Amazon VP of Physical Stores Tim Stone has been named Snap’s new chief financial officer, replacing Drew Vollero, who is stepping down from the role. Stone is a significant loss for the Seattle-based tech giant, which has seen several high-level executives depart in the past few months.
He most recently oversaw Amazon’s integration of Whole Foods stores, which the company bought for a whopping $13.7 billion last year. He was formerly the company’s VP of finance and held a number of other high-level finance executive positions over more than 20 years with Amazon.
In the past two months, several high profile executives have departed Amazon, including Alexa Smart Home founder Charlie Kindel; Amazon Prime head Greg Greeley; Alexa AI research and development lead Ashwin Ram; voice and natural user interface VP Assaf Ronen; and head of new Alexa initiatives Doug Raymond. The company’s Alexa and artificial intelligence teams have been most hit by the departures.
In his new post-Amazon role, Stone will be tasked with reviving Snap’s prospects following a rough first year as a public company. Just a week ago, Snap announced that the first quarter of 2018 saw its slowest user growth ever, causing shares to drop more than 15 percent. Its stock price has only slid lower since that report.
— San-Francisco based startup One Medical expanded its tech-fueled primary care clinics to Seattle last year, but now it seems to be eyeing a bigger move into the region.
One Medical recently added an enterprise vice president for the Seattle area, former Oracle employee Jerry Brown. In a message to GeekWire, Brown said the company is looking at even bigger expansions in the Seattle area.
He also said was intrigued by One Medical’s focus on technology and its approach to a changing world of primary care.
“We live in a post primary care world where most millennials are ‘medically homeless’ and don’t have a Primary Care Physician – so they are curating specialists from their search engines,” he said.
One Medical’s answer to that new landscape is a series of clinics that integrate with online tools to serve users whenever and wherever they have a health problem. The model is subscription-based, so users pay a monthly fee instead of the per-service fees that many healthcare institutions charge. The company has clinics in Seattle, San Francisco and six other major U.S. cities.
One Medical’s approach is similar to models being tested by Seattle companies Vera Whole Health, which operates subscription based clinics through employers, and 98point6, which offers an entirely-digital primary care service for a similar subscription fee.
“Having greater access closer to work and through our app or online we can catch a lot of issues that would typically end up in urgent care or an ER visit. That saves employers real dollars and downstream costs,” Brown said. “It saves lives and money and we are going to aggressively grow our footprint in Seattle and the Eastside over the coming years and I am proud to be a part of it!”
— Global health nonprofit PATH tapped longtime Seattle health executive Michael Fahey as the company’s new chief information officer. Fahey will spearhead the organization’s digital transformation work and its digital strategy.
“I look forward to engaging and collaborating with the talented staff across PATH to help define, develop, and execute an IT strategy that continues to help PATH deliver on the mission of improving the health of people around the world,” Fahey said in a press release. PATH partners with commercial actors to develop and deploy health technologies in more than 70 countries around the world.
Fahey joins the organization from Bay Area financial technology company LoanPal, where he was also the CIO. He previously spent eight years at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where he was the director of infrastructure and user support services and also spent 18 months as interim CIO.
— Jonah-kai Hancock, a senior marketing leader at Seattle tech company Tune, has joined Algorithmia as the company’s head of growth marketing, GeekWire has learned.
Algorithmia is a Seattle-based marketplace for AI and machine learning algorithms. It recently unveiled a new platform that connects laypeople looking for AI help with AI researchers, who could be reimbursed for their work with cryptocurrency.
“Algorithmia was an exciting opportunity for me because they are at the forefront of AI and ML,” Hancock told GeekWire in an email. “It goes without saying that this is the new frontier and organizations, developers, and individuals alike are trying to understand how they can best leverage these tools in their organizations. I am excited to work with the team here to help expand our market position and enable us to continue to scale our processes as we continue to grow in 2018 and beyond.”
Before the move, Hancock was a senior marketing director for Tune. He previously held marketing roles at data visualization company Tableau, social media company Tagboard and PR company Weber Shandwick, among others.
— Seattle-based agriculture technology startup Phytelligence tapped sales vet Lee Cobb as its first vice president of global berry sales. In the role, Cobb will oversee and expand Phytelligence’s berry sector. The company uses a combination of fast-growing technology and genetics to deliver fruit plants to fruit growers with a quicker turnaround.
Cobb joins the company from fruit producer BlazerWilkinson, where he led a revival in BlazerWilkinson’s blueberry production. He has spent more than fifteen years in berry growing and sales.
“I look forward to joining Phytelligence and building its capacity to service berry segment growers,” Cobb said in a press release. “I’m eager to expand my knowledge of tissue culture practices and further the company’s commitment to delivering high-quality crops across all sectors.”
— Trilogy Equity Partners Managing Director and Partner Amy McCullough joined the board of Owlet Baby Care, the Utah-based developer of a smart health monitoring device for infants. Her addition comes after Owlet’s $24 million Series B funding round, which Trilogy led.
McCullough is a longtime investor at the Bellevue, Wash., based Trilogy. The company has invested in startups including Vicis, Amplero and Remitly, which recently raised a whopping $115 million.
Owlet Baby Care is the creator of a connected sock that monitors infants’ heart rates and oxygen levels to quickly detect health problems while they sleep. The company is set to launch two new children’s health products this year.
“As an investor, it is rare to get the chance to invest in a company that has both the potential to be tremendously successful while simultaneously delivering a product that has the ability to make such a substantive and positive impact on people’s lives,” McCullough said in a press release. “Owlet is on a journey to achieve both of these objectives and at Trilogy, we couldn’t be more excited to lead this round and take the next step in Owlet’s journey together.”
— Tom Spann, the co-founder and former CEO of healthcare technology company Accolade, has joined San-Francisco based financial health company Brightside as its CEO. Brightside announced Spann’s appointment alongside $4 million in seed funding from Trinity Ventures and Comcast Ventures.
Spann co-founded Accolade, based in the Philadelphia area, in 2007. He served as its CEO until Concur co-founder Raj Singh took over that role in 2015 and established a second headquarters for the company in Seattle. With Singh’s addition, fellow Concur co-founder Mike Hilton took the role of chief product officer and Spann became the company’s chief operations officer.
Spann stepped back from his day-to-day role at Accolade in 2016 but remains the company’s vice chair. His role at Brightside puts him at the helm of another young, technology-fueled startup that focuses on an aspect of health and well-being.
“We’re building Brightside for employers who are focused on helping their employees make better financial decisions,” Spann said in a press release. “Employers now have a simple solution for the huge costs of reduced productivity, increased absenteeism, and serious health issues that arise from financial stress. It is well established that financial stress makes us less healthy, less intelligent and lonelier.”
