Nike Accelerator Spotlight: GeoPalz motivates kids to exercise with reward system

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Editor’s note: Nike Accelerator Spotlight takes a look at the ten startups participating in the Nike+ Accelerator, a three-month startup program based in Portland, Ore. and put on by Nike and TechStars. GeekWire is featuring each company leading up to the June 10 demo day. Check out past Spotlights below.  As technology becomes more prevalent in today’s world, seeing… Read More…

Nike Accelerator Spotlight: Nextstep.io teaches you about yourself with exercise data

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Editor’s note: Nike Accelerator Spotlight takes a look at the ten startups participating in the Nike+ Accelerator, a three-month startup program based in Portland, Ore. and put on by Nike and TechStars. GeekWire is featuring each company leading up to the June 10 demo day. Check out past Spotlights below.  There are countless fitness activity trackers available… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Stride taps user feedback to build a CRM product with ‘love’

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It took just 24 hours for the self-described “startup junkies” at Stride to get their new customer relationship management service off the ground. But they didn’t stop there, and now just over a year after its formal launch, the team is still iterating and developing. The Stride app — created by Andrew Dumont, Nathan Carnes, Adrian… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Socedo dives into social media to help you find sales leads

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Socedo co-founder Aseem Badshah came up with the idea for his startup after helping big brands like Microsoft and Guess boost their presence on Twitter and Facebook. Badshah realized that businesses were doing a good job of broadcasting their messages and responding to customer inquiries, but not taking advantage of driving new sales leads via… Read More…

Nike Accelerator Spotlight: GoRecess helps you find, book fitness classes

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Editor’s note: Nike Accelerator Spotlight takes a look at the ten startups participating in the Nike+ Accelerator, a three-month startup program based in Portland, Ore. and put on by Nike and TechStars. GeekWire is featuring each company leading up to the June 10 demo day.  For many of us, exercising alone is sometimes boring. Fitness classes,… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Tohula helps families connect with nature (and earn rewards)

The Tohula founders on a brainstorming session in the outdoors.

It’s going to be a gorgeous weekend in Seattle, and I’m already planning to get the family outdoors to enjoy some much-needed sunshine. (Mountain Loop Highway or Chuckanut Drive is the question?) With Tohula, a new Redmond startup led by nature lovers, tech geeks and Founder Institute grads Sebastien Fouillade and Matthieu Lefort, I could chronicle my experiences… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Jobaline looks to help hourly workers hook a job

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We write a lot about the shortage of workers in the fields of software development and engineering. But the majority of workers in the U.S. — roughly 59 percent —  pull down hourly paychecks in jobs such as dishwashers, baristas, sales clerks, landscapers and janitors. Jobaline, a six-month-old Kirkland startup led by former Microsoft manager Luis… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Cart Blanche wants to be the TripAdvisor for the shopping mall

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Cart Blanche founder Joel Espelien is trying to change the way you shop at the local mall, combining the best of social networking technologies with the brick-and-mortar retail experience. His new startup, which is launching Friday at the Northwest Entrepreneur Network’s First Look Forum, allows shoppers to rate, review and share  the items they find on the… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Former Microsofties launch BevyUp to let friends shop together

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Would you have more fun shopping with a buddy? BevyUp founders Mauricio Cuevas, Brian Toba, Chris Rallo and Reymarx Gereda think you will. The Seattle startup company, which is emerging from stealth mode today after more than a year in development, is launching what it calls a new platform for “contagious commerce.” The ultimate goal is… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Healthentic looks to reduce health care costs using ‘big data’

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Can we make the world healthier with big data? Healthentic thinks so, and the Seattle startup is hoping to reduce health care costs along the way by helping big corporations better analyze health care data of employees. The company’s Wellness Decision Engine allows benefits managers to better analyze insurance claims, and then used that data to create… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Decide’s Mike Fridgen taps power of data to change how we shop

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Mike Fridgen already helped change the way people buy airfares, getting Seattle startup Farecast off the ground in 2005. Now, the Internet executive (and loyal Husky) is trying to transform how we shop for power saws, smartphones, treadmills and everything else as the CEO of Decide.com. The Seattle company, which like Farecast was started with… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: GridVid.me touts low-cost video encoding

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You can now watch your favorite shows no matter where you wander, tuning in on a smartphone or tablet. On the back end of that process, however, it can be a pain for individuals or companies to distribute their videos across multiple formats. Enter video encoders like Encoding.com and Zencoder, and most recently a Portland… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: GiftGiv looks to make gift giving to corporate clients a breeze

Kushal Shah, CEO, Product Management at Microsoft, MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business, startup experience.

2.      Sriram Subramanian, CTO, Developer at Microsoft, startup experience.

Want to send a small token of thanks to a client, customer or friend? GiftGiv, a new Seattle startup, makes sure you don’t miss a beat. As co-founder Kushal Shah sees it, the traditional way of sending gifts to folks is broken, especially as it relates to small tokens of appreciation in the business world…. Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Enliken helps consumers control personal data and market it to advertisers

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Advertisers are getting to know more about each and every one of us, especially as behavioral targeting technologies allow big brands to more directly target messages to individuals with specific interests and Internet browsing patterns. But what if the consumer had more control of that data? And what if you could earn value from marketing… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Online art classes look to inspire a new breed of innovators

Thrive founder Theresa Harris

Nearly every day we hear about the importance of STEM education — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. But what about the power of art? Theresa Harris, the 40-year-old founder of Thrive, wants to make sure that art isn’t forgotten when it comes to the educational system. After all, in her view, nothing better prepares a person… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: High school whiz kids create Q&A website Junglr

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For most teenagers, balancing homework and a social life is plenty of work. But for three Mercer Island High Schoolers, that wasn’t enough. Zack Elliott, Isaac Diamond, and Robert Sun have been working for over two years to develop the question-and-answer site Junglr. “Our goals were not lofty,” said 18-year-old CEO Elliott, who interned at Microsoft… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: This upstart wants to bring the 3D viewing experience to 2D TVs

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Many of us already watch television in 3D. But for those who are stuck in a 2D world, a new Seattle startup called 3D Digital wants to help. The company, led by former Microsoftie Raif Khassanov and entrepreneur Eugene Gershman, is working on a method for people to watch 3D programming on 2D screens. Still in the… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: GoToTags looks to be the one-stop shop for near field communication

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GoToTags founders Craig Tadlock and Keith Kegley saw an opportunity a few years ago when they realized that wireless sensor technology would become cheap enough for consumer use. Today, their startup is trying to fill in all of the key gaps around NFC, or near field communications, a technology that allows devices to communicate with… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Your Brandlive helps Internet retailers communicate with shoppers

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Portland-based startup Your Brandlive formally launched today, announcing a new video social commerce platform designed to help make the retailer-customer relationship more personal. Essentially, Your Brandlive is a project of Cascade Web Development, connecting online retailers with online shoppers through live video chat. One sales person is able to communicate with hundreds of customers at once. “The… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Germ-hating developers look to create mobile file sharing that’s better than Bump

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You’ve heard of Bump — the mobile application that allows two phone users to exchange contact information, photos or videos with a physical tap of the devices. With more than 100 million downloads, Bump provides a pretty seamless way for friends or new acquaintances to easily exchange files. But what if you don’t like the… Read More…