TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

You can use the Internet to find just about anyone, from lawyers to real estate agents to future spouses. But up until now, it was a chore to find a tennis player of equal skill. That's where Tennis Round steps in. The company, with six founders spread between Seattle and San Francisco, is trying to make it a little bit easier to find local tennis players and courts. We chatted with co-founder Alex Marinov for the latest installment of Startup of the Week.

What’s your elevator pitch... Tennis Round connects tennis players at similar skill levels to play matches at local tennis courts anywhere in the U.S.

Prentice

Jon Prentice: Here in Washington state, elected officials and policy-makers across the political spectrum often tout our state’s leadership in fostering renewable energy and clean technologies. “The Puget Sound will become the next Silicon Valley of clean tech” is a common refrain.

And why not? Washington has, at first glance, a strong foundation for fostering companies that deploy renewable energy technologies: A proud legacy of environmental stewardship, historically progressive political leadership, abundant natural resources, and an active venture community. When it comes to protecting the environment, developing disruptive technologies – whether in software, biotechnology, or aerospace – and growing great companies, Washington state knows a thing or two.

But in interviews with local investors I conducted this summer on behalf of enterpriseSeattle and in coordination with the Washington Clean Technology Alliance and the Northwest Energy Angels, a much different picture emerged – one that doesn’t exactly tend towards sunny optimism or green shoots.

The M&A market appears to be heating up as we close out the year. We've seen a series of acquisitions in recent weeks, and we're hearing rumblings of several more. The latest example comes from Bellevue where Pharmacy OneSource -- which has developed an online service to help hospitals manage patient safety and compliance -- has agreed to be acquired by Wolters Kluwer Health. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Pharmacy OneSource has been growing rapidly in recent years.

It ranked 335th on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 list, with revenue growth of 269 percent from 2005 to 2009. The company, led by Tim Gibbons, employs 100 people.

Lazarus

Jon Lazarus has stepped down as interim CEO of Kiha Software, a move that comes one month after the heavily-funded, Paul Allen-backed startup unveiled software to help organize information on mobile phones. A spokesman for billionaire Paul Allen said that Lazarus' consulting gig ended earlier this month and that board member and Vulcan vice president Chris Purcell has taken over as interim CEO.

"During his time in that position, Lazarus helped lead the company to the recent Aro Beta release," Paul Allen spokesman David Postman tells TechFlash. "Kiha remains focused on Aro and the recent beta release. The company is now working on its go-to-market plan, including a strategy of providing Aro directly to consumers."

Seattle startup AdReady is starting to look a lot like aQuantive -- at least in terms of personnel. Randy Wootton, a former aQuantive executive who spent the past six years at Microsoft, most recently as vice president of global search and online marketplace, has been named senior vice president of sales and marketing at the online advertising upstart.

He joins a list of former aQuantive employees -- including CEO Karl Siebrecht -- who believe that AdReady is on to something big in the display advertising market.

OK, folks, we're just two days away from the Flashies bash at the Experience Music Project. We've already recorded more than 10,000 votes across the 15 categories, but we're giving readers a final chance to vote before the winners are unveiled at Wednesday's big event. With some very tight races, now is the time to record your vote if you haven't already or encourage your friends to do so. We'll cut off voting today -- November 29th at 3 p.m.

We also have a few tickets left for The Flashies, as well as the pre-event News Summit (featuring VentureBeat's Matt Marshall, All Things Digital's Tricia Duryee, msnbc.com's Wilson Rothman and The Wall Street Journal's Nick Wingfield). Tickets for both available here. (Note: The News Summit will take place at the Rainier Room near Key Arena at 3:30 p.m., with the Flashies starting at 5:30 p.m. at EMP. Map below).

Here's a look back at all of the categories for The Flashies.

Previous Categories, Voting Open Until 3 p.m. Monday: Do-Gooder of the Year ... Story of the Year ... Newcomer of the Year ... Guest Column of the Year ... Big Deal of the Year ... No Longer Stealth Award ... Stunt of the Year ... Innovation of the Year... Buzzword of the Year... Newsmaker of the Year... Tech Debacle of the Year ... Tech Platform of 2010 ... Breakout Performance of 2010 ... Tech Move/Hire of the Year ... Startup Deal of the Year.

Steve Murch -- the "head chef" and founder of Seattle online recipe site BigOven.com -- continues to make strides in the mobile application development arena. And his latest project is one that could get some attention around these parts.

Dan Shapiro's latest startup company, Sparkbuy, was born out of his personal frustration shopping for a new laptop. After hours of reading online reviews and browsing e-commerce sites, the Seattle entrepreneur decided that there had to be a better way.

Sparkbuy is launching a limited test version of the Web site today, a service which is designed to help consumers figure out exactly what they want in their next laptop. "Ever spend hours researching a purchase, only to still feel like you got ripped off? Yeah, us too. That's why we built Sparkbuy," the company writes in a welcoming message to new users.

We're concluding online voting today for The Flashies, our 2010 TechFlash Newsmaker Awards, with a great category: Story of the Year. In this category, we revisit some of the biggest stories on TechFlash, including the launch of Windows 7, the defeat of Initiative 1098 and the wave of Silicon Valley companies that established branch offices in Seattle.

Vote below for the nominee you consider most worthy, and continue reading for a quick description of each.

To find out the winners, join us next week, on Dec. 1, for the big Flashies bash at the Experience Music Project, where we'll be handing out awards in more than a dozen categories and taking a fun look back on the year in tech.

It seems like everyone is creating a mobile application these days. And the number of startups emerging to assist in iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7 app development is simply astounding. But Liquify Digital, a 5-person Seattle startup formed just five months ago, thinks it will stand out by initially focusing on a targeted niche market of book publishers and film studios. We chatted with Liquify Digital founder Greg Martin for the latest edition of Startup of the Week.

What’s your elevator pitch... We are developing a self-service application publishing platform that will allow anyone, regardless of their technical proficiency, to create rich, professional multimedia applications which can be experienced on any tablet or mobile device.

After the dot-com bust, startup incubators kind of became a maligned concept in entrepreneurial circles. But incubators -- including the rise of organizations such as TechStars and McKinstry's Innovation Center -- are back in style.

The MIT Enterprise Forum explored the topic of incubators and accelerators at a program earlier this month. Excerpts from the program can be seen in the video above, with the more interactive Q&A portion starting in minute eight.

Seattle's technology community is always attracting new people, but this year saw an even bigger influx of companies, personalities and entrepreneurial groups than normal. And that's the subject of today's vote in The Flashies, our 2010 TechFlash Newsmaker Awards. The category: Newcomer of the Year.

Vote below for the nominee you consider most worthy of this special honor, and continue reading for links to more information about each.

To find out the winners, join us one week from today, on Dec. 1, for the big Flashies bash at the Experience Music Project, where we'll be handing out awards in more than a dozen categories and taking a fun look back on the year in tech.

See this page to vote on any categories you might have missed. We've got one more category to go, Story of the Year, so check back later this week for one final vote leading up to next week's Flashies event. A big thanks to sponsors BDO and Filter, and media sponsor VentureBeat for helping make the Flashies possible.

Foreman

Kevin Foreman, who most recently served as CEO of mobile indoor mapping startup Point Inside, has landed a new gig as vice president of mobile at Inrix. In the new role, Foreman will oversee the company's iPhone and Android applications and lead strategic efforts in the location-based services arena.

Prior to Inrix and Point Inside, Foreman served as CEO of Bevy, an online fashion site backed by Madrona Venture Group and Trilogy Equity Partnership. Before that, he served as general manager of the mobile business unit at RealNetworks.

Shapiro

Dan Shapiro: Startup pay kind of sucks.

This is not a well-kept secret. A great startup with a dozen or so people will typically pay its employees about a third less than a big company. Some will argue that that's because of the value of the equity that startups give you. I argue that that's the price of doing something that's more fun, but of unproven economic value.

But regardless of why you're doing it, there's no question that startups ply you with ownership in the company, typically in the form of stock options. They will argue that there's tremendous value in those shares, more than you'll get from a big company, but they tend to get all nervous-looking when you ask them how much value.

Now there's no doubt that 1000 options on stock in a startup with one million shares outstanding (0.1%) has a lot more upside than 1000 options on stock in google (0.000003%). This of course raises the simple question: what are they worth?

F5 Networks is one of the hidden success stories in the Seattle tech community, not drawing the attention or fanfare of bigger players such as Amazon.com or Microsoft. Given that, I spent a little time this morning perusing the company's annual report to shareholders.

The report details a profitable and fast-growing technology business with a big backlog of orders, perhaps one of the reasons why venture capitalist Greg Gottesman and others predicted that the company would be an attractive takeover candidate in 2011 at the WTIA predictions dinner last week. But there was something else that grabbed my attention. F5 offered this chart, comparing the growth of its stock to the Nasdaq over the past five years.

As you'll see in the chart above, those who invested $100 in F5 on Sept. 30 2005 would have $477.70 five years later. By comparison, a $100 investment in the Nasdaq index would have been worth just $127 during that same time frame.