Doug Aley

The venture capital industry may be under siege, with paltry returns and dwindling exits. But Madrona Venture Group is pushing forward, tapping talented executives to incubate new projects in the wireless, social media and communications arenas.

The latest addition at the Seattle venture capital firm is Doug Aley, a 30-year-old marketer who previously worked at Jott Networks and Amazon.com. Aley, who joined the firm as an entrepreneur-in-residence late last month, said he hasn't decided what he'll work on.

"I've been toying around with a couple of ideas for a few years and this is an opportunity to see which one sticks," said Aley.

He's most interested in looking to help consumers make sense of personal information stored online as well as new ways to improve the way companies utilize social media to market their products.

"I think it is a really interesting time for marketers -- going from a mass communications perspective to a micro marketing perspective," he said.

Aley also is spending a portion of his time investigating business ideas around Near Field Communications, a short-range communications technology that can be used to conduct payments on mobile devices.

Aley most recently served as vice president of marketing at Jott Networks, a Seattle company whose voice-to-text technology is used for note-taking and other business functions. Before that he worked in Amazon.com's retail and third party seller groups. In 1999, he co-founded the SSB Bart Group, a software consulting company that's still in business today.

Aley isn't the only entrepreneur-in-residence that Madrona has attracted in recent months. The firm also is working with Twitter application developer Damon Cortesi, though he has yet to launch a startup around his many ideas for the fast-growing social media platform.

Also working with Madrona is Damon Danieli, a former Microsoft employee who was one of the core developers of Xbox Live. Danieli and wireless entrepreneur David Bluhm are developing a new company called Zero260, which is specializing in iPhone applications. (Sounds like the Madrona offices are getting a little packed).

Aley said he was already familiar with the venture capital firm. But he got more engaged through Madrona's Scott Jacobson, also a former Amazon.com employee.

Aley is not too worried about starting a new company in these tough economic times, saying now is a great time to incubate new ideas.

"Any true entrepreneur -- I don't think the climate bothers them because they are just interested in building stuff," he said. "As soon as the crash happened, that's the best time to start a company."

We'll have to stay tuned to see what Aley comes up with.

John Cook is co-founder of TechFlash. Follow him on Twitter @johnhcook.