Madison McIIwain

Madison McIlwain is a Partner at Defy in Los Angeles, California, where she manages the firm's seed portfolio and invests in early-stage enterprise and consumer technology startups. Before joining the venture capital firm, she worked as a Product Manager at Gap Inc., focusing on modernizing retail order management systems and digital customer channels. McIlwain earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and rapidly advanced from an associate role to become a partner at Defy by the age of 26. She has sourced investments in startups like Thrilling and Prive, and co-founded The Room Podcast, producing over 100 episodes featuring industry executives such as Michelle Zatlyn of Cloudflare and Johnny Ho of Perplexity. Her current focus remains on identifying and backing pre-seed and seed-stage founders across the artificial intelligence, fintech, supply chain, and software-as-a-service sectors.