Tom Alberg, a Seattle enterprise and civic chief who performed an instrumental position within the creation of industries starting from e-commerce to wi-fi communications, died peacefully at his dwelling on Friday. He was 82.
An investor, lawyer and champion of Pacific Northwest tech, Alberg was identified nationally for his early funding in Amazon and his longtime position on the corporate’s board. However in his beloved hometown of Seattle, his legacy extends far past serving to to launch one of the crucial influential corporations on the earth.
Alberg was a outstanding lawyer for aerospace and tech corporations, and govt vp of McCaw Mobile Communications, a groundbreaking telecom firm. He co-founded Madrona Venture Group, a enterprise capital powerhouse that has fueled the expansion of among the area’s best-known tech corporations. He was central within the creation of the Alliance of Angels, serving to to provide numerous early stage startups an opportunity at long-term success.
Via all of it, Alberg developed a fame as a visionary, a key behind-the-scenes participant in regional enterprise and civic initiatives, a humble mover-and-shaker who was optimistic by nature and animated by the promise of the longer term.
“Tom noticed one thing in Amazon earlier than most individuals did,” wrote Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in a 2020 letter marking Madrona’s twenty fifth anniversary.
“I believe it was as a result of he shared my imaginative and prescient that the Web was a disruptive power that might enhance enterprise and folks’s lives,” he mentioned. “We had been promoting books however had been a tech firm at coronary heart and had the chance to make use of a revolutionary know-how to create a greater buyer expertise. So he wrote us a examine.”
My pal and a pal to many, Tom Alberg, has handed away. He was an early investor in Amazon and served on our board for 23 years. Tom was a visionary and likewise only a great, good man. I used to be so fortunate to have you ever in my life, Tom. We are going to all miss you dearly. pic.twitter.com/JsRvxt8rI0
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) August 6, 2022
Alberg was on the Amazon board for 23 years, stepping down in 2019.
“His skilled and civic accomplishments had been many,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy mentioned in a tweet Saturday. “However, what impressed me most was his character — humble, excessive integrity, missionary, cared about his group — nearly as good a man as they arrive. Realized quite a bit from Tom. Will miss him.”
These near Alberg praised his dedication to his group and devotion to his household, which included 5 youngsters. He acted in management roles for the Pacific Science Center, the Intiman Theatre and the Technology Alliance. He based the nonprofit Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center and an esteemed vineyard.
“Via his work, imaginative and prescient, and humanity, he had a profound affect on each our trade and group,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella mentioned on Saturday.
Alberg remained lively in lots of organizations till experiencing a stroke final 12 months. Latest roles included his participation with Challenge Seattle, a coalition of native high CEOs that’s tackling knotty regional points together with homelessness and academic inequities.
One among Alberg’s longtime pals and colleagues, John Stanton, the Seattle Mariners chairman, wi-fi trade veteran and investor, described him as “curious, fiercely clever however mild,” within the foreword to Alberg’s 2021 guide, “Flywheels.”
“As a lawyer, govt, board member, investor, and, crucially, as a social entrepreneur concerned in every thing from autonomous autos to natural farming and the challenges of homelessness, Tom has been one of many seams holding the quilt of the Pacific NW collectively,” wrote Stanton, who labored with Alberg at McCaw Mobile.
In announcing Alberg’s death, his Madrona colleagues wrote that “Tom was merely an incredible particular person… He had immense imaginative and prescient and braveness to take dangers whereas not looking for the limelight or recognition for his private affect.”
Alberg by no means stopped desirous about what was subsequent. In his early 80s, in what can be the ultimate years his life, he was penning commentaries about the potential for quantum computing, commissioning research concerning the promise of self-driving automobiles, and writing a guide about what he noticed because the vital want for tech and civic leaders to work collectively for the mutual good thing about their communities.
“He’s a person who sees solely the imaginative and prescient,” mentioned Problem Seattle CEO and former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, in 2020. “He doesn’t let folks say ‘no’ to a imaginative and prescient and believes that in the event you empower them by making them take into consideration a imaginative and prescient of the longer term, there’s most likely not an entire lot we are able to’t accomplish.”
The pull of native roots
Born in 1940, Alberg grew up in a time when many noticed Seattle as a sleepy outpost fueled by timber and fishing. He graduated from Ballard Excessive Faculty the place he was class president twice. He left the town to attend Harvard as an undergraduate, and earned a regulation diploma from Columbia College in 1965.
He practiced regulation in New York for a time, however was wanting to return to his hometown, which felt to a younger Alberg as extra ripe for alternative than the Massive Apple and its entrenched corporations and social construction.
Alberg joined the agency that’s now Perkins Coie the place he was principal counsel for aviation giants Boeing Firm and Alaska Airways in addition to early know-how corporations. Round that point Alberg was changing into fascinated by client tech and was an early adopter of the VCR and Apple II pc.
“The den of our home was like a cauldron of the longer term with all of the devices,” mentioned his son John Alberg in an earlier GeekWire interview.
Whereas an achieved legal professional, Alberg was tugged by entrepreneurial yearnings that he traced to his Swedish paternal grandfather who had immigrated to America many years earlier. So in 1990, he went to McCaw Mobile, first as a lawyer, then an organization chief. 4 years later, McCaw merged with AT&T.
Alberg wasn’t eager to hitch a large, bureaucratic firm. He was, nonetheless, keen to remain in innovation. The next 12 months he made two daring selections that catapulted his profession {and professional} stature.
1995, a pivotal 12 months
In 1995, a beginner to Seattle named Jeff Bezos was searching for buyers for his nascent digital bookstore. Alberg was one of many folks he approached. Alberg didn’t know a lot concerning the web, “however I knew some due to McCaw, and I did suppose it was an enormous deal,” he instructed GeekWire in a 2020 interview.
With encouragement from his son John, Alberg invested in Amazon’s seed spherical and the next 12 months joined its board. Bezos praised his contributions when Alberg left the board after serving for 23 years.
“I’ll miss his sound judgment, deep nicely of enterprise & life expertise, and his fast wit,” Bezos tweeted on the time. “He’s a sensible enterprise particular person and even higher human.”
Alberg acknowledged that he had underestimated Amazon’s potential, even when he determined to write down that game-changing examine.
“When it began, I don’t suppose Jeff or any of us had any thought of what Amazon would develop to,” Alberg instructed GeekWire in 2019. “We thought promoting books on the web had some actual prospects, however the focus was books. Perhaps we might promote CDs, finally.”
However Amazon wasn’t Alberg’s solely massive wager in 1995. That 12 months he and three pals — Bill Ruckelshaus, former head of the U.S. EPA twice over and former appearing director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Jerry Grinstein, former CEO of Burlington Northern Railroad and Delta; and Perkins Coie accomplice Paul Goodrich — joined forces to create what they known as Madrona Funding Group, a car for backing different promising Northwest entrepreneurs.
The audacity of the transfer nonetheless shocked Alberg many years later.
“I don’t know why we had been prepared to take this threat,” Alberg as soon as instructed GeekWire. The group had monetary means, however not huge sources. “By some means we had been pondering, nicely, we’d make these investments and 5 years later they is likely to be price one thing,” he recalled.
Madrona Enterprise Group, because it’s now identified, has invested in additional than 200 early-stage corporations, primarily from the Northwest. Whereas some fizzled, 24 have gone public and 50 have participated in mergers and acquisitions. The agency manages $2.4 billion.
Madrona has backed among the most vital corporations to emerge from the area in latest many years, together with Smartsheet, Redfin, Apptio, Impinj, Qumulo, Turi, Highspot, SeekOut, Rec Room and others, in addition to some startups outdoors the realm, corresponding to Snowflake.
‘What will be’
By the late-’90s, Alberg’s bullishness towards his hometown was outpacing even Madrona’s attain.
So he teamed up with one other roster of heavy hitters: Bill Gates Sr., father of Microsoft’s Gates and a long-time civic booster, and Tom Cable, an funding banker and founding investor in Immunex. They despatched a letter to pals and colleagues urging them to think about investing in startups. The trio envisioned a “virtuous cycle” wherein rich people recycled a few of their largesse again into native entrepreneurs, stoking the startup group.
The consequence was the Alliance of Angels, a nationally outstanding group and the Pacific Northwest’s largest angel funding group.
However Alberg’s ardour for the area prolonged past its startup founders and into its forests and fields.
Rising up, he hiked wooded trails with the Boy Scouts and explored Washington’s rural corners together with his dad, who purchased agricultural land close to the Snoqualmie River and within the Columbia Valley.
He cultivated a inexperienced thumb, and when Alberg had a household of his personal, they settled in certainly one of Seattle’s toniest neighborhoods — the gated group of Broadmoor on Lake Washington. Among the many fastidiously landscaped houses, Alberg planted a vegetable plot in his yard to the possible dismay of some neighbors however delight of his youngsters.
The Albergs cherished their summer season crusing journeys to the San Juan Islands and the pristine waters east of Vancouver Island. The papery-barked madrona tree that’s the namesake of Alberg’s funding agency is iconic to the islands.
In latest many years, he started taking part in a bigger position in managing among the land initially bought by his father. His household planted wine grapes on their Columbia Valley property, resulting in the genesis of the Novelty Hill Januik vineyard. He and his second spouse, Judi Beck, years in the past turned Snoqualmie’s Oxbow Farm right into a nonprofit that hosts college youngsters and grows sustainable crops and native crops.
Whereas tech and farming would possibly seem as contrasting pursuits for Alberg, his household noticed the by way of line.
“Virtually every thing he does is about what’s going to be — whether or not it’s planting a tree that received’t be mature for 80 years to investing in driverless automobiles, which he’s so enthusiastic about,” mentioned his daughter Katherine Anderson in 2020. “He simply believes in what hasn’t occurred but.”
Alberg is survived by his spouse, Judi Beck; his youngsters Robert, Katherine, John, Carson and Jessica; and his 4 grandchildren. His household requests that donations be made in Alberg’s identify to the Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center.
