Madrona Venture Group appoints former aQuantive CEO as managing director

“Brian has an amazing talent for identifying exceptional people and helping them develop ideas to their full potential,” said Madrona managing director Matt McIlwain. “That’s what he accomplished at aQuantive, growing the company from a small digital agency to a leading global technology marketing company. We have built a strong relationship with Brian these past ten years and are thrilled that he is joining the Madrona team.”

McAndrews served for eight years as the CEO of aQuantive, a global digital marketing company, and negotiated its $6bn acquisition by Microsoft in August 2007. The sale represents the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history. During his tenure at aQuantive, McAndrews took the company public, launched the Atlas advertising division and DrivePM ad network, and led the acquisition of Razorfish and 14 other companies around the world.

After aQuantive was acquired by Microsoft, McAndrews served as senior vice president at Microsoft, founding and leading the Advertising and Publisher Solutions (APS) Group. The APS business group is today responsible for approximately $3bn in revenue and for building and marketing the Microsoft advertising platform, which includes search, display, first-party ad networks and emerging media. McAndrews left the company in January 2009 after the transition of aQuantive into Microsoft was successfully completed.

“Madrona is a leading, early stage venture capital firm with an outstanding track record of partnering closely with entrepreneurs,” said McAndrews. “As we learned at aQuantive, technology-driven innovation occurs in all market cycles and I am excited about jumping in and helping talented teams take their ideas and build them into lasting companies. The idea of helping identify, build and foster other promising, innovative businesses in the Pacific Northwest had an appeal that was simply too strong to pass up.”

Madrona has been investing in early stage technology companies primarily in the Pacific Northwest since 1995. The firm invests across the IT spectrum including consumer internet, digital media and advertising, commercial software and services, networking and infrastructure, and wireless. Madrona currently manages over $675m and was an early investor in companies such as Amazon.com, aQuantive, Isilon Systems, iConclude, Farecast.com (now Bing Travel), and ShareBuilder.

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