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The new Technical Advisory Board at Pioneer Square Labs includes top researchers, executives, entrepreneurs, and investors. Top row, from left: Ed Lazowska, Yejin Choi, Ali Farhadi. Middle row: Lili Cheng, Shwetak Patel, Joe Beda. Bottom row: Bharat Shah, Jesse Rothstein, Diego Oppenheimer. (PSL Image)
Pioneer Square Labs is tapping some of Seattle’s leading technology researchers and innovators with the creation of a new advisory board to help support the early stage companies in its startup studio and venture fund portfolio.
PSL’s new Technical Advisory Board (TAB) will work closely with the firm’s internal staff, as well as associated startups, to provide counsel across technology themes and support company sourcing and diligence.
The group includes top researchers from the University of Washington; execs at tech giants; and veteran startup operators. They include:
Ed Lazowska (chair), professor and Bill & Melinda Gates Chair Emeritus at the University of Washington’s computer science school
Yejin Choi, the Wissner-Slivka Chair of the UW’s computer science school and a senior research director at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Ai2)
Ali Farhadi, CEO of Ai2 and a professor at the UW’s computer science school
Lili Cheng, corporate vice president of Microsoft Cloud and AI
Shwetak Patel, Washington Research Foundation Entrepreneurship Endowed Professor at the UW’s computer science school, and head of health technologies at Google
Joe Beda, founder of Kubernetes, and founder of Heptio (acquired by VMware)
Bharat Shah, former corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure Cloud Security and Microsoft for Startups
Jesse Rothstein, co-founder and former CEO of ExtraHop
Diego Oppenheimer, partner at Factory and founder and former CEO of Algorithmia (acquired by DataRobot)
The creation of the group was driven in part by the firm’s recent focus on AI, said PSL Managing Director Greg Gottesman.
“We believe that AI will fundamentally change the technology landscape from infrastructure to applications, and we are investing in deeper technologies that are at the forefront of this change,” he said. “We wanted to bring on world-class expertise as we developed our theses and worked with entrepreneurs in these spaces, so adding TAB with members who are the best in these areas makes a lot of sense.”
Gottesman said the board was modeled off similar programs at other venture firms.
The group’s nine members will receive equity in PSL’s venture fund and meet regularly.
“The opportunity to connect with us, top-notch entrepreneurs, and each other is appealing and useful as well,” Gottesman noted.
PSL raised $20 million for its third fund last year to support its studio, which has spun out more than 35 companies including Boundless, Recurrent, SingleFile, and others. The PSL Ventures fund raised $100 million in 2021. PSL Ventures invests in PSL studio spinouts, but does not lead investment rounds in those companies. It does, however, regularly lead rounds in external (non-studio) companies.
Earlier this year PSL inked a co-investing partnership with Silicon Valley venture firm Mayfield to fund AI-focused startups.
