
In the final installment of the Microsoft@50 series, we interview Laura Jennings, who was the Vice President in charge of MSN and one of the senior most female executives at Microsoft in her time. Laura was the Microsoft executive who shifted M...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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54:36
Microsoft@50: The Launch of Windows 95, with SVP Brad Chase
In the 5th installment of the Microsoft@50 series, we interview Brad Chase, who was the SVP in charge of the launch of Windows 95. Later on, he took over the reins for MSN. Brad joined Microsoft in 1987 and was the first product manager respons...
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Season 1
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Episode 26
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47:12
Microsoft@50: Birth of Microsoft, with its Sixth Employee, Steve Wood
In this 4th installment of the Microsoft@50 series we bring you Steve Wood who was the sixth employee at Microsoft. He was recruited out of Stanford where he completed his Masters in Electrical Engineering. He went on to work at Microsoft's Alb...
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Season 1
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Episode 25
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51:09
Microsoft@50: Birth of Xbox, with Chief Xbox Officer, Robbie Bach
This is the 3rd installment of the Microsoft@50 series. We interview Robbie Bach, who was the Chief Xbox Officer at Microsoft and the founder of Xbox at Microsoft. Before founding Xbox, he ran Microsoft Office and made it into the standard it i...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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1:05:52
Microsoft@50: Birth of Microsoft Office, with President of Business Systems Division, Jeff Raikes
This is the 2nd installment of the Microsoft@50 series. We interview Jeff Raikes, who was President of the Business Systems Division at Microsoft. Jeff was the one of the senior most executives at Microsoft after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. J...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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1:00:37
Microsoft@50: The Windows Battle, with SVP for Microsoft's Desktop & Server Software, Paul Maritz
In this first installment of the Microsoft@50 series, we interview Paul Maritz who was the third most senior executive at Microsoft.From 1986 to 2000, he worked at Microsoft and was on its executive committee. He became executive vice presi...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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1:05:29
Gen AI Series: Gen AI in Security, Sumedh Barde, Chief Product Officer, Simbian
Learn about Simbian, an AI security company. Simbian is the first security company to accelerate security by empowering every member of a security team, from the C-Suite to frontline practitioners, to craft tailored insights and workflows...
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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1:01:07
2025 Investment Outlook Panel - In the age of AI
Listen to our 2025 Annual Investment Outlook Panel with four top VCs based in Seattle and the Bay area. Get their perspective on the investment climate in 2025 and their plans to invest specifically in AI-based startups. See how they did with t...
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Season 1
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Episode 20
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1:10:06
Gen AI Series - The AI agent redefining travel: Managing Director Mike Fridgen, Madrona Venture Labs
Learn about the founding of Otto from Mike Fridgen, the Managing Director of Madrona Venture Labs where this concept was incubated. Otto is your personal AI travel agent that seeks to be as valuable and insightful as a dedicated personal assist...
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Season 1
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Episode 19
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43:33
Best of 2024: From Startup to Exit
2024 has been an incredible year for TiE Seattle’s From Startup to Exit podcast – featuring inspiring conversations with entrepreneurial leaders, innovators, and changemakers. As the year ends, we’re excited to share the Top 4 Episodes of 2024 ...
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Season 1
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Episode 18
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1:04:04
Founding Smartsheet and its vision: Conversation w/ Praerit Garg, President of Product & Innovation
Smartsheet is a major success story for the Seattle Tech ecosystem. Smartsheet was founded in 2005 as a workplace management system based on a spreadsheet style architecture. In this episode, Praerit Garg (PG) talks about the early product visi...
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Season 1
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Episode 17
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55:31
Gen AI Series: Legalities of scraping data to build LLMs, a conversation w/ Adam Shevell, partner at Wilson Sonsini
Many of the large language model providers have built their LLM models by scraping data from websites and open source sites. Some have licensed the content like Open AI has done with Reddit. Nonetheless, many of these LLM providers have been su...
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Season 1
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Episode 16
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45:12
How Louisiana is driving innovation, A Conversation with Josh Fleig, CIO for the State of Louisiana
You may not think of the State of Louisiana as a software innovation hub but it is doing a lot to attract startups to its state. It has a $100 million seed capital fund to match VC investment dollar for dollar. It is willing to rebate 25% of yo...
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Season 1
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Episode 15
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54:43
Moderating foreign accents using AI, A Conversation with Soundwave team, winners of the TiE Young Entrepreneur competition
These days you will often call into customer service for a company whose product you are using and will be connected to an agent with a foreign accent. For many Americans, this can be a challenging experience as they cannot understand what the ...
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Season 1
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Episode 14
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33:31
Gen AI Series: Using Gen AI in a startup environment, A conversation with Jay Bartot of Madrona Venture Labs
On our one year anniversary, we are releasing this terrific episode with Jay Bartot, partner at Madrona Venture Labs (MVL). Jay talks about the model that MVL uses to work with startup founders and vet startup ideas.Like many technology ...
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Season 1
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Episode 13
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59:48
Gen AI Series: Developer Joy through Generative AI. A conversation with Rajeev Rajan, CTO at Atlassian
Rajeev embarked on his career at Microsoft as a developer after a sabbatical from his Ph.D. to build upon his internship experience in Seattle the previous summer. In this episode, he delves into how his journey and interactions with various le...
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Season 1
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Episode 12
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49:24
Gen AI Series: Gen AI from a VC perspective, A conversation with Vivek Ramaswami from Madrona Ventures
Generative AI has taken the industry by storm as we all know. Besides Open AI. a number of players like Meta, Google and Anthropic have announced new foundation models. In this episode, we get Vivek's perspective of the competitive landscape an...
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Season 1
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Episode 11
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52:51