Ela Madej

Ela Madej is  serial entrepreneur and a Founding Partner at Fifty Years, an early stage VC fund that backs entrepreneurs solving the world’s biggest problems with technology.

With Fifty Years, Ela has invested in over 40 private companies in areas such as food tech, synthetic biology, energy, space tech, health tech, autonomous vehicles, and more. Fifty Years was one of the early backers in Memphis Meats (clean meat grown from cells directly) and a few other cellular agriculture companies (growing collagen, leather, milk proteins outside of animals). Fifty Years has also invested in Solugen and Lygos, two startups using biology to make clean chemicals at scale, and Seattle Food Tech, developing manufacturing methods for sustainable, affordable plant based meat. Ela is a Y Combinator alum who previously co-founded Base CRM, the software development company Applicake, and was a Partner at Innovation Nest, a Europe-focused VC firm. She also runs Impact.tech, a platform for technologists in Silicon Valley who want to combine purpose with profit.