The Netherlands plans 25,000 government job cuts as it explores AI savings. See the 2027 timeline and steps for Dutch and EMEA public-sector IT teams.
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Portable projectors are popular because you can take them camping or for movie nights under the stars. The Aurzen D1R stands out from its rivals with built-in Roku OS and access to countless free streaming channels. Now's a great time to grab it while it's 38% off on a limited-time Amazon deal.
Senseonics has begun testing Freedom, an implanted glucose monitor that could track blood sugar for a year without wearable hardware. Here's how it would work.
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You might fondly remember the days of the Intel 486, but you probably don’t have one on your desk anymore. If you’d like to emulate that classic hardware, you can now do it in your browser, thanks to [Jan de Jager].
What [Jan] has built is a 100% browser-based emulator for an Intel 80486DX2-66 PC. Obviously, it’s not just a CPU that’s being emulated here—[Jan] has gone so far as to throw in the motherboard and ISA/VLB adapter card emulation necessary to make this a real and functioning computer that runs inside a solitary browser tab.
It’s all written in ES6 JavaScript. It will happily run SeaBIOS, VGA BIOS, FreeDOS 1.3, and a whole bunch of classic games, like Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, and DOOM. There’s even a control panel where you can configure the PC how you like, from storage to expansion cards and all the rest.
Once upon a time an emulator was an application you had to download and run, hoping all the while that your new machine had enough grunt to emulate the classic hardware of your desires. These days, we have endless piles of CPU cycles to throw at everything and you can do it all within a browser. Or even on a tiny microcontroller, if you feel like it!
— Xbox Chief Operating Officer Helen Chiang has suddenly left Microsoft after 21 years with the company, just months after landing the role in July. Her past roles include leading Mojang and the Minecraft franchise.
Verge first reported the news on Friday, citing a memo from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma that did not disclose the reason for her departure.
An Xbox spokesperson was likewise mum on details. “We don’t discuss individual personnel matters. We’re grateful for Helen’s years of service and wish her well,” the company said in an email to GeekWire.
Xbox has undergone a massive reorganization that included Chiang’s appointment, roughly 3,200 job cuts through the fiscal year — about 20% of the Xbox workforce — the spinoff of four game studios and a plan to dramatically flatten management.
— Seattle-based tech leader Philip Su has joined Anthropic as a member of technical staff on beneficial deployments. The management role focuses on AI applications in global health, life sciences, economic mobility and education.
Su started his tech career with 12 years at Microsoft and later worked for Facebook. He has launched multiple ventures, including Audere, a global health software nonprofit, and Superphonic, a podcast player. In 2021, he worked at an Amazon fulfillment center to experience the holiday rush.
Su also created and leads an annual course for University of Washington computer science students on how to maximize their personal and professional growth.
— More leadership changes are underway at SeekOut, a Bellevue-based recruiting startup launched in 2017. The company announced Monday that co-founder John Tippett is now president, moving from his role as chief client officer.
In April, SeekOut CEO and co-founder Anoop Gupta retired and passed the reins to enterprise software veteran Sean Thompson. In August, co-founder and chief technology officer Aravind Bala took over as CEO. Thompson is now listed as an adviser to the board.
Tippett will lead day-to-day operations and work with Bala “on the company’s direction,” according to a press release. SeekOut said it wants to integrate AI tools into customers’ operations to reduce recruiters’ workload.
SeekOut is No. 68 on the GeekWire 200, a ranked index of the Pacific Northwest’s top startups.
— Fred Hutch Cancer Center has appointed Michael (Mick) Merritt as vice president of strategy and partnerships, effective Dec. 7.
Merritt joins from Penn Medicine, where he was chief operating officer of Penn Signature Services. He has more than 25 years of experience in academic medicine, consulting, strategy, business development and operations.
— Industrial wastewater treatment startup Membrion has named Alexander Demihovsky as director of applications engineering. He joins the Seattle-based company from Xylem. His past employers include Evoqua Water Technologies and Bechtel National.
“Alex helps turn customer needs into viable project plans, mitigate execution risks and develop competitive proposals,” the company said.
Membrion is No. 160 on the GeekWire 200.
— Marine geothermal energy startup Endurance Energy has named Marty Calvert as the director of turbomachinery. Calvert joins the Seattle startup from Blue Origin. He was previously a turbomachinery engineer at NASA for more than 13 years.
Endurance completed its fifth deployment to the ocean floor last month, testing Adélie, a 100-kilowatt geothermal generator named for a penguin.
— Lattice Semiconductor, a Hillsboro, Ore.-based company, has added two directors to its board:
There are some devices which achieve electronic immortality, it’s likely that you have used a few of them yourself. The 555 timer of course, or the 741 op-amp. [ElectronicsNotes] is here with another candidate that might not have been on your mind as you read the previous sentences, and it’s a transistor. The 2N3055 is an NPN power transistor, no, THE NPN power transistor, that has found its way into an astounding array of devices over the last six decades or more.
For such a ubiquitous device one might imagine that there’s not much new to know, but the video delivers on that front. Here as well as probably for you the 3055 has always been an epitaxial device whose quirks you likely know well, but originally it was something different. It used the hometaxial construction process on its launch in the early 1960s, but in the mid 1970s it was replaced by a version with the same capabilities but using the epitaxial process. The consequent higher Ft required modifications to circuits using the device to stop unwanted oscillation.
Where this is being written there are several 2N3055s, in the by now rather old office audio amplifier, in a bench power supply, and probably elsewhere too. It’s been superseded in many ways and its TO3 case now feels antiquated, but it will probably never entirely go away. Meanwhile if you’d like to read about another iconic 1960s device that never went away, we have you covered.
Header: a really early example. Eule4404, CC BY-SA 4.0
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Last year, we reported on Red Viper, a Virtual Boy emulator that added a splash of Super Game Boy-style color to Nintendo's famously failed red-on-black "portable" 3D headset from the '90s. Now, a new emulation experiment, VBoy Color, has taken the concept to a higher level, using a tile-based palette system that allows for many more distinct colors in each individual Virtual Boy frame.
Rather than simply replacing the Virtual Boy's four shades of red with four different colors, VBoy Color's readme files explain how the emulator's game-specific Color Packs can assign a distinct four-color palette to each 8x8 tile in a Virtual Boy scene. That means the emulator can differentiate between green pipes, grey platforms, and red brick wall in Mario Clash, for instance, even though all those in-game objects share the same overlapping red hues in the original game.
The Game Boy Color-esque results feel like being transported into an alternate history where Nintendo invested in a full-color display rather than cheaper red LEDs for the Virtual Boy hardware. The increased contrast between differently colored elements is particularly welcome in games like Jack Bros. or Vertical Force, where the original red-on-red display often makes it hard to differentiate the player-character from busy red background elements.
© VBoy Color
Unknown hackers hijacked more than 300 Tor exit nodes and reconfigured them to favor unencrypted email traffic and redirect SSH connections through servers they controlled, a researcher reported Tuesday.
The hijacking began in late August, when, according to Tor volunteers, the attacker used a valid password that had been reused to gain access to a Tor management server. The attacker then installed Ebury, a backdoor written for Linux that was discovered 12 years ago.
Then the attacker connected from the management server to a second Tor server, called Switzerland2, through SSH, using an RSA key that, for unknown reasons, investigators couldn’t find among Switzerland2’s authorized keys. With administrative control of Switzerland2, the attackers installed Ebury there as well. Finally, the attacker reconfigured settings on two exit nodes that Switzerland2 hosted.
© Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
— Kymeta has appointed former CIA Deputy Director Elizabeth Kimber as chief growth officer.
Kymeta, a Redmond, Wash.-based mobile satellite communications company, is working to increase sales with the Department of Defense, the intelligence community and other organizations in national security.
Kimber had a 37-year career with the CIA, departing in 2022 as the agency’s deputy director for operations. She most recently worked as a vice president with Two Six Technologies and has served on Kymeta’s board of directors for two years.
— Alaska Airlines has named Amaresh Siva as its first chief information technology officer. Siva joins from CVS Health and has held technology leadership roles for more than two decades at companies including Lowe’s, Target and GE Money.
“Technology touches nearly every part of how we run our airline and serve our guests, and Amaresh will bring our technology and digital teams together under one leader,” said Ben Minicucci, CEO of Alaska Air Group, in announcing the news.
— Vijaye Raji, founder and former CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based Statsig and now OpenAI’s CTO of applications, has joined the board of Amplitude, a digital analytics and product intelligence company. OpenAI acquired Statsig last year, and Statsig and Amplitude announced a strategic partnership in May in which Amplitude would build on Statsig’s brand and customers.
“Statsig continues as a platform and brand within Amplitude,” Raji said. “Joining the board is an opportunity for me to help carry that mission forward as Amplitude and Statsig build their next chapter together.”
— Vasu Jakkal has left her role as Microsoft corporate vice president of security, compliance, identity, management and privacy after more than six years. She has joined Armadin, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based cybersecurity company, as chief strategy and business officer.
Jakkal is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and previously held executive roles at FireEye and Intel. She praised Armadin’s mission, which she described as building “autonomous security to stay ahead of attackers and build a safer world for all.”
— Microsoft VP Hans Yang is leaving. The Los Angeles-based leader, most recently focused on AI transformation, product strategy and growth, was formerly a general manager for Microsoft for Startups and Microsoft Learn.
“I think my next hill to climb is helping companies capture real ROI from AI,” Yang said, adding, “If you know a company that is struggling to get started with AI, or has invested but is not yet seeing meaningful value, I would welcome any introductions.”
— Venky Chandrasekharan is returning to Microsoft for the role of general manager of Windows commercial category and investments. He left the company in 2021 after 12 years and worked at Qualcomm and Acuity Brands in the interim.
“Having spent some of my most formative years at Microsoft, there’s definitely a sense of familiarity — but I’m coming back with new experiences, a broader perspective, and a lot of excitement for what’s ahead,” Chandrasekharan said.
— Meg O’Conor Bannecker has left Microsoft after two years leading communications for the company’s Washington state team. Past roles include communications leadership at NanoString Technologies, Bannecker Public Affairs and Pier 70 Ventures.
— Patrick Miller has been appointed as global division president of real estate company JLL’s technology sector. Miller joins from Snap, where he served as senior director of global workplace services. He previously oversaw real estate operations for Amazon’s Seattle-area headquarters for more than three years and has worked for Facebook and DTZ.
“I’ve spent my career on the client side … so I know exactly what it feels like to need a partner who shows up, tells you the truth, and solves real problems,” Miller said.
— DigniFi, a Bellevue, Wash.-based fintech company providing repair financing for autos, RVs, ATVs and other motorized vehicles, has named Jefim Piekarz as chief product officer. Piekarz joins from Arch, and his past employers include Skylab74, Welo, Octane and Etsy. Launched in 2012, DigniFi has facilitated more than $575 million in transactions for automotive merchants in the U.S.
— Seattle-based global logistics company Tideworks Technology has named two C-suite leaders:
— Adaptiva, a Kirkland, Wash.-based company automating software updates across computers, has named Allison Armstrong VP of product marketing. She joined from Elemica and has worked for Transmit Security, Hopin, Qualtrics, Apptio and others.
— Smarsh, a Portland, Ore.-based company providing communications data and insights, has appointed Alessandro Silva as its first chief growth officer. He joins from ACI Worldwide, and his past employers include Western Union and Carlyle Group. Silva is also a board member for Teach for America.
— Seattle-based Yoodli has named Mike Mather as chief learning advisor. The startup recently expanded from helping people practice speeches, sales pitches and job interviews to providing corporate training across wide-ranging skills. Mather is CLO for the accounting firm KPMG US and was previously a partner at EY, IBM and PwC.
“For most of my career, the hardest part of [learning and development] was the gap between training and the moment someone actually has to perform,” Mather said. “Yoodli closes that gap.”
— DigiStor, a company with offices in Austin, Texas, and Vancouver, Wash., that offers secure data storage products, has appointed Peter Bell to its board of directors. Bell co-founded StorageNetworks and serves as managing partner at Stowe Capital, among other roles.
— Seattle-area tech leader Jake Varghese has been promoted to chief product and technology officer for Dayforce, a Minneapolis company providing HR, payroll and related technology. He previously worked for companies including Microsoft, ServiceNow, Tanium and ConnectWise.
— The Association of Washington Business Institute has appointed Meagan Darrow as executive director. Darrow is also an adjunct professor at Evergreen State College and was most recently executive director of the American Diabetes Association. The AWB Institute is the nonprofit research and education affiliate of the association, a longtime organization advocating on behalf of its 8,000 members.
— Five Seattle-area physicians were appointed to the National Academy of Medicine:
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If you need a micro-manipulator, you probably already have a good idea of what it does. For example, you might be moving a probe over an IC die or wafer. You might be looking at something through a microscope. The key is moving something in very small, precise increments along three axes. An open-source design for a micro-manipulator has seen significant improvements lately. You can see several videos about the device below.
The device uses stepper motors, parallel kinematics, and miniature ball joints to achieve precise motion. The recent version 4.0 update fixes a few problems. According to the GitHub page:
- Self-collision during homing fixed.
- Connection of the ball joint block with screws only was not well constrained and could be rotated a bit.
- No reliable way to ensure consistent linkage rod length
- Unnecessary ball joint friction
- Accurate ball position heavily dependent on print quality and corner rounding
- Rubber bands could not be changed or removed once glued in.
We’ve covered earlier versions of this device, and we were watching the improvements to the ball joints. Since then, the project has updated much of its mechanical design and documentation, and it has also changed the API that drives it. It can even use tools in g-code now to support things like fine control over laser engraving.
If you prefer something old-school manual, consider a 3D-printed one.
Seattle-based TriMagnetix has landed new funding and commitments totaling $1 million to continue developing a semiconductor chip that, according to initial lab testing, consumes 800 times less energy than a traditional chip to process the same amount of data.
The startup uses nanomagnetic technology that requires only electrical pulses rather than the constant power stream traditional chips need, dramatically reducing electricity consumption and heat generation. The design also makes the chip resistant to radiation, and it’s built to integrate with existing computing infrastructure.
The startup has made additional progress beyond the new funding:
Earthbound data centers struggling to curb energy use and heat output are seeking more sustainable chips, but the startup is particularly interested in satellite applications.
The Pacific Northwest, home to companies including Starcloud and SpaceX, is the “satellite capital of the world,” said Lucas Hahn, co-founder, president and chief strategic officer of TriMagnetix.
Satellite companies have told him they want semiconductors that are energy efficient and resistant to the radiation experienced in space, Hahn said. That makes TriMagnetix’s devices “a no-brainer.”
In addition to Hahn, the startup’s other employee is Madison Hanberry, who launched the TriMagnetix in 2023. Hanberry, who has served as chief of research and development, is transitioning to CEO. His sister, Aspen White, is also a co-founder.
The chips made so far by TriMagnetix are not the high-performance graphics processing units, or GPUs, used for applications such as AI and 3D animation. Nor are they simpler central processing units, or CPUs.
“It’s replacing specific compute in certain devices at a very low level,” Hahn said. “So not quite CPU yet, but it is at the core level doing similar things.”
TriMagnetix has contracted with the Washington Nanofabrication Facility at the University of Washington to use the site’s fabrication equipment. It aims to have a product available for commercial sales within the next year.
The round was led by Acequia Capital with participation from Athenaeum Ventures. Actuate Ventures has also committed to the round. The combined total from the three firms is $1 million. Last year, the startup received a $200,000 investment from climate venture fund SNØCAP.
Recently [Ken Shirriff] got handed a mystery IC by [CuriousMarc] who had found said IC in a box of various old chips. Labelled only with a date code of the 47th week of 1985 and a mysterious F1-10-5 alongside a logo that didn’t lead to any hits in the typical IC databases, it was up to [Ken] to figure out what lurks inside this CDIP chip.
As it turns out, it’s actually a pretty interesting IC with an easy to identify die once the ceramic package had been cracked open with a surgical hammer-and-chisel strike.
With the die under a microscope it was identified as a Harris HF10, itself a variant of the National Semiconductor MF10. This is a dual switched capacitor filter, with the modern version being e.g. the TI MF10-N in both PDIP and SOIC, but sadly no CDIP any more. Availability seems scarce, so the MF10 may not be long for this world.
These filter ICs can tune their capacitors to act as a low-, band- or high-pass filter. How this works is explained by [Ken], with switched capacitors replacing the resistors of a typical filter circuit. The main reasons for doing this over just using a resistor include how large resistors can get compared to the relatively small capacitor, not to mention their fixed value versus the adjustable resistance from the switchable capacitor.
The remainder of the circuit is mostly there to enable the switching and overall operation, providing a fascinating glimpse at a chip that would have been incredibly useful in the 1980s, including in synthesizers where this adjustable filter feature was most convenient.
Flying and driving simulators can go as far as money will take you, and at some point it might end up being cheaper to buy a plane or race car than to keep adding capabilities to some of the sim rigs we’ve seen. But it can also be a fairly affordable hobby as well, with entry-level components being within reach for many. The price can drop precipitously from there too, provided some parts can be sourced and a 3D printer is made available, and [Jason] is demonstrating one of the lowest-cost H-shifters we’ve seen which only uses two parts at its core.
The two components only cover the electronics for the build, but this gets almost everything needed for the shifter squared away. A joystick like those found inside many game controllers is paired with an Arduino Pro Micro, with a very straightforward wiring configuration between them. These components are paired with a prototype 3D printed case and shift knob which provides the H pattern of choice. From there it’s as simple as uploading some readily-available firmware, which [Jason] also demonstrates, and which has many options for various configurations of shifters.
Although this was just a prototype, it shows was just a few off-the-shelf components and a 3D printer can provide to an affordable driving sim setup. Even then a 3D printer is not always necessary, like this three-pedal setup using extruded aluminum frame as a base. From there, all kinds of other features can be added like force feedback on the steering wheel.
Yoodli, the Seattle startup that offers AI to help people practice speeches, sales pitches and job interviews, is expanding to pursue a larger vision: AI that can teach people almost any skill they need on the job, and track whether they’re improving.
The company is recasting itself as the “AI platform for human skills” with the launch of new tools that create courses, teach people to use AI and software, answer employees’ questions, coach them during calls and meetings, and show managers whether the training is paying off.
One of the new tools takes the AI personas that companies build for practice sessions and puts them to work elsewhere. Loaded with a company’s own material, they can answer questions on an intranet, a partner site or a live call, handing off to humans when needed.
The move pushes Yoodli beyond practice sessions and into the much larger business of corporate training, where Workday and Microsoft’s LinkedIn are among the larger companies offering AI tools for training and coaching employees.
It also expands the potential market for the company, which counts Google, Snowflake and Databricks among its customers and has raised nearly $60 million from investors including WestBridge Capital, Neotribe, Madrona and AI House.
Varun Puri, Yoodli’s co-founder and CEO, said the goal is to use AI to help people get better at their jobs, at a time when the technology is more often raising concerns and questions about the future of work.
“This is all about upskilling humans and believing in the human potential,” Puri said in an interview this week at the company’s new headquarters on Seattle’s Pier 70. “How do we help humans be the best versions of themselves and get measurably better?”
Esha Joshi, Yoodli’s co-founder and chief customer officer, said the company is taking its cues from what businesses were already starting to do: using Yoodli to teach employees new skills, beyond the situational AI “roleplays” that have fueled the company’s growth.
Many of Yoodli’s first business customers were tech companies, but the list has since expanded to include the likes of governments, pharmaceutical companies and banks.
“There’s a whole world of people that need to develop their skills,” Joshi said.
How Yoodli got here: GeekWire has followed the company almost from the start. Our first story ran five years ago today, when the startup had just spun out of what was then known as the AI2 Incubator, with an AI tool to help people improve their public speaking.
Puri had run special projects for Google co-founder Sergey Brin and worked at X, the research arm of Google parent Alphabet. Joshi spent more than four years at Apple as a software engineer and product manager, and was Yoodli’s original chief technology officer.
With its transition to AI roleplays about two years ago, Yoodli shifted to selling primarily to companies and other organizations. Google, Snowflake and Databricks use it to train sales teams, Puri said. The government of El Salvador uses it to train doctors on talking with patients, and the University of Washington uses it to prepare students for job interviews, he said.
The company raised $13.7 million in May 2025 and another $40 million in December, in a round led by WestBridge Capital that valued it at more than $300 million.
Yoodli reported 900% revenue growth when it announced the December round. Puri declined to disclose current revenue or say whether the company is profitable, but said it isn’t actively raising money. “It’s been a very strong year,” he said.
The startup will face plenty of competition as it expands into the broader market. Tech giants Salesforce and Microsoft, for example, both offer AI roleplay coaching as part of their larger platforms.
Workday last year acquired Sana, an AI startup with a corporate learning platform. Highspot, the Seattle company that merged with rival Seismic in August, offers an AI roleplay tool, and startups including Hyperbound and Second Nature focus on sales roleplay.
Yoodli also integrates with some of them, including Workday and Highspot.
Asked what keeps Yoodli from becoming a feature in a larger company’s product, Puri cited the depth of its software, and pointed out that Google, for example, uses Yoodli to train its own teams on Gemini.
The company today: Yoodli has grown to about 100 employees, up from 25 in May 2025. Recent executive hires include:
Other executives include Josh Vitello, the chief revenue officer, who joined in April 2025 after more than 15 years at Tableau and Salesforce; and Derek Sessions, the chief technology officer since February 2023, previously an engineering manager at video software company Panopto.
Yoodli’s new offices are on the eastern side of Pier 70, sharing a building with AI House, the incubator and venture capital fund formerly known as the AI2 Incubator. Yoodli began at the incubator when it was across town near the northern shore of Lake Union.
The conference room names reflect the company’s culture. “Speakeasy” was Yoodli’s code name before launch. “PlankoClock” honors a daily ritual: at 3:45, the whole company stops to do planks. “Agnes Potts” is named for one of Yoodli’s earliest AI personas — a “customer” so tough that users wanted T-shirts saying they’d booked a call with her, Puri said.
The new tools: Yoodli describes the expanded platform as five products.
Yoodli’s website lists individual plans at $8 and $20 a month, billed annually, with custom pricing for businesses depending on team size and use case.
When GeekWire visited this week, employees took a quick break from preparing for the new platform launch to gather for an impromptu team photo. They goofed around under a Yoodli sign with the type of energy you’d see at a much smaller startup.
As they headed back to their desks, I mentioned that we’d all remember this moment when the company has its IPO in 10 years. They laughed and groaned at the suggestion that it would take that long.
Editor’s note: Yoodli is a client of GeekWire’s GeekWork recruiting business.
A new hub for women entrepreneurs is taking shape in Seattle and will host its official launch party tonight. Less than 10 weeks after opening, The SWELL has 53 members and quickly evolving programming that includes an accelerator, its own consulting startup and weekly “hot seats” where founders hash out challenges.
“What we’ve created is a community that happens to have a co-working space,” said founder Sally Revell. “I am not in the business of co-working. I’m in the business of building a women’s founder community, and we have a space that we convene in.”
Revell decided to launch The SWELL after 25 years in marketing leadership roles for tech companies including Google, Amazon Web Services, Philips and Intuit. Her parents’ deaths in 2024 were a “catalyst for change,” she said, prompting her to strike out as an independent consultant. But she still craved an in-person professional community.
The SWELL, an acronym for “Seattle women entrepreneurs leading and lifting,” is based at SURF Incubator, a longtime co-working and events venue in downtown Seattle.
Revell said the organization is built on three pillars:
A membership costs $200 a month and includes access to the co-working space Monday through Friday. The hub is currently capped at 75 members, and Revell is exploring a virtual program.
A survey of participants found that 40% resigned from corporate roles to launch their own ventures and 30% were laid off. An overwhelming majority have worked for big companies, and the cohort has a median of 17 years of work experience.
About 60% said they never want to return to corporate roles, and all are using AI in their business.
“There’s this movement of middle-aged women [feeling] like, ‘I’m empowered. I can choose to do something different,'” Revell said. “And when they get together, then the magic starts to happen.”
The SWELL is part of a broader push toward women-led companies. Women launched 44% of new businesses last year, according to Gusto, a payroll and HR platform. A key reason mid-career women are leaving corporate roles for entrepreneurship is that the jobs “did not line up with their needs, values, or realities,” as they struggled to balance work and caregiving, said researchers from the Rutgers Center for Women in Business.
Seattle has long been the birthplace of ventures supporting women founders and leaders. The Riveter, a pioneering, investor-backed co-working space for women, launched in 2017 but shuttered its physical locations in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It pivoted to an online community with expert webinars, mentoring and retreats.
Other related efforts include Female Founders Alliance, which has grown into a national organization operated by its own investment fund, Graham & Walker; TheWMarketplace, an e-commerce platform promoting women’s businesses; and Intentionalist, a site highlighting small businesses with diverse owners.
Revell is working with other women-focused efforts in the city, including the University of Washington’s Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership program. The SWELL recently announced a partnership with Formidable Media, a Seattle-based media and membership organization that helps women nationwide promote their businesses. And Nicole Doyle, who leads the Founder Institute’s Pacific Northwest cohort, created a custom accelerator for SWELL members that kicks off in January.
AI House brought investors from as far as Boston, New York, Colorado and the Bay Area to Seattle this week for something the city’s startup scene has rarely tried: a demo day meant to help bring outside money to local founders.
Twenty-five early-stage startups pitched at the event, held Wednesday at the startup incubator and venture capital fund’s offices on Pier 70. Many of them weren’t part of AI House’s own portfolio, and that was by design, said Yifan Zhang, an AI House managing director, who came up with the idea for the event.
“We all complained about not having enough capital here, but no one was doing anything about it,” Zhang said. So AI House tapped its own connections to investors in other parts of the country, she said, and “people flew in from all over for this.”
Investors in attendance included Mike Vernal, a partner at San Francisco-based Conviction; Emily Melton, founder and managing partner of Threshold Ventures; and Rob Go, co-founder of Boston-based NextView Ventures. Many well-known Seattle-based venture capitalists also attended the event.
Zhang said she wanted the lineup to show multiple sides of Seattle: startups built around real problems and revenue, and technologists doing “crazy ambitious things.”
Theo Ellis, CEO of Seattle mortgage-tech startup Friday Harbor, called it “Seattle’s answer to YC Demo Day,” a reference to Y Combinator’s showcase in the Bay Area.
Many of the city’s startups are “not necessarily in the flashiest spaces,” he said, but they have real customers and are growing fast. For his part, Ellis said, mortgage lending technology is “not exactly nuclear-powered robots landing on Jupiter, but it’s an enormous market with a lot of businesses willing to pay for it.”
Ellis told the crowd during his pitch that Friday Harbor underwrote 0.6% of all U.S. residential mortgage applications in August, and that the company is starting to raise its Series A round.
Many of the companies that pitched have been covered by GeekWire. In addition to Friday Harbor, they included Optimly, Vantari, Jinn Labs, GateIn, Casium, Orbital Robotics, Viata, Ridge AI, Caddi, Lev, Aria (formerly Alpyne Labs) and Synthesize Bio.
Others were new to us, at least in their current incarnations:
Closing the event, Jacob Colker, AI House co-founder and managing director, made his pitch to the out-of-town investors, building on the themes in his recent GeekWire guest column and a rallying cry he delivered during Seattle Tech Week in July.
The region is full of “space, science, tech, bio, health, startup builders,” he said, with far more good ideas than local investors can fund. “The reality is there’s just not enough capital in the Pacific Northwest.” That’s where the visitors come in, he said, predicting that they’ll find “great investment opportunities and great deals.”
Seattle, Colker said, “is worth your time, your investment, your focus, your energy.”
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