— Kevin Turner has stepped down as CEO of Seattle-area blockchain startup Core Scientific. The former Microsoft COO told GeekWire that the “timing was just really good for me.”
“Company is in great shape to go public in the near future. Just going to take some time to recharge and plan my next thing,” Turner said.
Turner will remain an advisor to the company. Chairman Mike Levitt is now CEO.
Turner joined Core Scientific in 2018. He previously spent 11 years at Microsoft from 2005 to 2016, leading the company’s global sales and marketing teams. The former Walmart exec and Nordstrom board member — known for his high energy and outspoken demeanor — was once considered a candidate to become Microsoft’s chief executive, but left in 2016 to take the CEO role at Citadel Securities.
Founded in 2017, Core Scientific is building blockchain infrastructure technology related to hosting, transaction processing and application development. It manages a fleet of more than 130,000 cryptocurrency miners. The company has around 100 employees and has raised $115 million to date, according to PitchBook.
— Magic AI co-founder Alexa Anthony has joined Seattle startup ThruWave as business operations manager. Anthony previously led Magic AI, a Seattle startup that developed AI software to help monitor horses. She shut down that company in late 2019 after failing to raise more venture capital.
ThruWave spun out of the University of Washington in 2017. The company has developed technology that uses millimeter waves to see through packaging. Fortune 100 customers in retail and e-commerce warehouses are using ThruWave’s hardware and software. The startup raised $6.4 million last year.
Anthony said there is a lot in common between ThruWave and her last startup.
“There is a computer vision and hardware component, an industrial market, incredible talent on the team, great progress with customer contracts in place, and early revenue,” she said. “Not to mention the dog friendly office perk!”
Anthony previously was an advisor at Forstmann & Co. and spent two years at Intellectual Ventures.
— Seattle enterprise video startup Panopto added Payscale CMO Adrianna Burrows to its board. Burrows is a longtime marketing exec, having spent time at Microsoft, Stack Overflow, and Cornerstone OnDemand before joining Seattle-based pay compensation software maker Payscale last year. She is also on the board of Stack Overflow, which was acquired this week for $1.8 billion.
Panopto, founded in 2007, first targeted universities that wanted a way to capture, store, stream, and sort through videos of lectures. It later found demand in enterprise video content management — organizations ranging from financial institutions to appliance manufacturers that wanted a way to manage videos and slides for training, events, sales, marketing, and more.
Burrows, who also spent 12 years at Waggener Edstrom (WE), is Panopto’s first independent member of the board.
“Video is mission-critical for businesses and universities, and its value and role will only increase from here,” Burrows said in a statement.
Panopto last month landed an investment from K1 Investment Management and acquired Ensemble Video. The company’s annual recurring revenue increased more than 40% in 2020, and is now at $50 million.
— Seattle-area workforce scheduling software maker Shiftboard added Travis Shipley as chief revenue officer. He was previously VP of sales at Wrike, a collaborative work management platform that was recently acquired by Citrix. Shipley spent nearly a decade at Microsoft and also founded the consulting firm Portelo.
Founded in 2002, Shiftboard initially built employee shift management software for healthcare clients. It has since expanded across several industries and use cases. Its software lets businesses integrate payroll information and utilize data to create optimal workforce operations, among other solutions. The company raised $11.5 million in 2018 and last year merged with SchedulePro.
— Charlie Corredor, a former executive at OtoNexus Medical Technologies and co-founder of Seattle startup Phoresa, has joined Microsoft as a senior program manager in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Search. Corredor was previously a product strategy manager at Facebook.
— Liberty Lake, Wash.-based industrial IoT company Itron added Santiago Perez to its board. Perez previously spent more than 15 years at Johnson Controls and was the chief commercial digital officer at Schneider Electric. He is currently a senior advisor at Arsenal Capital Partners.
