Geoff Entress

Eight months after leaving Madrona Venture Group, Geoff Entress has landed at another Seattle venture firm just down the street. Today, the well known angel investor is joining Voyager Capital as a venture partner. That's the same title Entress held at Madrona, where he worked for eight years helping to discover some of the firm's most promising deals. (Isilon Systems, World Wide Packets and BuddyTV to name a few.)

So what gives? My mind was racing with conspiracy theories when I met with Entress and the Voyager team at their Second Avenue offices this week. After all, it is rare (bordering on strange) to see this type of migration in Seattle's tight-knit venture community.

But Entress, a former attorney at Perkins Coie, told me there's absolutely nothing scandalous about the move. (Probably a good thing given the number of scandals Seattle's startup community has endured over the past six months.) And he said there's no bad blood between him and the partners at Madrona, noting that he continues to have a good relationship with the firm.

So why the leap to Voyager?

When Entress left Madrona last summer to focus on his personal angel investments, he said the climate was much different than it is today. In his view, it now makes sense to have the resources of a venture firm at his disposal.

Bill McAleer, a co-founder of Voyager, said the firm actively recruited Entress because of his expertise on the Web and deep ties in the angel and entrepreneurial communities. A very successful investment track record didn't hurt either. Last year, for example, Entress saw three of his startups sold to larger players. (Coffee Equipment Company, Shelfari and World Wide Packets.)

"We were pretty jazzed about the fact that he was interested in thinking about venture again," said McAleer. "He brings a number of entrepreneurial connections."

Voyager is about half way through its $108 million venture fund from 2007, with plans to make another 10 investments from that fund.

Entress will be charged with finding some of the hot deals in the Internet space, something he's proven very capable of in the past. He's currently an investor in about 20 startup companies, many in the Web 2.0 space. Those include Sampa, LiquidPlanner, Judy's Book, Trusera and Pet Holdings. Obviously, given the current climate, it becomes harder to identify winners, with Entress conceding that he's spending some time doing damage control right now.

A member of the Alliance of Angels and Founder's Co-op, the 45-year-old will continue to fund angel deals on his own. But in the new role, he also will be scouring the early-stage market for bigger opportunities that might make sense for Voyager.

Given the minimal capital needs of consumer-oriented Internet companies, Entress said many of the companies he backs will never need venture money. But, in some cases, Entress said it will make sense to "put more gas in the tank and take it to the next level."

Entress said he has no plans to set aside a specific amount of time that he will work on Voyager investments versus his own personal deals. "I spend 100 percent of my time working with early-stage companies and looking at early-stage deals," he said.

Entress has worked alongside Voyager for years, but he started chatting more seriously with Voyager's Erik Benson after working on a joint-investment in Portland-based Elemental Technologies.

Voyager has added other staffers to its team in the past year, including Dan Ahn In Silicon Valley and Diane Fraiman in Portland.

For the most part, Entress will be focused on the Seattle area. Won't that mean he'll bump into his former colleagues at Madrona from time to time?

Entress hopes so. "Hopefully, the two firms will be able to do more deals together in the future," he said.