Announcing the Judges for the Seattle Meetup + Pitch Off

TechCrunch is headed to Seattle this Thursday for the annual Meetup + Pitch Off. And we are ready to announce our esteemed judges.

The pitch-off will consist of 10 startup companies presenting for 60 seconds on stage in front of TechCrunch Editors and tier 1 investors from the Pacific Northwest.

The winning team will get a free table at TechCrunch Disrupt SF Startup Alley this September. Second place gets two free tickets, and audience choice gets one free ticket.

Bummed you missed your chance to apply for the pitch-off? Fear not! TechCrunch has your back. We will randomly select 1 company from the audience to pitch their startup on stage as a part of the competition. So make sure to sign up for the meetup here.

And now for our fantastic judges:

Bill Bryant, DFJ

William K. (Bill) Bryant is a partner at DFJ. Bill has had early and instrumental involvement in more than 25 leading software, Internet, mobile, and digital media companies, as a founder, senior executive, investor, and board member. He has had founding roles with Visio (now part of Microsoft), Netbot (acquired by Excite), Qpass (acquired by Amdocs), Medio (Nokia), Mixxer, and Airworks. In these founding capacities, Bill drove definition of the core product and market strategy; raised >$150M in venture capital; recruited senior management teams; and built customer, partner and channel relationships in launching software products, Internet, and mobile services. Bill represents DFJ on the boards of Chef, Ping Identity, Yellowbrick, Reflect.io, Remitly and Bright Computing. In addition to his DFJ investments, he is an active angel investor with investments in Winshuttle, LiquidPlanner, Bonanza, and Socrata.

Linda Lian, Madrona Ventures

Linda joined Madrona in 2016 and works on identifying new investments and supporting the growth of Madronas portfolio companies.Linda loves working with passionate entrepreneurs to solve business challenges, evaluate options and make decisions about the future of their products and services.Prior to Madrona, Linda was at Lookout Mobile Security in San Francisco. Previous to that, she was with Morgan Stanleys Investment Banking group in NYC where she worked on strategic and sponsor-led transactions.Linda graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard concentrating in History & Literature with a secondary in Economics.She is particularly interested in consumerization of enterprise, dev-ops and software-defined infrastructure, security, and new mediums including AR/VR and live media.

James Newell,Voyager Capital

James has been working with high growth technology companies as an adviser and investor since 2005 and focuses on early stage and seed investments in the Pacific Northwest. He has served as a board member or observer at Casper, DoubleVerify, General Assembly, Sauce Labs and Zerto, among others.

Prior to joining Voyager, James worked for Institutional Venture Partners (IVP).. While with IVP, James worked on investments in AlienVault, Carbonite , Casper, Checkr, DoubleVerify, General Assembly, Kayak, LegalZoom, Prosper, Sauce Labs, SoFi and Zerto.

James previously worked with Maveron, a leading consumer focused venture firm based in Seattle and San Francisco and in business development for Zulily, a Maveron portfolio company. Earlier in his career, he worked in the Technology Investment Banking group of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

James earned a B.A. in Economics and a B.A. in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from the University of Washington. He has also earned his M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration in entrepreneurial management.

Jason Stoffer, Maveron

Jason joined Maveron in 2007 and is now a partner focused on investing in education, e-commerce and web-enabled consumer businesses. He is involved with the firms investments in General Assembly, Common, TrueFacet, Everlane, CourseHero, Dolls Kill and Dolly. Prior to joining Maveron, Jason served as senior director of strategic operations for Career Education Corp., where he co-founded and led admissions and marketing for IADT Online, a for-profit design school. He has also served as an associate at Spinnaker Ventures, an expansion-stage venture capital fund. Jason graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in economics from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Looking forward to seeing you all at the Showbox SoDo. There will be tons of time to connect with TechCrunch staff, the judges, and to grab a drink.

Buy tickets to the Seattle meetup on June 22 right here.

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