10-29-2015

Our Investment In Pioneer Square Labs

by Brad Feld

We are pleased to announce that we have completed our initial investment in Pioneer Square Labs (PSL). Based in Seattle, PSL is a startup studio, an 8-person team of founders, developers, and designers who rapidly test and validate new startup ideas before recruiting an executive team to build out an actual spin-off company.

The co-founders are Greg Gottesman, Geoff Entress, Mike Galgon, and Ben Gilbert. Greg is a co-founder of Madrona and long-time VC. Geoff worked with Greg at Madrona for a decade and is one of the most prolific and successful angel investors in the Pacific Northwest. Mike was the co-founder of aQuantive which was acquired by Microsoft for $6.2 billion. Ben was a co-founder of Madrona Labs with Greg.

PSL was announced recently and there’s an extremely comprehensive post explaining how it works at Top Seattle investors raise $12.5M for new ‘startup studio’ Pioneer Square LabsMarcelo Calbucci, who is part of PSL, explains in his post Next Chapter: Pioneer Square Labswhy he joined and what’s unique about the approach.

We are looking forward to working with Greg, Geoff, Mike, Ben, and the PSL team on helping create some great new companies.