Zillow, the Seattle-based real estate website, mobile platform, and mortgage marketplace, said today that it has promoted chief operating officer Spencer Rascoff to CEO. Rascoff, who joined Zillow as part of its original executive team in 2005, is taking the place of co-founder Rich Barton, who has served as chief executive since the company’s founding. Barton will continue to be involved in the company, staying on as executive chairman of the board.

Rascoff has been steadily picking up new responsibilities throughout his career at Zillow. Prior to taking over the role of chief operating officer in October 2008, Rascoff served as both Zillow’s chief financial officer and vice president of marketing. It’s all of his progression in the online startup space. After getting his start in investment banking, Rascoff co-founded discount travel site Hotwire.com in 1999 and helped grow the company to be a leader in online travel. When it was acquired by InterActiveCorp for $675 million in 2003, he joined the team at an online travel company Barton co-founded: Expedia.

“Spencer is an immensely capable and energetic leader who has been a driving force at Zillow from the beginning, helping to grow the company from a spark of an idea into a profitable industry leader. This promotion is well-deserved and reflects the leadership responsibility he’s been carrying for a while,” Barton said in a statement.

Zillow has had a pretty big year. The startup, which consistently tops Seattle 2.0′s monthly Web traffic rankings and has grown to have 200 employees, has tapped the growing online real estate market, breaking records for both Web and mobile traffic, mortgage requests, and sales. In July the company formed a partnership with Yahoo! Real Estate, creating the largest real estate advertising network in the industry. Last month, Zillow’s traffic surpassed 12.5 million unique users, up 41 percent from the same time last year. And earlier this month the startup inked another partnership, this time with Chicago-based Apartments.com, to create a more comprehensive national database of apartment rental listings. To date, the company has brought in $87 million in financing. Zillow has also hit another major startup milestone—it’s profitable.

Spencer Rascoff

“Zillow is in a great place right now—we’re profitable, and all operating and financial metrics are tracking up and to the right,” Rascoff says.

So what’s coming up next for the growing company? According to Rascoff, the company plans to continue to grow in its current markets, while expanding its emphasis on mobile.

“My top priority for Zillow, moving forward, is to extend our reach even further. As a media company, it’s an ongoing goal. We also plan to continue growing our revenue and building out Zillow Mortgage Marketplace,” he says.

The Zillow Mortgage Marketplace is now the company’s fastest growing business. In August the system tracked 314,000 loan requests, a six-fold increase over the same time last year. The company has also laid a strong foundation in the mobile app marketplace. Currently, Zillow runs the most popular real estate applications across a number of mobile platforms—the iPhone, iPad, Android, and Windows Mobile devices—surpassing two million downloads, and accounting for nearly 20 percent of the company’s weekend traffic.

“I expect the next year will bring more growth in traffic and revenue, and I think we’ll see great things from Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. It’s already our fastest-growing business unit, and is built on the innovative notion of letting consumers shop for mortgages anonymously,” Rascoff says. “I also expect to see our mobile usage expand. We already have the biggest real estate app on iPhone, iPad and Android, and I think we’ll take even more of a leadership role in the mobile arena moving forward.”

Barton, in his new role, will hand over day-to-day responsibility for running the company to Rascoff. But Barton will still be closely involved as executive chairman, come in to the Zillow office, and spend about half his time working on the company, Rascoff said.

Prior to co-founding Zillow, Barton founded and ran Expedia, the world’s leading online travel site. Earlier this year, he joined up with former Expedia pal Greg Slyngstad to create a new travel startup, New Travelco (aka TravelPost), which—still veiled in stealth—brought in $9.8 million in equity financing. While Barton has his plate more than full, Rascoff says he will continue to play an active role at Zillow.

Barton “will be a resource for me and the rest of the Zillow team when it comes to bigger issues and opportunities,” Rascoff says. “I’ll be running the business day-to-day.”

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Seattle-based information services company Onvia (NASDAQ: ONVI) has appointed Henry (Hank) Riner as president and chief executive, effective October 4, according to a regulatory filing. Riner, 59, is currently the CEO of New Jersey-based online invoice and statement printing services company OSG Billing Services. He has previously served as chief executive at trade promotions management company CoAMS, direct marketing company SourceLink, and University Microfilm (now known as ProQuest). As CEO of Onvia, Riner will be paid a base salary of $350,000 with potential for bonuses, according to the filing, and will be granted 180,000 stock options. Onvia was founded in 1996 and provides data and services to help companies succeed in the government contracting—or ‘gBusiness’—marketplace.

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Bellevue, WA-based online education company DreamBox Learning has hired Jessie Woolley-Wilson as its new chief executive. Woolley-Wilson previously served as president of K-12 at Blackboard (NASDAQ: BBBB), as executive vice president of LeapFrog Enterprises (NASDAQ: LF), and as president of LeapFrog SchoolHouse. She has also held executive leadership positions at MyRoad.com, The College Board, and Kaplan. DreamBox, founded in 2006, was acquired by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and non-profit venture firm the Charter Fund back in April. The deal included a $10 million investment in the company for the advancement of its e-learning technology, content, and distribution in U.S. schools.

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At least three people were laid off from Seattle-based Calypso Medical Technologies on Wednesday, and former CEO Eric Meier has left the firm, according to a source close to the company.

Director of marketing David Gusdorf declined to comment on the layoffs. A request for comment from Eric Meier was not immediately answered. Vice president and chief marketing officer Lorraine Marshall Wright did not comment on the layoffs, but did say that Meier left Calypso “prior to this week.”

“After ten years building Calypso Medical into an industry leader in radiation therapy motion management, Mr. Meier had decided it was time for a new challenge and time for new leadership to take the company to its next stage of evolution and growth,” she told Xconomy via e-mail.

Wright also verified that the board of directors has appointed Ed Vertatschitsch as interim CEO (he has replaced Meier on the website), while the search for a candidate that will “complement the company’s culture” is underway. Vertatschitsch joined Calypso in 2003, and was formerly the hardware development manager at Palm, and prior to that, chief scientist at Boeing. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from McMaster University.

According to our source, Meier was let go about a month ago with plans to stay on as chief executive until a replacement could be found, but left the company shortly after.

Ed Vertatschitsch

Eric Meier

Calypso, a developer of technology that pinpoints radiation therapy for cancer in order to minimize side effects, has garnered a lot of attention over the last few years. In September, Calypso raised $50 million in a round led by Skyline Ventures and Seattle-based Frazier Healthcare Ventures, the firm that founded the company in 1999. The financing, which was the largest Northwest venture capital deal last year, came after the company cut a fifth of its employees—36 people—in December 2008, a move the company said was made to conserve cash flow during the economic downturn. Calypso had 136 employees as of last September.

Since Calypso’s hefty financing announcement in September, the company has inked a strategic development agreement with Siemens Healthcare to jointly develop radiation therapy products to treat pancreatic, lung, and prostate cancers. In February the company completed a clinical trial with 64 patients who used Calypso’s system to track their prostate tumors during radiation sessions in real time. Researchers said in the journal Urology that these patients had fewer bowel-related side effects, including diarrhea, as well as less urinary irritation and erectile dysfunction.

We’ll update this story if and when we hear more from Meier or Calypso.

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After last week’s resurgence of activity surrounding Seattle-area technology companies, I have to say I’m somewhat surprised by how few deals were made this past week. But just because there weren’t very many straight deals over the last few days, doesn’t mean there weren’t any big news stories—or big dollars—being tossed around the local tech scene. This past week we’ve seen a number of key players in local business shuffle in and out of executive positions and a local billionaire pledge the majority of his money to charity, and we’ve gotten a number of interesting glimpses into the future of Seattle-area startup culture and the emerging industries that seem to be taking center stage. Take a look at the highlights:

—Seattle-based energy retrofitting company EcoFab joined the McKinstry Innovation Center, becoming the third cleantech company to set up shop at the still growing “accelerator” for clean and alternative energy startups. This announcement, however, falls into a larger context about the future of northwest industry. Could the emerging green sector become Seattle’s newest boom industry?

—Stealthy Seattle-based startup PhotoRocket hired on its interim president Gary Roshak as the company’s first CEO. Though founder and chairman Scott Lipsky, former Amazon executive and aQuantive co-founder, hasn’t revealed exactly what the company will be doing yet, this recent announcement may be a sign that the company, which says it is planning on “changing the landscape of the photo sharing space,” may be coming out of stealth soon.

—Madrona Venture Group managing director Tom Alberg has been appointed to President Obama’s new National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The 26-person council, which includes co-founders from big web companies including Yahoo!, AOL, and Zipcar, is charged with helping the administration develop policies to foster entrepreneurship, create jobs, and drive economic growth.

—Paul Allen threw some big money around this last week. The Microsoft co-founder commemorated the 20^th anniversary of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation by giving $100,000 in special grants to the founders of five local nonprofits and vowing to donate the majority of his own estimated $13.5 billion estate to philanthropy. Allen, 57, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma last fall and said he intends to ensure that his “philanthropic efforts will continue after my lifetime.”

—Microsoft Research Redmond named Peter Lee as its new managing director, succeeding Rico Malvar, who will stay on as chief scientist. Lee was previously the director of the Technology Office at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and head of Carnegie Mellon University’s computer science department.

—TechStars, a startup mentorship program and seed-stage investment with operations in both Boulder, CO, and Boston, is opening up a Seattle program in August. Before leaving for Boston himself, Greg got a sneak peek at TechStars Seattle’s new 14,000-square-foot South Lake Union space, fully equipped with a bar put in by the former tenant, who had been planning to open a speakeasy of sorts in the basement. What better environment to foster Seattle’s next generation of tech startups?

—Speaking of blossoming startup scenes, Seattle seems to brimming with new group buying deal-a-day sites—from Tippr, DealPop, and Yubit to the national names, Groupon and LivingSocial. And while this may not exactly be a deal, the onslaught of new daily deals and bargain sites in the local sphere definitely makes for an interesting analysis of where this market is going and what it means for consumers seeking new deals in the local marketplace, and merchants looking for ways to draw in new customers.

—In perhaps the only actual deal this week, Portland, OR-based Puppet Labs, a developer of data center automation software, raised $5 million in Series B financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture firm out of Menlo Park, CA. The completed funding round came at the same time as the open-source software startup rolled out its newest product, Puppet 2.6, which improves upon its flagship product and targets the needs of “enterprise environments.”

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Storage giant EMC (NYSC: EMC) of Hopkinton, MA, said today that veteran software executive Harel Kodesh has been appointed president of the company’s Cloud Infrastructure division and CEO of Decho, a new subsidiary formed in November from the combination of EMC’s Mozy and Pi divisions. Kodesh is the former chief products officer at Missouri-based telecommunications billing provider Amdocs, and helped to create the Windows CE embedded operating system for Microsoft as vice president of its Information Appliances Division. As Greg reported in November, Decho will focus on cloud-computing-based approaches to managing individuals’ digital information.

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If you’re like me, you go through life with the vague hope that someday, technology will help you become a more efficient person. How often I’ve driven to the grocery store or the library to pick up one thing, knowing full well that there’s some other item I needed, but that I’ll never be able to locate it beneath the dust bunnies of my memory.

New tools for tidying up one’s brain come along all the time, of course: the File-o-fax of the 1990s gave way to the Palm Pilot, which eventually gave way to online services like Jott, Evernote, Remember the Milk, and Ta-Da List, and to the hundreds of personal productivity applications available for platforms like the iPhone. There’s even a whole website, Lifehacker, devoted to tracking such technologies.

But I’m still waiting for the über-application, the one central online repository that will allow me to a) file away all of the noteworthy bits of information coming in every day via e-mail, snail mail, catalogs, the blogs and websites I read, the mass media, billboards and posters, and the like, b) curate that information—that is, organize, annotate, tag, rearrange, and share it, and c) retrieve it when and where I really need it, whether I’m using my computer or my cell phone. The tool that currently comes closest to doing all that, for me, is Evernote, created by the Sunnyvale, CA, startup of the same name (I wrote a column about Evernote back in July). But now there’s a promising New England candidate, though it’s still in its embryonic stages: Springpad, an online notebook service launched in beta form last week by Boston-based Spring Partners.

Springpad is a system for creating customizable, task-oriented Web pages called, logically enough, springpads. To each springpad, you can add blocks of data such as text notes, to-do lists, contacts, calendar events, maps, and digital documents such as photos. You can build as many springpads as you want for the various tasks in your life. The company provides useful starting springpads designed for dozens of activities, from planning a vacation to tracking your pet’s medical records. There’s a powerful personal database system under the hood that allows you to tag, search, and share individual blocks, and Spring Partners—a 10-person, venture-backed startup located in Boston’s quaint Charlestown neighborhood —is working on add-ons such as an iPhone app and a Web clipper that will allow you to send information you find on the go or on the Web directly into your springpads.

If you go to Springpad right now, you might get the impression that it’s all about holiday planning—the same way MyPunchbowl is all about party planning or Geezeo is all about financial management (both of those life-tool startups happen to be located in the Boston area too). But the Thanksgiving and Christmas motif at Springpad is a bit misleading—and actually represents a marketing gamble of sorts for the startup.

As co-founder and CEO Jeff Janer explained to me when I visited the company Wednesday, the team had to start somewhere. Spring Partners—which consists almost entirely of transplants from Boston-based mobile advertising company Third Screen Media, acquired by AOL in 2007—has extremely ambitious plans for Springpad. Janer sees it as the central place for consumers, starting with the Web-savvy 25- to 35-year-old demographic, to organize all their life activities—shopping, chores, hobbies, eating out, exercise, travel, research, you name it. He describes it as a kind of anti-Facebook: a place to focus not on your social network but on yourself and all the tasks and information you have to manage.

But that’s a lot to explain to prospective users—and historically, quite a few super-duper personal information management tools have fallen victim to what Janer calls “blank slate syndrome,” the problem of having a great tool in front of you, but not knowing what to put into it.

So that’s why Springpad’s front pages are currently full of the kind of tips and advice you might find on the cover of the December issue of Better Homes & Gardens or Real Simple: an “8-week Holiday Preparation List,” a “Christmas Card Log,” a “Holiday Meal Planner.” The tips are linked to pre-built templates that guide users through the traditional tasks related to Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, and New Year’s celebrations. “The idea was to show people, in a focused way, how to survive the holidays,” says Janer. “Yes, there are all these other templates and features and functionalities available, but … Next Page »

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Bedford, MA-based TimeTrade, which makes a personal appointment scheduling system called TimeDriver, is expected to announce tomorrow that its software has been integrated with Salesforce.com’s suite of Web-based customer relationship management applications. TimeDriver for Salesforce will be unveiled next week at Salesforce’s DreamForce conference in San Francisco and will be available to users of Salesforce’s Force.com AppExchange by the end of the year, the company will announce.

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Acronis, a Burlington, MA, company that makes storage management and disaster recovery software, said today that it has appointed veteran West Coast tech CEO Jason Donahue as its new chief executive. Donahue previously led ClearApp (recently acquired by Oracle) and Meiosys (acquired by IBM in 2005). Former Acronis CEO Walter Scott will remain with the company “in an advisory capacity,” according to a company announcement.

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