Morado Ventures

Founding Partners Ash Patel and Mike Marquez lead all investment decisions. Patel brings the technical and product lens from his 15 years at Yahoo, where he served as Chief Product Officer and SVP of Platform Engineering. Marquez contributes the strategic and M&A perspective from his roles running corporate development at both Yahoo and CBS Interactive. Corporate Venture Partner Patrick McGill and Operating Partner Henry Sohn support sourcing and portfolio company operations.

Morado leans on its founding partners’ deep Silicon Valley operator networks, built over decades at Yahoo and CBS Interactive, to access founder referrals. Corporate Venture Partner Patrick McGill provides a distinct sourcing channel through relationships with corporate venture arms at Dentsu, Telefonica, and Volkswagen, creating a pipeline of deals that may later align with strategic acquirers. The firm publicly states it prefers introductions through its existing network.

Morado positions itself as an active seed-stage partner rather than a passive co-investor. Its partners collaborate directly with founders on product strategy and execution, reflecting an operator-heavy approach shaped by Patel’s experience scaling Yahoo’s engineering organization. The firm does not publicly disclose check sizes or whether it consistently leads rounds.

Morado explicitly focuses on seed-stage companies, investing at the earliest institutional round. Its deal memos highlight investments made at the seed stage in companies that later raised significant follow-on rounds, including Scribe, which reached a $1.3 billion valuation in its 2024 Series C. The firm occasionally participates in early growth rounds for existing portfolio companies.

Morado’s current thesis centers on data-fueled companies tackling industrial, health, and infrastructure challenges through software and hardware innovation. The firm has publicly stated its focus areas — AI, data infrastructure, industrial IoT, robotics, autonomy, computer vision, and health tech — implying minimal activity in consumer internet, media, or pure-play business model innovations outside these technical domains.

Patrick McGill’s role as Corporate Venture Partner suggests Morado actively facilitates co-investment relationships between portfolio companies and corporate venture groups. His track record includes launching Best Buy’s Digital Media fund and working with Telefonica Ventures, indicating Morado can route deals toward strategic corporate capital when it aligns with a portfolio company’s market.

Yes, Morado publishes investment memos on its blog explaining why the partnership backed specific companies, including KonstructIQ, Vena Vitals, Metrist, and Flox. These posts are co-authored by Ash Patel and Mike Marquez and provide transparency into the firm’s screening criteria: complex technical problems, data-centric moats, and industries overdue for automation.