Intuit Ventures hires former partner at Microsoft VC fund; HoloLens leader departs – GeekWire

— Adam Coccari is now director of Intuit Ventures, the new venture capital arm of Intuit, the global financial technology platform company behind TurboTax, QuickBooks and other products.

Coccari previously worked at Microsoft for more than seven years where he was operating partner, head of portfolio development at M12, Microsoft’s venture fund. Coccari also worked on cloud infrastructure as a manager at Azure. Most recently he was a managing partner at SeaChange Fund, a venture capital firm that backs early stage startups based in the Pacific Northwest.

Intuit Ventures, launched in September 2021, focuses on investing in startups in the areas of FinTech, software services for small- to medium-sized businesses, commerce enablement, artificial intelligence, and blockchain. The firm is based in Mountain View, Calif.

Coccari told GeekWire there were “no plans at the moment” to open an office for the firm in Seattle, but added, “Given my strong relationships with founders and the other venture capitalists here, I certainly plan to invest in Pacific Northwest-based companies and co-invest alongside the funds here.”

Other key personnel changes across the Pacific Northwest tech industry:

• Yu-Ting Kuo joined the board of directors of artificial intelligence startup Vaital. Kuo retired last year after 25 years at Microsoft, where he launched the company’s computer vision and research group and led Azure AI Cognitive Services. He also teaches at University of Oxford, MIT, and National Tsing Hua University, in Taiwan.
• Josh Mandel, a physician and software engineer who is Microsoft’s chief architect for healthcare, joined the advisory board of health tech startup Graphite Health.
• Microsoft’s HoloLens leader Alex Kipman has left the tech giant. His departure was announced in an internal Microsoft email this summer in the wake of an Insider story that cited him as an example of “toxic” behavior inside the company.
• Leafly chief operating officer Sam Martin is leaving the Seattle online cannabis marketplace, effective Dec. 31, after seven years with the company.

Update: This story has been changed to reflect that Coccari was previously an operating partner at Microsoft’s venture fund.