Madrona Promotes Jacobson, Jordan, Porter

Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group, known as one of the earliest backers of Amazon.com, is promoting partners Scott Jacobson, Len Jordan, and Tim Porter to managing director.

In a release, the firm says the trio led six of Madrona’s 14 investments in 2011, including deals with B.C.-based suit-maker Indochino, and Oregon-based cloud-computing companies AppFog and Cedexis.

Madrona is investing from its $250 million fourth fund, which was raised in 2008, and manages more than $650 million. Madrona says all but one of its investments in 2011 were based Seattle, Vancouver, or Portland. Madrona also notes that it seeded five companies in 2011, four of which were incubated at the firm’s offices.

Jacobson, Jordan, and Porter join Tom Alberg, Paul Goodrich, Greg Gottesman, Brian McAndrews, and Matt McIlwain as managing directors. The three new appointments all have roots at the Seattle area’s biggest tech companies.

Jacobson worked at Amazon.com, including on the Kindle project, before joining Madrona in 2007. Jordan previously was a general partner at Frazier Technology Ventures, and before that was a senior vice president at RealNetworks. Porter previously worked in corporate development for Microsoft, handling acquisitions and investments.

Author: Curt Woodward

Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem. A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.