Recent posts and comments

• Under the Radar Deals: 12 Northwest Financings You Haven’t Heard About

  We hope to make this a regular feature in our Xconomy cities. It’s a look at small financings of private companies in tech, life sciences, and cleantech. These are deals in... Read more »

• 17 New Web Startups Around Town

  At least 17 Seattle-area startups rolled out new websites last month, according to the latest edition of Seattle 2.0’s startup index. The index now lists 373 companies, which are ranked... Read more »

• Cozi Teams Up with MWV

  Seattle-based Cozi announced today it has formed a strategic partnership with MeadWestvaco (NYSE: MWV), a Sidney, NY-based maker of school and office supplies and planning tools. Financial terms of the... Read more »

• Microsoft Will Buy Twitter, Adobe to Buy Picnik, and Other Bold Predictions for 2010

  It wasn’t so much the predictions as the discussion that was most interesting at last night’s annual predictions dinner, organized by the Washington Technology Industry Association. Will Twitter be acquired... Read more »

• Dan Levitan on Maveron’s Bay Area Expansion, Its Latest Stealth Startup, and His First Starbucks

  Seattle-based venture capital firm Maveron has been in the news a lot this month. There have been reports about its latest stealth startup, which is a new type of e-commerce play.... Read more »

• Sony Ericsson Closing Bellevue Office

  Sony Ericsson, the London-based mobile handset maker, is shutting its Seattle-area office, as first reported by Engadget and Triangle Business Journal. Sony Ericsson is cutting about 2,000 out of 9,900... Read more »

• RealSelf, Backed by Second Avenue and Rich Barton, Blazes Trail with Cosmetic Review Site

  Who says consumer websites are dead? Maybe you don’t need the ridiculous traffic of, say, Seattle-based Cheezburger Network (LOLcats) to survive on advertising revenues. Maybe user-generated content around a targeted niche,... Read more »

• Voyager Re-ups with Placecast

  Seattle-based Voyager Capital has participated in a $5 million investment in 1020, the San Francisco developer of Placecast, a location-based advertising and marketing platform, according to a report in TechCrunch.... Read more »

• Why Mobile Doesn’t Go Viral, As Told By Ontela’s Dan Shapiro

  Google, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace. Those companies’ products spread over the Internet like a virus. But why hasn’t there been a runaway hit like those in the mobile software world? Why does... Read more »

• Top Three Takeaways from Mobile Northwest’s Investor Panel

  I sat in on a good venture capital panel yesterday at Mobile Northwest 2009 in Seattle. No huge arguments or chair throwing to speak of (we’ll see what we can stir... Read more »

• Bing Partners with Wolfram Alpha, OVP Leads $30M Fate Deal, Redfin Rakes In $10M, & More Seattle-Area Deals News

  Just when I thought venture deals, especially for software and tech companies, had headed south for the winter (or longer), the Northwest erupted with a slew of financings in the past... Read more »

• DocuSign Scores Second Century Investment

  Seattle-based DocuSign announced today it has received a strategic investment from Second Century Ventures, the VC fund of the National Association of Realtors. The amount was undisclosed, but the cash will... Read more »

• What Wireless Carriers Want from Startups, and Other Insights from VC Tom Huseby at Mobile Northwest

  Tom Huseby says he’s finally able to go home and not worry about seeing his family’s savings stuffed under his mattress. “The panic is over,” he says. “All of a sudden,... Read more »

• Avnera Raises $8M Equity Round to Advance Wireless Audio Chip Technology

  A consumer tech company has scored one of the bigger equity financing rounds in the Portland area this fall. Beaverton, OR-based Avnera, a fabless semiconductor company that makes chips for... Read more »

• Seattle’s Bill McCoy, E-Books and Digital Distribution Expert, Leaving Adobe

  We’ve all been wondering how the Adobe layoffs, reported earlier this week, may affect the Seattle area—especially given the slew of other recent cutbacks in the local tech industry. Adobe... Read more »

• Enroute Closes Series A, Looks for More as It Expands and Aims for Profitability

  Early-stage tech financings are still chugging along, it seems. On the heels of yesterday’s news of a $5.25 million financing of Seattle stealth startup Doxo, I checked in with Keith... Read more »

• Doxo Digs Up $5.25M

  Seattle-based Doxo, a stealthy tech startup, has raised $5.25 million in equity financing, according to a regulatory filing. The funding was reported by Northwest Innovation and TechFlash. The investors... Read more »

• Redfin Raises $10M More to Improve Customer Service, Expand, and Invest in R&D

  Well, this does nothing to change the downward trend of early-stage software financings, but it’s good news nonetheless. Seattle-based Redfin, the online real estate broker and information discovery service, has announced... Read more »

• Bing Partners with Wolfram Alpha

  The teams behind Microsoft’s Bing and Wolfram Alpha announced today they have teamed up to enhance Bing’s search results across topics like nutrition, health, and advanced mathematics. Financial terms weren’t given,... Read more »

• Future of Search Event Nov. 30 to Draw Top Startups, VCs, and Execs to UW

  Online search and information discovery are being transformed before our eyes. It’s no longer just Google, or Google and Bing, or even Google, Bing, and Twitter—there are big problems in technology... Read more »