Women’s online eyeglass seller Rivet & Sway peers ahead with $2 million

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Seattle retailers have helped transform the way people buy outdoor gear (REI); high-end fashion (Nordstrom) and everything else (Amazon.com). Now, a new Seattle startup wants to overhaul the way women purchase prescription eyeglasses. The company, Rivet & Sway, today is announcing that it has raised $2 million in fresh funding from investors that include New… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: BuildersCloud makes construction document sharing a breeze

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We first encountered BuildersCloud at GeekWire’s Startup Day last fall when 28-year-old co-founder Andrey Nokhrin took the first place prize in the Elevator Pitch competition. Well, the Bellevue startup continues to make headway, landing an investment from construction services giant McKinstry and attracting interest from other investors. Nokhrin actually knows the challenge of sharing building plans… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: ShopIgniter helps big brands sell on Facebook

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ShopIgniter has assisted Nike in selling golf balls and Levi’s in selling jeans, but not from the traditional storefront. Instead, the 4-year-old Portland startup is helping big brands tap into the power of social networks, making it easier for them to attract new customers via channels like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. The 4-year-old company, which landed $8… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Amazon vet Rob Frederick guides Gripwire to profitability

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Not many of the upstarts we feature in the Startup Spotlight have hit profitability. But Rob Frederick’s Gripwire — a developer of mobile games and apps — is an exception. Bootstrapping his way to success, Frederick has built a profitable startup from almost day one, creating its own mobile games like Doodle Trivia and helping organization’s like Bob… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Diptic app makes photo collages a breeze

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Peak Systems has been around for more than a decade, building Web sites and mobile applications for a number of companies and organizations (including the original touchscreen kiosk ordering system for Pepsi Center in Denver and the Warren Miller Entertainment Web site). But the company is making waves with its very own app, called Diptic…. Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Amazon and Microsoft vets unpack Boxella to track product manuals

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Vikas Khandelwal and Pankaj Sethi met as classmates nearly 16 years ago at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur. As luck would have it, both ended up in Seattle, with Khandelwal joining Microsoft and Sethi working for a period at both Microsoft and Amazon.com. Over the years, the two friends have bounced around a number of ideas,… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Tether Technologies makes sure you never lose master keys again

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Tether Technologies founder Randy Neely’s entrepreneurial spark occurred more than a decade ago when a security company he managed lost the master keys for a high-rise office building in Seattle. Neely not only looked for the keys, but more importantly for a technological solution so building keys wouldn’t be lost again. He couldn’t find anything… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Lacuna alerts IT staff of potential problems before outages hit

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Pinpointing technical glitches before they occur is kind of like finding a needle in a haystack. But Kirkland-based Lacuna Systems — led by former employees of Amazon.com, Classmates.com and aQuantive — believes that its new Indico platform can save IT managers time and money by locating problems before they arise. It does this by intelligently analyzing… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: Codeproof IDs jailbroken phones, ‘malicious apps’ and other mobile threats

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Make no mistake about it, life is challenging for corporate IT managers these days. Not only must they now deal with ongoing cyberthreats, but an increasing number of employees are connecting to the corporate network with their personal devices, like iPads and Android phones. That trend — known in tech speak as BYOD or Bring Your… Read More…

Startup Spotlight: GIVINGtrax helps businesses manage donations for social impact

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It started out as a plan to create a simple tool to manage business donations. But then, Karrie and Lance Hungerford realized the opportunity grow something that connects traditional workplace giving and employer-matched donations. The answer was GIVINGtrax, a Seattle-based startup founded in August 2010 that helps both businesses and their employees manage donations for social impact… Read More…