New entrepreneur in residence Kush Parikh, left, and Madrona Venture Partners Managing Partner S. Somasegar, right. (Madrona Photo)

Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group just named its newest entrepreneur in residence: former PayByPhone CEO Kush Parikh.

Parikh has been a tech executive and “intrapreneur” for years, starting with his time creating new Bluetooth and GPS technologies at Texas Instruments. He moved to the Seattle area in 2006 for a VP role at INRIX, later serving as the traffic technology company’s chief business officer. He most recently spent more than three years as the CEO of mobile payment company PayByPhone.

His appointment was announced Wednesday in a blog post by Madrona Managing Partner S. Somasegar. “Kush brings domain experience in both enterprise and consumer services to Madrona,” Somasegar said.

Madrona’s startup incubator, Madrona Labs, has spun out startups including e-commerce platform MessageYes, Essential and Spare5.

Sam Weber. (Amplero Photo)

— Artificial-intelligence-fueled marketing startup Amplero announced the addition of a new leader: Longtime Silicon Valley tech executive Sam Weber, who joins the company as its chief revenue officer.

Weber joins Amplero from mobile marketing company Swirl Networks, where he also served as the company’s chief CRO. His past experience includes more than six years as an executive at marketing company Sales Genius, including three years as its CEO, when he oversaw the company’s acquisition by CallidusCloud.

“Digital transformation has a dirty secret. Despite the millions of dollars invested in collecting and connecting vast amounts of data, most large brands still can’t deliver a meaningful, connected customer experience due to human-based limitations inherent in how today’s marketing clouds work,” Weber said in a press release.

“However, with emerging AI technologies like Amplero, brands are automatically learning and adapting as customer behavior and marketing response evolves so interactions are relevant, reciprocal, and transformative—in other words, human,” he said.

Amplero is one of GeekWire’s Seattle 10, the ten hottest startups in Seattle as selected by a panel of independent judges. All the startups will be highlighted at the upcoming GeekWire Gala on Dec. 6 at the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle.

Sameer Phatarpekar. (Usermind Photo)

— Usermind, which builds a unified platform for orchestrating business operations, has added former Oracle employee Sameer Phatarpekar as its new VP of customer success.

Phatarpekar joins the company from NetSuite, an Oracle subsidiary that provides cloud-based business tools, where he served as VP of technical services. He formerly spent ten years at Oracle in software development and product strategy and was one of the founding members of the company’s Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture.

Revel Consulting, a digital consulting agency that recently relocated its headquarters to Seattle, announced the addition of David Overcash as the company’s new chief commercial officer.

David Overcash. (Revel Consulting Photo)

Overcash is an entrepreneur and executive who co-founded and served as the CTO of Seattle-area consulting company Brightlight. That company was acquired by Sirius Computer Solutions in 2014, and Overcash joined Sirius to serve as its managing director for a short time before taking a hiatus.

He is also involved in a number of community organizations, including his role as a board member of The Forty, a network of young business leaders.

“Technology is the ‘final mile’ of digital transformation that companies and consultancies alike struggle to travel,” Overcash said in a press release. “By building and integrating new technology services into Revel’s already-successful consulting model, our clients will go to market faster, with more agility and without the “legacy lag” that too often gets bundled in with big firms. That’s the advantage of a full-service born-digital consultancy, and that’s what we’re excited to bring to market.”

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