—EveryMove co-founder Marcelo Calbucci has stepped down as CTO of the Seattle health and fitness company nearly five years after founding the upstart along with Russell Benaroya. Benaroya said that the shift has been in the works for some time as part of the company’s transition to focusing on business-to-business operations, away from its roots as a business-to-consumer company.
“The business continues to stay focused on its employer and health plan customers and building up the capabilities to support them better,” said Benaroya.
Calbucci previously founded the Seattle tech community site Seattle 2.0, which was acquired by GeekWire. He also previously founded Sampa, and worked as an engineer at Microsoft. Calbucci tells GeekWire that he’s just begun a search for something new.
A Techstars Seattle grad, EveryMove has cut its staff a couple times this year to preserve cash. EveryMove is backed by BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, Premera Blue Cross and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska. The two-year-old company raised $3.5 million in 2013.
—BlackSky Global named software and services veteran Rakesh Narasimhan as executive vice president and general manager. Narasimhan, who previously worked on Microsoft Azure and most recently served as group vice president and general manager at Citrix, will oversee engineering, sales and marketing.
“Rakesh brings a stellar track record of building software teams, products and businesses and is ideally suited to lead our team and build that platform,” said Jason Andrews, CEO of Spaceflight Industries, the parent company of BlackSky Global. “Our vision is to revolutionize how we look at and understand our planet. With that vision, we are building a web scale e-commerce and big data platform to allow anyone on Earth to task our satellite constellation and receive an image in a matter of minutes, instead of the days and weeks it currently takes. This is a really hard problem which has a huge benefit for humanity and Rakesh will be instrumental in driving this initiative.”
BlackSky calls itself an “imaging-as-a-service” company, with the goal of providing high-resolution images of the globe. The company is planning a 60-satellite constellation to capture images of about 95 percent of the Earth’s populated area.
—Evernote said today that Phil Libin will step down as CEO, replaced by Chris O’Neill who previously led the Google X research operation. “I’ve always said that I wouldn’t be the company’s last CEO. And I realized years ago that I didn’t want to be the CEO when the company went public,” Libin tells Re/code.
More in this blog post announcing the change.
—Point Inside, a Seattle company that helps shoppers better find the location of items in stores, has formed new strategic and advisory boards with leaders from the retail industry. The boards include:
- Gail Cottle, former president of the Nordstrom Product Group
- Dan Fishback, former CEO of DemandTec
- Jeff Handler, former SVP of marketing at Meijer and Sports Authority
- Gihad Jawhar, Vice President, Digital at Lowe’s
- Jeff Jones, EVP and chief marketing officer at Target
- Charlotte Yates, founder of CIO Global Forum and former CEO of Telwares Inc.
- Nat Burgess, president of Corum Group
- Dan Fishback, former CEO of DemandTec
- Patrick Giusti, VP of Sales at Oracle
- Sunir Kapoor, former CEO of E-Stamp and former VP of marketing at Oracle
- John St. Amand, CEO of Movik and former venture partner at Highland Capital
- Thomas Reinemer, former EVP of business development at EDGAR Online
- Doug Tudor, former SVP at Asurion and managing partner of Ravenscourt Partners
—Virtual reality startup Envelop VR named Dr. Tom Furness — known as the grandfather of virtual reality” — as its senior scientific advisor. He’s a professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering with adjunct professorships in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington, and will continue in those roles as he assists Envelop VR.
“I have chosen to work with Envelop VR because they are developing the most essential component for the future of the VR industry,” said Furness. “It is the superglue that brings together and integrates all of the hardware, software and experience design components that make VR an empowering tool for mankind.”
He joined the UW in 1989, and before that worked for 23 years as a military scientist in the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air base, where he developed advanced cockpits and virtual interfaces for the Department of Defense. In 1998, he won the Discover Award for his invention of the virtual retinal display, which scans images directly onto the retina of the eye and can help people who have some forms of blindness.
“Tom is a true innovator in the field of virtual reality, and to have him want to be involved with what we are working towards here at Envelop VR is such incredible affirmation,” said Bob Berry, Envelop VR’s co-founder and CEO. “I have the highest regard for him and having access to his mindshare is an added bonus for our team moving forward.”
Envelop VR has raised $2 million from high-powered angel investors such as Hank Vigil, Sujal Patel, Rudy Gadre and Geoff Entress.
—Steve Karr has been named marketing director at Zooppa, Karr previously worked in marketing roles at AssureStat and Wexley School for Girls.
—Washington STEM, a non-profit organization which is trying to get more kids engaged in science, technology, engineering, and math education, named Andy Shouse, as chief program officer. He will be responsible for leading Washington STEM’s teaching and learning programs, focusing on underserved and underrepresented groups.
