Benjamin Romano

Senior Editor, Seattle

Benjamin has covered the intersections of business, technology and the environment in the Pacific Northwest and beyond for more than a decade. At The Seattle Times he was the lead beat reporter covering Microsoft during Bill Gates’ transition from business to philanthropy. He also covered Seattle venture capital and biotech. Most recently, Benjamin followed the technology, finance and policies driving renewable energy development in the Western US for Recharge, a global trade publication. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.

Recent posts

Zillow Takes Questions via Twitter in Real-Time During Earnings Call

Seattle online real estate company Zillow took a new, more open approach to its first quarter earnings conference call Tuesday, accepting and answering questions via social media side-by-side with those of... Read more »
Trulia Buying Market Leader for $355M, Upping Zillow Competition

Home shopping website Trulia is bolstering its offerings for real estate professionals with a $355 million cash and stock purchase of Kirkland, WA-based Market Leader.

San Francisco-based Trulia’s acquisition of a... Read more »
Roundup: Dell Cloud Buy, Obama in Austin, Houston Hackathon, TechRanch Partner

Notable Texas technology news in recent days includes Dell’s acquisition of Enstratius, a tech-centric visit to Austin by President Obama, a Houston government initiative to spur “civic hackers,” and an international... Read more »
Targeted Tableau Software IPO Price Would Value Company at up to $1.5B

Tableau Software, the Seattle data visualization company, is aiming to offer 7.2 million shares of stock for sale to the public at between $23 and $26 a share, valuing the company... Read more »
Solar Needs Market Changes To Bring Benefits To ‘Untapped’ Texas

Solar power advocates hope this will be the summer that drought-stricken Texas sees the potential of this abundant natural energy source, and changes electricity market structures to take advantage of it.... Read more »
Roundup: Tango Card, VoloMetrix, Glider, Chirpify Score Funds, & More

Call this the “torrid springtime heatwave” edition of the Seattle tech news roundup, because that’s what’s in the forecast from now through the weekend. Meanwhile, a handful of tech... Read more »
Jobaline Brings Technology to Overlooked Hourly Job-Seekers, Employers

Seattle-area startup Jobaline is out to solve some big problems for workers and employers in the huge, underserved world of hourly labor.

The company’s technology platform is meant to match job... Read more »
New UW, PNNL Institute Attracts Supercomputing Expert Dunning

The Northwest Institute for Advanced Computing (NIAC) has landed supercomputing luminary Thom Dunning Jr., who will help lead the effort to tie together two of the region’s top centers of computing... Read more »
Startup MovingWorlds Helps Professionals Volunteer In Developing World

Mark Horoszowski wants to make it easier for people with business expertise to help organizations in emerging economies, which he describes with the neologism “experteering.”

He came upon the idea while... Read more »
Report: Google Buying Seattle Startup Wavii to Augment Knowledge Graph

Wavii, a Seattle startup that makes a Facebook-style feed for whatever you’re interested in, has been scooped up by Google for “more than $30 million,” according to TechCrunch, citing “a... Read more »
Roundup: VC Investment, Tableau Q1, Greenest Building, Asteroids, & More

On Earth Day, the world’s “greenest office building” is opening in Seattle, providing a model for commercial developers weighing the costs and benefits of sustainability. Meanwhile, Northwest venture investment was down... Read more »
Flowboard App Is Platform For ‘Touch Publishing’ on iPad

The debate rages on: are tablets good for creating content, or just consuming it?

The iPad and other touch-enabled tablets are undeniably awesome for browsing the Web, viewing photos and videos,... Read more »
Startup BevyUp Rolls Out Platform to Make Shopping Social

Seattle startup BevyUp is introducing a social shopping service for online retailers that allows groups of people to browse, chat, and tag items together.

The company, founded in 2011 by Microsoft... Read more »
University Grants Could Aid Data Science Push in New York, Seattle

The New York Times turned its attention last weekend toward education of data scientists, highlighting a budding “rivalry” between New York City and Seattle.

The paper’s Education Life section focused on... Read more »
A Billion Prices and Counting: Big Data Ambition at Startup Indix

Indix, a startup straddling two continents with an enormous business data problem in its sights, is gradually coming out of stealth.

After announcing a $4.5 million financing round last week,... Read more »
Roundup: AudienceScience, Treehouse, Donuts, EveryMove and More

Northwest companies AudienceScience, Treehouse, Donuts, and EveryMove were among those raising significant capital in early April, while business travel companies Egencia and Concur paired up for a new offering, Zipwhip introduced... Read more »
Student Teams Working on Environmental Innovation Inspire

You can’t help but be inspired after spending a couple of hours with the 20 Northwest student teams at the UW Environmental Innovation Challenge.

Despite the shortcomings of our education system... Read more »
Ignition Partners Raises $150M, Expands to Silicon Valley

Bellevue, WA-based Ignition Partners has raised a $150 million fund to make early-stage investments in enterprise technology companies, mainly on the West Coast, and is opening a second office in Palo... Read more »
Seattle Big Data Star Tableau Software Seeks $150M in IPO

Tableau Software’s much-anticipated IPO filing Tuesday could attract new attention to the Seattle tech scene and its growing big data cluster in particular.

The 10-year-old company—profitable in each of the last... Read more »
Seattle Roundup: Indix, Haiku, Livemocha, WebTuner, and More

A handful of interesting local companies have raised significant capital in the last week, including Indix and Haiku Deck, and stealthy WebTuner, which added to an earlier round. Meanwhile, Rosetta Stone... Read more »

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Benjamin Romano

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