Madrona Venture Labs spinout Zeitworks raises $2M, taps Seattle tech vet Jay Bartot as new CEO

Zeitworks boss Jay Bartot. (Zeitworks photo)

New funding: Zeitworks, a Seattle-based startup helping companies improve business processes, has raised an additional $ 2 million and hired a new CEO.

New managing director: Long-time Seattle tech veteran Jay Bartot joins Zeitworks as CEO, replacing Ryan Windham, who has led the company since it was spun off from Madrona Venture Labs (MVL), the startup studio within the Madrona Venture Group.

Bartot’s background: Previously, he was CTO at MVL and worked at Hulu and Alliance Health Networks. Bartot also co-founded startups like Medify (which was acquired by Alliance) and Farecast, the flight price prediction startup that was incubated within Madrona and eventually acquired by Microsoft in 2008.

Why Zeitworks? Bartot worked closely with Zeitworks when it went from an idea to an actual company within MVL. When Windham announced last year that it would be stepping down for personal health reasons, Zeitworks board member asked Bartot to step in.

“Although I love the MVL team and am very proud of the process that we have built and developed over the past five years, I felt in my soul the ‘call of the wild’ to lead temporary work and finally to an operational role” said Bartot GeekWire.

What’s next? With the new funding from Jazz Ventures and the Madrona Venture Group, Zeitworks plans to add more pilot customers and expand its software that uses machine learning to suggest improvements to a company’s repetitive business processes.

The software records data such as mouse movements or keyboard clicks, cracks the numbers and then recommends interventions – for example automation or expansion of a process. Use cases are claims processing, employee onboarding, order processing or returns management.

“There is a tremendous opportunity to leverage this data and deliver tremendous value to customers who want transparency in their manual / human processes and ultimately want to optimize their operations and bottom line,” said Bartot.

Zeitworks plans to double the size of its six-person team. The company has raised $ 6.5 million to date, including a $ 4.5 million round last year. Other supporters include the former CEO of the Zillow Group, Spencer Rascoff. Ben Elowitz, co-founder of Blue Nile and Wetpaint, is a co-founder of Zeitworks but has no operational role. Windham, the former CEO of Cedexis, remains on the board and supports strategic projects.

“Jay’s extensive track record of building innovative data and machine learning-based products makes him uniquely positioned to lead the company through the next phase of product and technology development,” said Jazz Ventures partner John Lee, who received the new funding.