TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

A few weeks ago, a TechFlash reader suggested that it would be cool to create a map that showcases the locations of Seattle technology companies. I thought it was a cool idea, and so did Kevin Merritt of Seattle-based Socrata who handed over some nifty tools to make it happen. So, here's the deal. Let's try to create a map of all of the technology companies in Seattle, both big and small. Just fill out the form below and add your company to the map.

Let's try to limit the map to true technology companies in the fields of software, Internet, biotech and clean tech, so no service providers like law firms, recruiters and PR agencies. Hopefully, if this is successful, we can start to see where clusters of firms are located in the region. Editor's note: The latitude and longitude is not necessary.

Spoon is trying to make desktop applications available to users no matter where they are -- without installations or downloads. The 25-person company recently changed its name from Xenocode to Spoon, and launched a new service that streams applications directly from the Web. Founder and CEO Kenji Obata, a former Microsoft employee, discusses what makes his company tick in the latest installment of Startup of the Week.

What’s your elevator pitch — in 140 characters or less, please... Spoon launches desktop apps from the Web without installs.

We came up with the idea for the startup... While studying math at Berkeley.

Vivek Bhaskaran/PSBJ photo

Vivek Bhaskaran's journey to the Seattle tech community has been a long one, from high school in India to an engineering college in Russia to Brigham Young University in Utah. But now the 33-year-old is firmly rooted in Seattle, building the profitable and growing online survey company Survey Analytics. We chatted with the fast-talking and foul-mouthed Bhaskaran about bootstrapping, competition from Survey Monkey, social media and more.

On leaving Russia for the U.S.: "In hindsight, those two years (in Russia) kind of toughened me up to a point. It was fairly brutal in a sense. I was just out of high school and I'd say by the time I went -- it was 1995 to 1997 -- it was not the worst time.... It had seen darker days, but still it was not a walk in the park. But I remember when I came to the states, things were so much easier for me. Not that I had been through a lot, but everything just happened. And there were rules and laws, and things were more structured. Russia is a lot like India -- chaos, unstructured, everything is moving. So, that actually helped me a lot when I came to BYU."

Derek Streat

Derek Streat's new online venture arose from the worst circumstances. Last year, the Seattle entrepreneur learned that his 2-year-old daughter was suffering from a rare, life-threatening autoimmune disease.

"When that happened, I did the only thing that I know how to," said Streat, who previously co-founded AdReady and worked as an early executive at Classmates.com. "I kind of went into battle mode and went highly analytical on this. I started consuming as much information as a I could and tried to make sense of it."

From that very personal experience, Medify was born. The stealth company -- formed six months ago by Streat and former Farecast vice president of technology Jay Bartot -- today is announcing $1.3 million in venture financing led by Voyager Capital. Medify's goal is pretty straightforward: to help families better manage the complex maze of medical information associated with the most challenging health care situations.

Zillow.com today is releasing numbers about its growth for the first half of the year, touting a boost in unique visitors and mobile downloads. The Seattle online real estate company said it attracted 10.7 million visitors in June, up 26 percent over the same period last year. Meanwhile, the company says it has recorded more than 1.75 million downloads of its mobile app across platforms such as the iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile.

But there are key metrics that you won't find in the Zillow press release: profits and revenues. Of course, as a privately-held company, Zillow.com can choose not to release those sorts of numbers.

Ignition Partners is among the venture capital firms backing Zenprise, a Fremont, California startup that helps large enterprises such as Boeing, Facebook, Nuance and Sony manage, monitor and secure employee usage of smartphones. The $9 million financing round was led by Rembrandt Ventures, with Ignition, Bay Partners, Mayfield and Shasta Ventures also participating.

Symform has landed $4 million in new venture capital financing, with Longworth Venture Partners and OVP Venture Partners participating in the deal. Total funding in the company -- founded by former Microsoft employees Praerit Garg and Bassam Tabarra -- now stands at $5.5 million.

Symform has created an unique way for small businesses to implement cost-effective data backup services. It does this by operating a system where customers turn over unused storage capacity on their servers in exchange for online back up services.

Calistoga Pharmaceuticals has landed $40 million, the second largest venture capital financing round in the state so far this year. Total funding in the Seattle biotechnology company, which is developing treatments for cancer and inflammatory diseases, now stands at $96 million.

The financing was led by Quogue Capital, with Alta Partners, Amgen Ventures, Frazier Healthcare Three Arch Partners and Latterell Venture Partners also participating. The money will be used for continued drug research into CAL-101, a possible treatment for relapsed or refractory indolent non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Valuevine is expanding its social shopping services with the acquisition of Caravan, an early-stage Seattle startup which like Groupon and Living Social has designed a way for small local merchants to tout their goods and services online. Caravan, which has been operating in private beta, is led by Pete Mannix who previously served as director of engineering at Recruiting.com (formerly Jobster). As a result of the acquisition, Mannix is joining Valuevine as chief technology officer.

It is not like Mannix is unfamiliar to the Valuevine exec team, since founders Neil Crist and James Gallagher also previously worked at Jobster. Crist said it was a priority to hire a top-notch CTO this year, and adding the Caravan service to the Valuevine portfolio also made sense.

Pearl Chan

The Cheezburger Network has hired a new bean counter. The fast-growing humor network, known for its cadre of sites such as Fail Blog, GraphJam and There I Fixed It, has appointed Pearl Chan as chief financial officer.

Chan joins Cheezburger from CFO Selections where she provided accounting services to a number of Seattle area startups, most notably the online photo editing service Picnik which was acquired by Google earlier this year. Prior to CFO Selections, Chan worked in financial positions at Isilon Systems and Metawave Communications. She also previously served as the corporate controller of Sierra On-Line and CFO at PhyCom.

Alcatel-Lucent has gobbled up ProgrammableWeb, a leading repository of open application programming interfaces or APIs. Over the past five years, ProgrammableWeb has compiled more than 2,000 open APIs from companies such as Amazon.com, Google, DocuSign, Twilio, MapQuest and WhitePages. The directory also includes more than 5,000 mashups that utilize the APIs.

Terms of the acquisition weren't disclosed, but in a press release Alcatel-Lucent said the acquisition offers a compelling new way for the company to connect with the Web developer community.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse appeared on CNBC yesterday, chatting about competition with the new iPhone and the economy's impact on the wireless industry. But some of Hesse's most interesting comments dealt with Sprint's broadband wireless partner: Kirkland-based Clearwire. (That discussion starts in minute 4:15 of the video below.)

Here's what Hesse -- known around these parts as the former CEO of AT&T Wireless and Terabeam Networks -- had to say about buying out the remaining stake of Clearwire.

Calling all hackers, duffers and links lovers. We've got a fabulous offer for those who want to spend a summer day on the golf course.

TechFlash is excited to serve as a media sponsor for the 15th annual Washington Technology Industry Association's golf scramble to be held Monday, July 26 at the Glendale Golf & Country Club in Bellevue. We sponsored this event last year, and it was by far the most fun I've ever had on a golf course. Each hole takes on a specific theme tied to a different region of the world, with beverages, food and prizes associated with each. So, even if your putting is poor or swing is slicing, you're bound to have a blast rounding these 18 holes with other leaders from the tech industry.

As part of the fun this year, we are assembling a TechFlash foursome to compete with the best-of-the-best in Seattle's tech community. I'll be hacking away as usual, but we need three other players to join our team. If you can commit to July 26, email me a brief paragraph of 100 words or less as to why you'd be the best addition to Team TechFlash. [Editor's Note: Given the large volume of submissions, we've already selected the team. Thanks for all of the witty applications].

Rumblefish today is introducing a new music service called Friendly Music, which the Portland company says allows users to create the perfect soundtrack for YouTube videos. For just $1.99, users are able to purchase rights to a song and then embed the clips into YouTube videos.

Typically, amateur video creators attempt to create their own musical scores to accompany their videos or take existing tracks from established musicians without permission. The latter situation often leads to the videos being removed or the audio blocked on YouTube.

It's been 15 months since H. Perry Fell stepped down as CEO of NanoString, the heavily-funded Seattle bioinformatics startup. But the company today finally announced Fell's replacement, tapping former Genzyme Genetics executive Brad Gray for the top post.

Gray served as vice president of product and business development at Genzyme Genetics where he worked since 2004. Before that, he worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company.