Jay Bartot

Jay Bartot is a serial technology entrepreneur and innovator with 20 years of experience building startups from the ground up. He specializes in developing data and machine-learning applications for businesses and consumers. Jay co-founded, raised capital, and built several technology startups, culminating in acquisitions for Vhoto (sold to Hulu in 2015), Medify (sold to Alliance Health Networks in 2012), Farecast (sold to Microsoft in 2008) and AdRelevance (sold to Nielson/NetRatings in 2002).

A creative risk-taker, Jay is passionate about developing and vetting ideas, providing vision and strategy, and building high-performing teams. Throughout his career, Jay has amassed bilateral expertise in strategic technology leadership and hands-on technology development.

Jay’s experience spans technology verticals, including eCommerce, online advertising, travel, healthcare, mobile videography, people analytics, business process intelligence, data privacy, and security and compliance—each using data and machine-learning technologies to solve business and consumer problems.

As CTO and Managing Director at Madrona Venture Labs, Jay and his team incubate exceptional startups. He provides support and expertise across the business, including startup ideation, technical vision, market research, customer validation, product development, technical requirements analysis, technical architecture, data and machine-learning application design, pitch deck development, and founder, technical leaders, and team recruitment.

Jay also co-leads Go Vertical, a series of startup creation workshops focused on technology entrepreneurship. Go Vertical has attracted more than 150 participants, identified over 50 startup concepts, and launched several companies, including 2 with venture funding.