Mike Fridgen has spent decades building Seattle startups from scratch rather than just funding them from the outside—starting with his own company backed by Madrona in the late 1990s, then working on Farecast and Decide, and later helping run Madrona Venture Labs, where he and a team of former founders worked closely with new CEOs to build companies in about six to nine months instead of two years. That same hands-on style shows up in his recent focus on Otto, an AI travel agent where he sits on the board, echoing his early product work in travel at Farecast, and in his past role co-hosting a show about Seattle founders' startup journeys.