We had a great weekend with our participants, mentors, volunteers and judges. We really appreciate everyone’s help and participation!
SEE FINAL RESULTS
We will kickoff the Blockchain workshop with a Panel event to educate everyone on the fundamentals of Blockchain technology, platforms, use cases and token based business models. This will be followed by the Startup Ideation Weekend workshop where teams will work together to formulate exciting Blockchain startup concepts.
JOIN WAITLISTDate Thursday Oct 12, 5:30p – 9:30p
Location 320 Westlake Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109
Who should attend Business executives and professionals, Software Developers and Blockchain enthusiasts who are interested in learning about Blockchain technology. Blockchain experts welcome as well!
Date Friday Oct 27, 6p – Sunday Oct 29, 6p
Location Madrona Venture Group offices, 999 3rd Ave, 34th Floor, Seattle, WA 98104
Who should attend Business professionals, software developers, Blockchain enthusiasts and experts who are interested developing exciting startup concepts based on Blockchain technology.
No prior Blockchain experience required to participate in the workshop.
Participation is limited to 50 people. Your workshop ticket will include the fee for the Panel event
We’ve assembled a set of blockchain resources for our participants to reference in preparation for the event. You'll find everything you'll need here to dive deeper into blockchain.
VIEW RESOURCESLearn
• Learn about Blockchain platforms, building Smart contracts and Token-based business models from industry experts
Pitch
• Pitch your idea for a Blockchain startup concept
• You will have 60 seconds to make a pitch
• Vote to select the 6 best ideas
Team Up
• Vote on which team you want to join
• Meet your team members
Explore
• Explore your business opportunity in depth
• Validate concept with customers
Prototype
• Build an initial mockup or prototype
• Get feedback from potential users
Plan
• Develop initial business plan and model
• Meet with mentors to get feedback
Finalize
• Finalize your prototype and business plan
• Get final round of feedback from mentors
Present
• Demo your prototype and present your plan to the judges
• Defend the plan
Compete
• Winners will be announced by the judging panel
• Win exciting prizes from various sponsors
Jay Bartot
CTO, Madrona Venture Labs
Jay is a technologist, machine-learning enthusiast and serial entrepreneur whose startup career spans over 20 years and includes co-founding a number of venture-funded data/analytics companies which were acquired by companies such as Microsoft, Nielsen/NetRatings and Hulu. Jay enjoys playing music, collecting guitars and tinkering with his 3D printer.
Shirish Nadkarni
Serial Tech Entrepreneur
Shirish Nadkarni is a serial entrepreneur with proven success in creating multiple consumer businesses that have scaled to tens of millions of users worldwide. Shirish was the co-founder of Livemocha, the world’s largest language learning site with 15+ million registered members from over 200 countries. Livemocha was acquired by RosettaStone in 2013. Prior to Livemocha, Shirish was the founder of TeamOn Systems, a mobile wireless e-mail pioneer that was acquired by Research in Motion in 2002. The TeamOn technology served as the core foundation for Blackberry Internet E-mail which serviced over 50 million BlackBerry users.
Jagan Nemani
Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Madrona Venture Labs
Jagan is an innovator, serial entrepreneur and blockchain-enthusiast who has built innovative products and high growth businesses from ground up. He is passionate about building products that deliver best-in-class customer experience, using technologies that disrupt the current way of doing things. He believes blockchain is one such technology that would change the way we do our jobs. As Chicago Booth MBA, strategy consultant, product executive, entrepreneur, speaker and author; he has well rounded experience across different industries and different size companies.
S. Somasegar
Managing Director, Madrona Ventures
Soma joined Madrona in November 2015 and is a Managing Director at Madrona. Prior to Madrona, Soma had a successful twenty-seven year career at Microsoft Corporation. His last role at Microsoft was Corporate Vice President of the Developer Division. Soma has long been an angel investor with investments across a wide range of technology areas both in the U.S. and internationally. At Madrona, he is focusing on Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Applications, Developer centric platforms and tools, and the emergence of new technologies such as VR/AR.
Sharon LaDay
Blockchain Ecosystem Leader, IBM
Sharon LaDay comes to the blockchain industry with a background in enterprise infrastructure solutions, startup investing, and education technology. Prior to her current role as Blockchain Ecosystem Leader at IBM, Sharon was Vice President, Business Development for Macmillan New Ventures where she developed and executed growth strategies with a portfolio of startups. Her additional startup experience comes from her time at edtech startups like Wimba which was acquired by Blackboard Inc., and storage networking startups like Andiamo Systems which was acquired by Cisco Systems.
Ted Leung
CTO, NewAlchemy
Ted is an experienced technologist in software strategy, design and development; strong background with emerging technologies such as Internet of Things. Builder of high trust, high performance, startup teams. Over a decade of hands on involvement in multiple open source communities. Past: The Walt Disney Company, Sun Microsystems, Open Source Applications Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, Apple. Author, speaker, semi-professional photographer. Named a Seattle PI (now Geekwire) “Geek of the Week” in 2009.
Dave Parker
Venture Partner at Seven Peaks Ventures
Dave Parker is a Venture Partner for Seven Peaks Ventures, an early stage (Seed & A Round) venture fund based in Bend OR with an office in Seattle. As a five-time founder he sold three and closed two of his startups. As a Board Member he’s been part of six additional transaction on both the buy and sell side. He ran global programs for UP Global (Startup Weekend/Startup America) including Startup Week, Weekend, Next and Digest. His community program, “6 Month Startup - ideation to revenue” focuses on Founder Development in the Seattle market.
Bill Shihara
Co-Founder/CEO, Bittrex
Bill is Co-Founder and CEO of Bittrex. He was previously a Security Engineering Manager at Amazon and Manager of Security Threat Analysis and Security Engineering at BlackBerry. He drove the anti-malware and security automation strategy for the BlackBerry ecosystem to protect customers from threats before they happen. Previous to working at BlackBerry, Bill spent 11 years at Microsoft working on the Windows Operating System and the Trustworthy Security team.
Matthew Kerner
Partner GM - Blockchain - Microsoft
Matthew is an engineering leader specializing in enterprise-grade computing platforms, currently leading Microsoft's blockchain engineering. He has over 13 years of experience building teams of high performers to solve complex technical and business problems across organizations and technology stacks. Mathew has a proven leadership track record in understanding customer and business needs, and working collaboratively to remove impediments to service scale and to expand the addressable market. Matthew has domain expertise in blockchain, cloud computing, market expansion, service resiliency & service design to deliver availability, scalability, COGS efficiency, security and operability.
Joe Roets
Founder, Dragonchain Foundation
Joe Roets is a successful software and systems architect with experience as CIO, CTO, and Senior Vice President across industries. For over 20 years he has worked at companies such as Disney, Lockheed Martin, Sprint, FBI, DoD, and createTank, and has spearheaded new technology groups and led software engineering teams both large and small. He has been involved with blockchain and cryptocurrency projects since 2010, working with Coinbase, Overstock, Symbiont, Bloq, and Disney. He currently heads the Dragonchain Foundation and Dragonchain, Inc.
Peter Vessenes
Managing Director, New Alchemy
Peter has consulted for and advised numerous groups about the Bitcoin technology, including the Department of Treasury, FinCEN and the US Senate GAO. He has introduced Bitcoin to and helped build Bitcoin practices at major law firms like Perkins Coie, and is a trusted advisor to big four accounting firms like Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Price Waterhouse Coopers and major Venture Capital firms like Lightspeed Venture Partners, DFJ, Ribbit Capital, Pantera Capital, Cedar Hill Capital and others.
Prakash Sundaresan
CEO, TrustedKey
Prakash is a technology industry leader, innovator and investor. With over 20 years of industry experience building world-class products, Prakash is a recognized expert in the areas of Big Data, Cloud Computing and IOT. Previously, Prakash was the CTO of Microsoft Asia-Pacific R&D.
Ryan Straus
Counsel, Fenwick & West LLP
Ryan Straus focuses his practice on providing strategic advice to companies on legal, policy and business issues relating to financial technology. As an attorney with a background in both technology and financial services, Ryan assists clients with payment and lending matters, including electronic payments, mobile payments, prepaid cards, virtual and digital currencies, consumer lending, and federal and state licensing. Ryan is a frequent speaker on a wide range of consumer finance topics, including issues related to new product development, operational compliance, and Bitcoin and the Blockchain, and has been interviewed by, and written for, many national publications, including Forbes, Time, American Banker, Bloomberg Brief: Financial Regulation, Communications of the ACM, the Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists, and The Hill.
Claire White
Partner, K&L Gates
Claire is a partner in the firm’s Seattle office, and a member of the corporate practice group. Her practice focuses on representing startup and growth-stage companies and venture capital and private equity investors across a wide range of corporate, securities, and finance matters and industries. In addition, her experience includes securities transactions ranging from seed and venture capital to IPO, mergers and acquisitions, credit and debt financings, and corporate governance matters.
Daniel Li
Senior Associate, Madrana Venture Group
Daniel joined Madrona in 2015 and works on identifying new investments and supporting the growth of Madrona’s portfolio companies. He is also actively engaged in the firm’s activities in the Seattle community through organizations such as Challenge Seattle, where he serves as a Principal Advisor, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where he serves on the Evergreen Fund, Startup Weekend, and the Greater Foundation. Daniel has been active in developing Madrona’s thought leadership around machine learning, autonomous vehicles, eSports, and VR/AR and is a frequent contributor to publications such as TechCrunch and the Seattle Times. He also serves as a board observer and works closely with the management teams of several portfolio companies such as Eventbase, Matcherino, and SayKara. Dan led the investment in Gawkbox in 2017 and sits on the board of that company.
Rahul Sood
CEO, Unikrn
Rahul Sood is the CEO of Unikrn, a Seattle-based esports startup. Previous to Unikrn, Sood created the first incubation fund for startups at Microsoft, and eventually Microsoft consolidated their global startup activities under Sood’s leadership. In June 2013, he launched Microsoft Ventures. A serial entrepreneur, Sood spent 18 years in multiple startups prior to joining Microsoft. He founded luxury and gaming computer manufacturer Voodoo, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. Voodoo brought the ENVY and OMEN product lines to HP, contributing advanced technologies such as commercial liquid cooling and an increased focus on design. Unikrn is his new baby - their mission is to heighten the experience of watching and participating in esports by introducing safe, regulated, and responsible live in game betting to esports tournaments and video games. Since November 2014, Unikrn has raised a total of 10 million dollars with investors such as Ashton Kutcher, Mark Cuban, Liz Murdoch, Shari Redstone, Binary Capital and many others. Unikrn signed an exclusive global partnership with one of the largest wagering companies in the world, and has opened their doors to multiple international markets. Unikrn has been featured on Forbes, Fortune, ESPN, CNBC and countless publications around the world.
Zeyad Rajabi
Principle Program Manager, Microsoft
Zeyad is a Program Manager on the Blockchain team within Azure. Zeyad has been a PM at Microsoft for over twelve years across multiple organizations, including Office, and has worked on several v1 products, including Microsoft Sway. Zeyad drives strategy, customer insights, customer engagements and programs, and product development (around middleware services) on the Blockchain team.
Mike Fridgen
CEO, Madrona Venture Labs
Mike is a long-time entrepreneur, having built multiple successful Seattle companies, including Farecast and Decide. After selling Decide to eBay in 2013, Mike was the GM of eBay’s Seattle office. Mike is a Seattle startups and sports nut.
Maria Karaivanova
Principal, Madrona Venture Group
Maria has nearly a decade of deep technology experience, garnered through roles at some of the world’s leading technology companies, including Cloudflare, Intel and Boeing. Maria was head of business development and an executive team member at Cloudflare, a San Francisco – based web performance and security company, where she helped build the company from 25 employees to unicorn status. Prior to Cloudflare, Maria was an investor at Intel Capital with a focus on enterprise technologies and cloud security.
Satbir Khanuja
President and CEO, Datasphere
Satbir Khanuja is responsible for leading the overall growth and managing day-to-day operations of DataSphere Technologies. He previously served as SecondSpace's senior vice president of marketing and business development, responsible for the company's partnership, traffic-building and revenue-generating initiatives. He also spent seven years at Amazon.com as a member of the executive team and was vice president of Amazon.com's Worldwide Traffic organization, responsible for driving billions of dollars in sales through free and paid traffic to all Amazon.com websites worldwide. Previously, he was vice president and general manager of Amazon.com's IMDb.com and In-Theater businesses, where he created all business functions and built the division into one of the 50 most-trafficked websites in the world.
Lawrence Lerner
President, Lerner Consulting
During his career, Lawrence has worked in many industries in multiple roles (executive, lead technologist, board member) while growing businesses 25% year-on-year. The common thread? He’s enabled digital transformation, scaling up businesses using edge technologies and processes creating $100Ms in new revenue. Whether it was re-architecting Dun&Bradstreet’s core product (35% growth), delivering the next generation of coupons across 31,000 Retailers, growing an outsourcing business by $100M, defining Motorola’s smartphone strategy or helping launch a dozen startups he’s generated wealth for businesses, owners and shareholders. Today Lawrence creates sustainable advantages in companies as an interim executive and business coach. He’s currently the Technical Evangelist for RChain, a scalable blockchain company building networks capable of 40,000 transactions per second.
Jesse Proudman
Distinguished Engineer & Entrepreneur in Residence, IBM
Jesse Proudman has spent the last 20 years as a founder and startup executive. As the founder of Blue Box, Jesse helped raise $23M in venture capital and develop the company into a Seattle based leading private cloud provider. Blue Box was acquired by IBM in 2015. Jesse is now a Distinguished Engineer and Entrepreneur in Residence at IBM focused on the Crypto-Asset space. Jesse has been active in the entrepreneurial space in Seattle as a board member for the UW Buerk Center, a mentor for the UW Jones Foster Accelerator and for the Techstars Alexa Accelerator.
Sanjay Puri
Co-Founder and General Partner, 9Mile Labs
Sanjay is a marketing and product management leader who has successfully helped commercialize a wide range of breakthrough technology offerings -- spanning roles with innovative startups and mid-sized growth companies, as well as top global enterprise / B2B organizations. As a products executive at startups (iConclude, Opsware, Edifecs) and large companies (Microsoft and HP), Sanjay has helped companies achieve successful exits and exceptional revenue growth. Sanjay holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from IIT-BHU and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.
Kenny Rowe
Head of Operations, MakerDAO & COO, RChain Cooperative
Kenny is an entrepreneur who brings a focus on governance, community building and collaboration to projects across the blockchain industry. Currently, he serves as head of operations at MakerDAO, and COO of Rchain Cooperative. Additionally, as a senior consultant at CoinFund, Kenny advises early stage Blockchain projects. Such projects include Aragon and SweetBridge. Kenny is also the founder of OnChain consulting and the Seattle Ethereum Meetup group. His previous career was focused on IT and ecommerce for Newell Brands in various management roles.
Mark Schnitzer
Software Engineering Manager, Microsoft
Mark Schnitzer has 35 years of experience in finance and software. He has been leading engineering teams building analytical services at Microsoft since 2006. Mark led development of the ModelWare system for Morgan Stanley. He democratized access to SEC filings as the founder and President of FreeEDGAR. He was a distressed securities analyst and an investment banker prior to founding FreeEDGAR. He served in a number of leadership positions as a founding member of the XBRL consortium.
Ryan Tate
Software Engineer & Core Author, GitToken
Ryan Tate is an independent software engineer and core author of GitToken, an Ethereum ERC20 Token-based open-source reward point system for GitHub organizations. Previously, Ryan worked as an enterprise software engineering consultant for Consensus Systems LLC, was an investment analyst for Threshold Group LLC, and has been a serial entrepreneur in the blockchain space since 2012.
Arean Van Veelan
Co-Founder and CTO, Offer Up, Inc.
Arean Van Veelan is a technologist with nearly 20 years cross functional experience with the design, building and management of software products. He is currently involved in management of products and teams touching social media, cloud, crowd-sourcing, mobile app development and LBS. Prior to Offer Up, Mr. Van Veelan designed, sold, implemented enterprise and consumer products at Boeing, Philips, Marconi, Union Pacific, FirstGroup, CAT, GE and other large corporations.
Ejiro Akporobaro
Madrona Venture Labs
Priya Nagar
TiE Seattle
Savitha Swaminathan
TiE Seattle
Ben Zulauf
Madrona Venture Labs
The purpose of the Ideation Workshops to help jump start the formation of new companies based around innovative technologies. Our first Ideation Clinic In June 2017 was based around Machine Learning which showcased many interesting ML based startup concepts many of which are being actively pursued by the winning teams. In the future, we will explore other interesting technologies such as AR/VR, IoT etc.
You don’t need to have prior Blockchain Learning experience to participate in this workshop. We have mentors with deep Blockchain experience who are available to help you. However, to get the most out of the workshop, we would recommend learning the basics of Blockchain technology. Our Blockchain resources section will provide you with guidance on how to get up to speed quickly. In addition, we will also be holding an education event on October 12th that will go into more details around Blockchain platforms, applications use cases and business models.
We would recommend learning the basics of Blockchain technology prior to the event. Our Blockchain resources section will provide you with guidance on how to get up to speed quickly. It is mandatory for all Workshop participants to also attend the Panel event on Oct 12th as it will provide valuable educational content to prepare for the Workshop. In addition, the Startup Ideation and Team formation will happen at the Panel event.
We will kickoff the Blockchain workshop with a Panel event on Oct 12th to educate everyone on the fundamentals of Blockchain technology, platforms, use cases and token based business models. This will be followed by the Startup Ideation Weekend workshop on Oct 27-29 where teams will work together to formulate exciting Blockchain startup concepts. Your fee for the Workshop includes the fee for the Panel event.
It is mandatory for the Workshop participants to attend the Panel event as the Ideation and Team formation will start at the Panel event. Participants are encouraged to bring their own ideas and pitch them to other participants. Participants then get to vote on which idea they want to work on. Once the teams are formed, they can start collaborating on their startup concept in advance of the Workshop. We will establish a Slack channel to connect all the team members with each other.
The Startup Ideation Workshop will begin on a Friday evening (Oct 27). Teams should be prepared to begin work on their startup concept in earnest including developing a solid business plan and a dApp prototype. Throughout the weekend, teams will be supported by experienced mentors with deep startup and Blockchain experience. By Sunday afternoon, teams should have finalized their business plan presentation and application prototype to present to a distinguished panel of judges who will select the top 3 winning concepts. Each of the winning teams will receive exciting prizes and the support to continue working on their ideas to turn them into real companies.
Please refer to the Terms and Conditions outlined on our website.
Please visit our Terms & Conditions page if you have any questions concerning legal terms,
refund policy, or other details.
