A month or so ago, I had dinner with a group of entrepreneurs at the Goldman Internet Conference in Vegas. Among them was Travis Kalanick, the colorful and talented founder and… Read More
The Washington state legislature will convene next Monday for its annual session. The legislature will not pass a big operating budget this year in the 60-day session, but it will… Read More
We are in Seattle and thus deep in the world of clouds: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, CenturyLink Savvis, and more. But even for us, the experience of the Amazon… Read More
I’ve been reflecting lately on the cultural differences between the Pacific Northwest and Silicon Valley. I grew up in Seattle and have deep family ties here, but lived in the… Read More
I worked at tech startups for the past 15 years — Drugstore, Allrecipes, nPost, and Blue Box Group to name a few. But last year, I opted to take on… Read More
Three years ago, I founded my third company. I left my old company, risked my livelihood (again), put my social life on hold and bootstrapped Chirpify myself for over a… Read More
Like many of you, I was excited to read that the FAA decided to allow use of portable electronics below 10,000 feet. And like most of you, I assumed that… Read More
Seaton Gras started a tech incubator because he wanted to help entrepreneurs more easily create companies. He named it SURF Incubator — an acronym for Start Up Really Fast. But If you… Read More
I wanted to expose my kids to programming because it’s a great skill and a powerful way of thinking. And my kids spend enough time playing Angry Birds and Cut… Read More
The October 21st story in The New York Times — “Tech Wealth and Ideas Are Heading Into News” — includes Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos among “Silicon Valley and its various power brokers.”… Read More
Pull together a list of Seattle’s fastest-growing companies and you’ll see a wide variety of industries, leadership styles, go-to-market approaches and organizational structures. But pull back the top layers that… Read More
Within a few days of Facebook announcing plans to build a residential housing community that is walking distance to a sprawling Menlo Park, Calif. campus described by the Wall Street Journal as already, “so… Read More
Microsoft. Amazon. Expedia. These are among the tech giants that are household names and have grown and flourished in the Pacific Northwest. Another generation—companies like Mobisante, Inrix and BYNDL—are raising… Read More
Guest Commentary: The last few months have not been great for Microsoft. First, the Surface turned out to be a flop. Then, Ballmer resigned without a successor in sight and… Read More
I’m not sure if there’s a term yet coined for those who start companies in their spare time, so henceforth I propose those with full-time jobs and startups on the… Read More
I was going to save the old CDs from the destructive clutches of my toddler. Then I thought, why? They’d been stuffed in the driver’s side door pocket of the… Read More
Today is the first day it becomes legally permissible for startups and emerging companies to advertise their offerings. Or to tweet that they are raising money. Or to generally solicit for… Read More
In his new book Knowledge and Power, futurist George Gilder challenges existing economic theories of both Keynesians and libertarians by placing creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship at the center of economic development. In… Read More
As the start of another football season kicks-off, and we’re inundated with the breakdown and analysis of X’s and O’s, I’m reminded of the parallels between the strategies of this… Read More
Editor’s note: Tren Griffin has created a list of a dozen things he’s learned from Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Gurley, one of the keynote speakers at the GeekWire Summit… Read More
George RR Martin’s world of Game of Thrones is full of dragons, zombies, and magic. These are fun, but not the point. The reason the show speaks to us so… Read More
Jeff Bezos set off quite a bit of handwringing and soul-searching when he purchased The Washington Post earlier this month for $250 million, from the digital disruption and destruction of the media… Read More
Entrepreneurs by definition are risk-takers. They break new ground and are unfailingly willing to step off the well-trodden path of conventional practice. For entrepreneurs, “risk” takes many forms: career (choosing… Read More
Back in 2011, The Name Inspector wrote a post about the proliferation of startup names that make creative use of the suffix -ify, such as Spotify. At the time, he deemed the trend… Read More
A few recent conversations have turned towards youth sports participation and the valuable life lessons they provide. One in particular stood out to me – youth sports participation is one… Read More
When we release software to customers, we immediately begin to consider how to monitor it. The goal is to find problems as early as possible, and always before our customers.… Read More
This week marked a diverse set of technology milestones: Apple’s app store turned five; Microsoft announced that it’s reorganizing and Amazon’s stock crossed $300 per share. For those of us who’ve… Read More
You may be familiar with bootstrapping, an economic circumstance in which intrepid entrepreneurs launch and operate a business with little more than their ingenuity and chutzpah. Usually, bootstrap capital is… Read More
Everyone in the ad world is buzzing about Google’s plans to migrate all of its advertisers to Google Enhanced Campaigns, effective July 22. What will it really mean and what… Read More
Editor’s note: This post is part of a series by Tren Griffin, a senior director at Microsoft who previously worked at Craig McCaw’s Eagle River. Other posts include “A dozen… Read More
