Decide.com was featured in the New York Times again this week. Anyone shopping for electronics this holiday season (or ever, for that matter) is crazy to not use Decide. Read the article here.

Decide.com is featured in New York Times article highlighting that Black Friday might not be the best day to get the best deals. Read the article here.

Today’s Finance Corner on Forbes.com highlights Apptio’s competitive advantage in the hot new sector called Technology Business Management (TBM). Read the article here.

One of our newest investments, Indochino, had a nice piece on CBCNews (not a typo, the company is based in Vancouver, BC). Watch first, then order your suit immediately after.

Here is a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmWsVOTiz04
Click on Indochino’s logo to check out the company’s great offerings.

We still can’t tell you exactly what Decide does, but we can tell you that you won’t be disappointed when they launch in late Spring. We want to congratulate CEO Mike Fridgen and his team for making some great progress and closing a strong Series B financing round with Maveron. We at Madrona are happy to have been there when the company got started and can’t wait for the launch. Everyone should sign up today to be one of the first to get a sneak peak.

Here is a great piece from John Cook at Geekwire on Decide’s Series B financing. Read it here.

Thanks to John Cook for a nice update on TeachStreet.  Read it here.

Entrepreneurs around the country should be feeling a little tingling of excitement. Why?  The second class of Seattle TechStars is now open for applications.  You have until May 20 to get your application in, but don’t wait until the last minute.  For anyone thinking about making the leap to the world of entrepreneurship this is your chance.

Fellowship to offer paid internships to top computer science and engineering students to work with some of Seattle’s hottest technology startup companies including Redfin, Extrahop, Zillow, Lockerz, and Apptio.

February 23, 2011 – A coalition of startups and venture capital firms today launched the Cascadia Innovation Fellowship to bring world-class computer science students from around the country to Seattle and offer them a chance to work with some of the most exciting startups in the country as paid summer interns. Outside of Silicon Valley, Seattle has the biggest concentration of engineering talent in the country. The Cascadia Fellows will not only have the opportunity to make a big impact on the startups they work with, but will also have the chance to network with engineers at other small and large technology firms in the city.

“There is tremendous value in connecting the best and brightest of the upcoming entrepreneurial and technical talent with today’s top startups,” says Paul Goodrich, a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, one of the Fellowships organizers. “I want to recognize Warren Lee from Canaan Partners, who led the charge to create the Turing Fellows program in New York, which was our inspiration for Cascadia. The impact that these students will make on the companies they work with, even just over three months, will be very meaningful.”

The program will offer paid summer internships to undergraduate and graduate students studying engineering or computer science. Upon completion of the summer program, each student will also receive a $5,000 scholarship. Beyond the work each intern will do at the company they are matched with, the program will coordinate other social and networking events for the group.

More information about the program and the application form can all be found at the Fellowship’s website: www.cascadiafellowhip.org. The application deadline is March 10, 2011. Semi-finalists will be selected and flown out to Seattle March 25-26 to meet with the companies in the program they are interested in interning with.

The companies offering internships are Redfin, Cheezburger Network, Extrahop, Zillow, Lockerz, Apptio, WildTangent, Impinj, and Swype. Each of the companies are solving difficult technical problems, but the business models range from consumer focused, to networking and infrastructure, to social networking, and chip design.

“Redfin interns design and ship features used by millions of consumers, gaining experience that really stands out later when the time comes to apply for permanent positions, go to graduate school or start their own ventures,” says Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin. “Like all the young companies in the Cascadia program, we look for folks with the drive, brains and resourcefulness to get something done over the summer. When the interns go back to school, they’ll be able to see what they accomplished, live on the web.”

About the Cascadia Innovation Fellowship
The Cascadia Innovation Fellowship connects world-class computer science and engineering students with some of Seattle’s top technology startups. The paid summer internships and $5,000 scholarships are a small part of the rich experience the Fellowship will create for the participants. The Seattle technology community will support the fellows and provide them with networking, education, and insights that will benefit them as they finish school and well beyond into their career. Details about the Cascadia Fellowship can be found at www.cascadiafellowship.org.

Posted by Greg Gottesman

All of us at Madrona are looking forward to welcoming TechStars for its big reunion event here in Seattle on November 4. TechStars is a mentorship-driven incubation program/seed investment fund with operations in Boulder, Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts. Every year, TechStars funds 10 very early technology start-ups in each city and provides an intensive boot camp for those companies, involving dozens of mentors from the start-up community.

TechStars has been operating for three years and has funded about 40 companies. Some alumni companies have already had positive exits, including IntenseDebate (acquired by Automattic/WordPress), Socialthing (AOL), and Brightkite. Every year the TechStars companies get together for a reunion in a different city, and this year the reunion is in our Emerald City.

As part of the reunion event, TechStars reserves a part of one afternoon to highlight its companies that are still raising money and has them pitch to investors. To date, about 75% of the companies that come out of TechStars have been angel- or venture-backed. The pitch session is a great opportunity to see a bunch of interesting early-stage companies. In addition to company presentations, there will be a panel on angel and venture investment trends that will include Brad Feld (co-founder of TechStars and Managing Director of The Foundry Group), Andy Sack (Founders Co-Op), Steve Hall (Vulcan Capital), David Cohen (co-founder of TechStars and angel investor), Chris Sheehan (CommonAngels in Boston), and yours truly. It should be a lively discussion, followed by the pitches.

If you’re a Seattle-area VC or angel investor, please contact me, and I’ll get you an invitation to the event. Hope to see you there!

Getting the Right Driver on the Bus

In Good to Great, Jim Collins recommends that one of the first steps in building a great company is to get the right people on (and off) the “bus.” Not surprisingly, therefore, selecting the driver of the bus, the CEO, is certainly one of the most important tasks any board of directors undertakes. From the perspective of a venture capitalist working in the world of early stage companies, I have seen the huge, and often immediate difference the right leader can make. Now, I’m not talking about how to find great entrepreneurs who have started a company. While also a difficult process, this series of posts assumes we have already backed a good company, with great technology, but one that is in need of the right business leader.

Selecting the right CEO, however, is difficult, mostly un-scientific and often complicated because of personality and timing issues. Often, in very early stage companies, the “CEO” holds that title simply because he/she founded the company, and not because of any special qualifications or company-building experience. A few founders recognize that they don’t have the requisite skills to drive the bus, but many others figure that if they can drive stick shift in a sedan, how much harder can it be driving the bus? And that might be fine for a short drive at slow speeds, but as the company picks up speed, the probability of a major crash increases. So, many times, the first step in getting the right driver on the bus is convincing the current driver to step away from the wheel. It is often beneficial to have the founder remain involved with their company, just not always as CEO.

Timing is often a further complicating factor. Perhaps the current CEO has left unexpectedly (or been asked to leave immediately) or there is a financing that hinges on the recruitment of a new CEO. The board is under the gun, without the luxury of 6-9 months to do a thorough search for just the right candidate. Having had experience recruiting CEOs and knowing what qualities to look for can help make this challenging process more effective.

Several years ago Madrona surveyed our investment professionals, ranging from analysts just a few years out of college to veteran Fortune 500 CEO’s like Jerry Grinstein, Bill Ruckelshaus and Jack Creighton, who serve as our Strategic Directors.  We wanted to construct a profile to see if there was consensus on the relative importance of various personal attributes, skill sets.

The following graphs reflect the survey results (click on the graphs to see a magnified version).

Over a series of blog posts I will discuss the specifics of some of these attributes, what makes certain qualities more important in a CEO than others, and how, once you have determined what you are looking for, you know you have found it in the candidate. After all, what serious candidate is going to acknowledge that they lack good judgment? In the meantime, join in the dialogue by taking the survey and we will post the results and comments from the community.

Click Here to take survey