It was exciting to see the Seattle tech community come together for more than 70 amazing events at Seattle Tech Week 2024. This week proved once again that Seattle is a premier meeting place for founders, investors, innovators and startups of all sizes.

Last year, we launched the inaugural Seattle Tech Week to celebrate our city’s vibrant and innovative tech ecosystem. Our goal was to highlight the incredible talent, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit that define Seattle. The response exceeded our expectations and did so again this year, with more than double the number of events across the city. The way the community came together this year is inspiring. This would not have been possible without the support of everyone who hosted, sponsored, and attended events—and especially our colleagues at JP Morgan, Ascend, and Google Cloud, as well as community builder Sarah Studer, who all helped organize and make this year’s Seattle Tech Week a success.

We look forward to an even bigger event next year!

What was planned to be a week of events spilled over into the weekend, with a strength training session and a panel discussion of underrepresented founders scheduled for Saturday. Interacting with hundreds of tech enthusiasts and innovators was a highlight of this year’s Seattle Tech Week. And the diversity of our city’s tech scene was on full display – far beyond what we typically see at other events like happy hours and hackathons. The week really showcased the breadth and vibrancy of the Pacific Northwest tech scene.

There was a big announcement at the AI2 Incubator’s summer BBQ: Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell made a surprise visit and announced the opening of the AI ​​House in downtown Seattle, which will serve as a meeting place for AI startups and entrepreneurs.

Seattle has tons of AI talent, but there’s no “culture of talking about it or meeting at events,” Yifan Zhang, executive director of the AI2 Incubator, told GeekWire. “That doesn’t happen often enough. So we’re creating a place where people can meet, and we can really create that kind of culture here.”

We started Seattle Tech Week with the same intention: to build community, one conversation at a time, bringing together people from all walks of life in technology — executives from major tech companies, startup founders, investors, students, and even people from local government. We’re excited to have another dedicated space for this community!

On the subject of incubatorsDon’t miss this LinkedIn post by Jacob Caggiano, who shares an interesting fact from each of the Seattle startup accelerators that presented at the Sunny Side Up with Seattle Accelerators + Incubators event at Seattle Tech Week. One of this year’s Tech Week events was the Future AI Builders Demo & Pitch Competition, hosted by Future/Builders, BELLE, Mentor X, and the Seattle Entrepreneurs Club. Contestants pitched their innovations to an audience of investors, industry experts, and other Tech Week attendees. Out of 15 pitches from AI companies, Certifi AI took first place.

From entrepreneurs potentially experiencing the “biggest break” of their career during a poker tournament, to learning one of the hardest parts of the startup journey (building a great team), to discussing AI ethics with Father Benanti, to networking while jogging around Green Lake, the week had it all!

Fitness was a big theme this year. In addition to the 100+ people who participated in Ascend’s Pitch & Run for the 2.5-mile sprint, run or walk around Green Lake, there was rock climbing, pickleball, numerous Walk & Talk events, basketball and strength training – and there was also a daily cold dip!

Our friends at Ascend also hosted the Valley VCs Love Seattle Startups event. The key takeaway: Seattle’s startup scene is growing, but we still have some work to do. Four VCs analyzed Seattle’s startup landscape from the perspective of an outsider with active investments in Seattle. They see a city full of tech talent, but with some missing pieces. Go-to-market strategies often lag behind tech capabilities; capital is available but often from outside the region, and stronger community cohesion is needed to connect established tech leaders with founder types. You can read some of the Ascend team’s favorite quotes in their blog post.

The Statsig team also brought their roadshow A/B Talks to Tech Week to provide a special complement to founders. CEO Vijaye Raji sat down with Linda Lian, CEO of Common Rom, Jared Roesch, CTO of OctoAI, and Justin Uberti, CTO of Fixie, to talk about their journey to becoming founders. Each of them shared their unique experiences and offered valuable perspectives on the startup journey. It was a great event (although they are all founders of Madrona portfolio companies, so we may be biased!). You can find Statsig’s 5 key takeaways in their blog post.

Madrona CEO Matt McIlwain took the stage at OneSixOne Ventures Seattle Venture Day. This Seattle Tech Week event brought together leaders in the ecosystem to discuss how the region’s technology and venture landscape has evolved over the past two to three decades. Matt touched on many topics, one of which was that the most important AI model is actually the business model. Look for the recording of that conversation here.

GeekWire published an article from one of the other panels that afternoon that offered some brutally honest advice that might make people think twice about starting a startup. You can read the full article here. But Maria Colacurcio, co-founder of Smartsheet and CEO of Syndio, shared:

“If you’re a pessimist, don’t do it. You have to be such an optimist – the glass is half full, there’s always another hand to play. You have to be an optimist, and you have to be super persistent.”

GeekWire published another story during Seattle Tech Week that grew out of the great discussion between Madrona CEO Soma Somasegar and AWS Vice President of AI and Data Swami Sivasubramanian during our AI Unleased event. If the opening of their story doesn’t entice you to read on, I don’t know what will!

“There’s an old saying in tech that companies date their computer vendor and marry their database vendor. So are AI models the equivalent of a one-night stand?”

Read GeekWire’s story for more details on that conversation, and stay tuned for our takeaways and the recording. But until then, one good takeaway from their discussion and many conversations throughout the week is that we’re still in the early days of AI. According to Swami, no one model will rule the world, which is also an early assumption we made at Madrona. Many industries are increasingly using multimodal AI, such as imagery in healthcare, to go well beyond simple “text-in, text-out” applications, solving different and larger problems in the process.

This year, even more events were added to the Seattle Tech Week program for the amazing women of this region, from a Tech Walky Talky to a Women in Bio Coffee Walk & Talk to a Women Founders and Funders Poker Night and more. During Trilogy Equity Partner’s Women in Tech luncheon, Elisa La Cava (Trilogy), Elizabeth Liu (Crowd Cow), Yoko Okano (First Row) and Amy Mezulis (Joon Care) shared their transparent, encouraging perspectives to a packed house. Key takeaways:

• • “Be prepared to put your hand on the doorknob. Step forward with confidence.” – Amy Mezulis
  • “Know yourself and find what suits you. Your path may not make sense for everyone, and that’s okay. It is a earned right to exist.” – Elizabeth Liu
  • “Trust your instincts. Make sure you share the same values.” – Yoko Okano

Madrona’s CEO Scott Jacobson participated in a panel discussion about the fundraising experiences of consumer startups in the Pacific Northwest, but the lessons shared can be applied to much more than just the consumer landscape.

• • Focus on building a great company first, not on getting venture capital funding. (Attracting venture capital can be difficult because exit multiples are lower in consumer than in software.)
  • Cast a wide net for funding beyond Seattle, for example in NY and LA
  • Manufacturing hardware and physical goods is not for the faint of heart due to long lead times and capital requirements. (Delivering software for devices or consumer-facing software is less complicated.)
  • High revenue and rapid growth do not automatically mean that your business is healthy and sustainable (especially in an industry with high customer acquisition costs).
  • Don’t underestimate the value of having a co-founder or finance leader who can bring financial discipline to your company.

It’s impossible to share insights from every event, but the Silicon Valley Bank rooftop mixer was the perfect way to cap off the week of bringing AI ideas to life. A quote from the “Transforming HR with AI” event at Humanly’s headquarters in Belleuve sums it up well:

“AI is a copilot, but you are the pilot.”

Nearly every founder and investor we spoke to throughout the week expressed optimism and excitement about where things are going and what the future holds for their companies and the local ecosystem. Geoff Entress, Managing Director of Pioneer Square Labs, summed it up after his panel hosted by OneSixOne Ventures during Seattle Tech Week: “I don’t think I’ve seen our community this active since the late ’90s and the first internet boom… I’m excited to see what’s coming in Seattle!”

Us too!