Ela Madej

Ela Madej: Serial Entrepreneur and VC Investor

Ela Madej is a serial tech entrepreneur and investor who co-founded Fifty Years, an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco. Some key facts about her:

• Co-founder and Partner at Fifty Years since 2015, a seed-stage VC firm backing founders using technology to solve the world's biggest problems135
• Y Combinator alum (S12) and previously a Partner at Innovation Nest, a Polish VC fund123
• Started her first company, Applicake, at age 21, a Ruby on Rails and mobile app development shop based in Krakow, Poland13
• Co-founded Base CRM, a sales platform acquired by Zendesk in 201813
• Organized large events for software developers in Europe like the European Rails Conference Railsberry1
• Passionate about food tech, health tech, and technologies that can positively impact wellbeing24
• Also runs Impact.tech, a platform for technologists in Silicon Valley who want to combine purpose with profit14
• Speaks Polish, English, German, and Spanish1

Ela has invested in over 30 private companies at Fifty Years across areas like synthetic biology, energy, space tech, autonomous vehicles and more.4 She believes in the importance of building values into technology and business to create a positive impact.4