Newsmakers 2012: Luke Friang keeps Zulily on the fast track

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Perhaps no Seattle startup is moving quite as fast as Zulily, the daily deal site for moms which just scored $85 million in funding at a whopping $1 billion valuation. The company has hired hundreds of employees; opened warehouses in Ohio and Nevada; launched service in Europe; and topped more than 10 million subscribers —… Read More…

Newsmakers 2012: Greg Gottesman, Matt McIlwain lead the charge at Madrona

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At a time when many are proclaiming the death of the traditional venture capital firm, Madrona Venture Group seems to be hitting its stride. The Seattle firm, originally founded 17 years ago as a loose network of prominent angel investors, raised a $300 million fund in June. That marked the largest in Madrona’s history, and… Read More…

Newsmakers 2012: UW president Michael Young shines a light on startups

Michael Young at the Center for Commercialization. UW photo

Are startups in the DNA of the University of Washington? If not right now, they will be once President Michael Young finished his work. Young, who took the helm of the state’s largest research university in July 2011 after a successful run at the University of Utah, has pledged to double the number of startups… Read More…

Newsmakers: Adam Brotman gives Starbucks a digital jolt

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Typically, around these parts at least, technological innovation is associated with tech titans like Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing. But there’s a bit of a technological revolution brewing at one of Seattle’s other big brands: Starbucks. Make no mistake about it, Starbucks is still very much about the coffee experience. But the world’s best known coffee… Read More…

Newsmakers 2012: Seaton Gras catches wave at SURF incubator

Seaton Gras at the SURF incubator space in downtown Seattle

Seaton Gras had dreamed for years of a place where entrepreneurs could gather to commiserate (and share war stories). And this year Gras finally made that dream a reality, opening up a 15,400 square-foot incubator on the 8th floor of Seattle’s Exchange Building. SURF incubator is not just an office space with a few desks… Read More…

Newsmakers 2012: Steve Singh guides Concur to new heights

Concur CEO Steve Singh

Concur Technologies doesn’t get as much attention as its publicly-traded Seattle area counterparts. After all, filling out travel and entertainment expense reports typically ranks right behind going to the dentist. But Concur’s technology, which helps automate expenses at hundreds of companies throughout the world, is getting some serious traction as it enters its 20th year… Read More…

Newsmakers 2012: Modumetal CEO Christina Lomasney looks to reinvent the steel industry

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Christina Lomasney isn’t out to change the way we share photos with one another, nor does she want to create a new mobile app for finding the best restaurants in your neighborhood.  Nope, she’s frankly got bigger fish to fry. A University of Washington-trained physicist who previously worked at Boeing, Lomasney believes that Modumetal’s nanolaminated… Read More…

Newsmakers 2012: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos redefines boundaries

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It was another big year for Amazon.com, with the expansion of the company’s Kindle and Kindle Fire lineup, the continued growth of Amazon Web Services, major sales tax truces across the country, Amazon’s rapid growth and expansion in Seattle, and moves by the company’s core e-commerce business into new areas such as fashion and wine…. Read More…

Newsmakers 2012: Apptio’s Sunny Gupta swings for the fences

Sunny Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder of Apptio

The thing we’ve always liked about Sunny Gupta is that he’s not playing “small ball.” Nope, the entrepreneur is taking a big swing for the fences with Apptio, a Bellevue company that’s developing new ways for corporate IT departments to manage costs. And Gupta, who previously co-founded iConclude, took a big step up to the plate… Read More…

Newsmakers 2012: Asteroid miner Chris Lewicki points Planetary Resources to a new industry in space

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They plan to send robots into space to mine asteroids — opening up a new frontier for natural resources and creating a trillion-dollar industry in the process. Planetary Resources’ mission would sound crazy if it wasn’t for the people behind it — led by “chief asteroid miner” Chris Lewicki as president and chief engineer. A… Read More…

List: The 25 people who did big stuff this year in Seattle tech and beyond

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After considerable discussion, careful deliberation and more than a few debates at the neighborhood bar, the GeekWire team has finished compiling our Newsmakers of 2011 — a list of the people we’ve covered who, in our estimation, made the biggest impact on the technology community and did the coolest stuff within their respective fields over… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg pushes the potential of the social infrastructure

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Now that everybody is connected, things are about to get really interesting. That was the message from Mark Zuckerberg this year, through his words and actions. The Facebook CEO sees the new “social infrastructure” transforming businesses including television, movies, books and music before moving on to traditional sectors such as health care and finance. “When… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Neil Roseman helps bring Zynga to Seattle

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One of the biggest stories in Seattle tech in 2011 was the arrival of the Silicon Valley tech titans. It seemed that nearly every other month a new company was establishing an engineering center in rain-soaked Seattle, picking off talented managers and engineers and altering the tech recruiting landscape in the process. Zynga, the fast-growing… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Mariachi and margaritas mark wild year for Double Down’s Walcott, Enell

DoubleDown's Walcott and Greg Enell

Executives at Double Down Interactive hired a mariachi band to entertain staffers at a company meeting in September — a special treat for hitting one million daily active users on Facebook. And then — amid the tortilla chips and margaritas — the fun really started. CEO and co-founder Greg Enell — along with execs Glenn Walcott… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Smilebox CEO Andrew Wright builds big business on life’s little moments

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It’s that time of year when folks start thinking about connecting with family and friends through holiday cards. And Smilebox CEO Andrew Wright has certainly seen his fair share of interactive creations over the years. Since its launch in 2006, the Smilebox software has been downloaded by more than 15 million people and over 180… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Google engineer Steve Yegge, the accidental newsmaker

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We’re just a few days from finishing the rollout of our 2011 GeekWire Newsmakers, a roster of people who made an impact on the tech industry over the past year. Today’s honoree, Steve Yegge, is unusual because he probably never would have expected to make the list. Not that the Google engineer isn’t doing important… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: F5′s John McAdam quietly creates a billion dollar business

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F5 Networks CEO John McAdam helped guide the company to more than $1 billion in revenue in 2011 Over the past decade, John McAdam has led F5 Networks on one of the more impressive growth paths in the Seattle tech industry. When the former IBM and Sequent Computer executive arrived at the helm in 2000,… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Z2Live CEO David Bluhm builds a mobile games powerhouse

Z2Live co-founder David Bluhm poses in front of Sgt. Ramsey, one of the main characters in Battle Nations. Photo: Annie Laurie Malarkey

Z2Live CEO David Bluhm — a veteran Seattle entrepreneur and gaming executive — likes to say that his company batted three for three in 2011. And it’s hard to argue with those metrics. The maker of MetalStorm, TradeNations and Battle Nations saw each of its titles soar to success this year. “We took all three… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Yoky Matsuoka links humans to devices, from thermostats to robots

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Yoky Matsuoka has long been interested in the frontiers of human interaction with machines, exploring new ways for the nervous system to work in conjunction with robotics and other mechanical devices. In 2011 the University of Washington associate professor pushed that work forward on two fronts — inside the research lab, and inside a thermostat…. Read More…