GeekWire

A global pandemic might seem like the wrong time to pursue a new startup idea, given all the uncertainties, but in many ways, the timing couldn't be better. That's one of the insights from our GeekWire Podcast conversation this week with Seattle-area entrepreneur and investor Shirish Nadkarni, author of the book From Startup to Exit: An Insider’s Guide to Launching and Scaling your Tech Business.  The changes in user behavior and tech platform shifts caused by the pandemic dovetail with one of the lessons Nadkarni is hoping to get across to entrepreneurs. "Look for opportunities where there is either some major technology shift or some macro trend that either surfaces an old problem, or enables you to build a solution in a unique fashion that could not be done before," Nadkarni says. "I think those are the best opportunities for an idea to succeed." We also talk about startup opportunities in artificial intelligence and machine learning; the impact of the IPO and SPAC craze on startup psychology; and the effect of remote work on investing and recruiting. Nadkarni founded mobile wireless email pioneer TeamOn Systems, acquired by Blackberry in 2002, and co-founded language learning site Livemocha, acquired by RosettaStone in 2013. He began his career at Microsoft, working on Windows development tools, overseeing MSN's transition into a web portal, and leading Microsoft’s Hotmail acquisition.  In the news this week ... Microsoft announced an Oct. 5 release date for Windows 11, but said it won't be making Android apps available on the new OS until a later date, under a partnership with Amazon. Seattle-based money remittance company Remitly disclosed key financial results on its path to its upcoming IPO. It posted $257 million in revenue and a $32.5 million net loss in 2020. And in our final segment, we hear from a loyal listener, Steve Case (no, not the AOL founder), with feedback on our recent behind-the-scenes episode about the audio technology we use for the show. I had critical things to say about the Blue Yeti mic on the show, to which Steve gave this response: I like and use the Blue Yeti (with an external pop filter). It was the logical choice when I was doing a bit of voiceover, and pondering podcasting. The Yeti is perfect for podcasting because of its three condenser capsules and four modes, so it’s good for one person (cardioid mode) or interviewing someone in person (bi-directional mode). Of course that was back in the pre-quarantine days when we might actually sit on the other side of a microphone from someone outside of our household. Many people who use these for podcasts, YouTube videos and the like, don't seem to understand the modes – or even which side to talk into. This is a side-address microphone, but I see people talking into the end of it, or even into the back side when using cardioid mode. Then there are the folks way too close to the mic, without a pop guard, and the gain set to full. The built-in gain control is a great feature, but with the power to change gain at the microphone comes the responsibility to set it appropriately. Noted! Thanks to Steve for his insights. You can reach us at podcast@geekwire.com with your thoughts on mic technology or anything else we discuss on the show. Audio editing by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

President Joe Biden brought together top executives from the nation's biggest technology, financial services and energy companies this week to address the growing challenge of cybersecurity, speaking to tech leaders including Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Apple CEO Tim Cook. "The federal government can't meet this challenge alone," Biden said in his public remarks to open the meeting. "I've invited you all here today because you have the power and the capacity and the responsibility, I believe, to raise the bar on cybersecurity. And so, ultimately, we've got a lot of work to do." So what happened next? And did any real solutions emerge? Our guest on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast was in the closed-door meeting. Seattle-area investor and entrepreneur Hadi Partovi, CEO of computer science education nonprofit Code.org, shares details and key takeaways on this week's show. In the third segment, Partovi reflects on his own childhood in Iran, as a 6-year-old during the 1979 revolution, later immigrating to the U.S. with his family, and finding success as a computer scientist and entrepreneur along with his twin brother, Ali, who joined him in founding Code.org.  Read his full thread on that topic and see our earlier coverage. See GeekWire.com for more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The last 18 months have been an audio-visual adventure, requiring many of us to improve and refine our at-home tech setups for virtual meetings and remote work.  And just when we thought we'd figured it out, we were hit with a new scenario entirely: hybrid work, with some people together in the office, and others dialing in from home. Getting things to work seamlessly in these situations is no easy task. This can be especially challenging when you're trying to get good sound. We’ve struggled with this latest twist on GeekWire's podcasts, with multiple people in the studio, for example, and others joining us remotely. We’ve figured it out, mostly, through lots of trial and error — emphasis on the error. We're sharing our hard-won lessons on this behind-the-scenes episode of the GeekWire Podcast, including details on hardware and software we’ve been using.  Even if you're not recording audio or video, or producing your own show, we hope these insights might help with your own hybrid meetings and events.  We use a few of our favorite mics to record the show, letting you hear the difference in quality. In addition, we discuss mics to avoid, based on our experience. Also making an appearance are some new Microsoft headsets and microphones that we’ve been trying out on loan from the company.  Stepping out from behind the virtual booth to participate in this episode is Curt Milton, who edits and produces the GeekWire Podcast every week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An online marketplace that helps to facilitate trade between marijuana sellers and buyers will soon see its own stock traded on the Nasdaq. Another that connects pet owners with walkers, boarders and other caregivers just posted its first earnings as a publicly traded company. And a 3-year-old Redmond-based biotech company with a mere 25 employees just raised $80 million its stock market debut. SPACs are shaking up Seattle's startup scene. On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we examine how special purpose acquisition companies are turning startups into publicly traded stocks at a rapid clip. The SPAC phenomenon is giving many of these companies access to additional sources of capital while creating new risks for investors and raising questions about the long-term direction of the stock market. Our guest (and guest audio editor) is Laurel Deppen, a journalist who has been working as an intern at GeekWire in Seattle this summer through the Dow Jones News Fund, reporting a wide range of stories about the region's tech and business community, including an earlier story about soon-to-be public online cannabis marketplace Leafly. She studied broadcast journalism at Western Kentucky University, where she was editor-in-chief of the College Heights Herald, and in addition to joining us for the podcast conversation, she edited this episode as one of the final assignments of her summer internship. In the second segment of the show, we talk with Laurel about her overall impressions of Seattle as a newcomer to the city, as documented in part in her story, How Bumble BFF helped this Kentucky transplant find friends and break The Seattle Freeze. And in our final segment, it's the return of the Random Channel, our segment exploring the random things that caught our attention this week. Laurel talks about the HBO drama The White Lotus, GeekWire co-founder John Cook suggests the new podcast The Edge, and I share my enthusiasm about recent episodes of Kara Swisher's New York Times podcast, Pivot.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman joins us on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast to discuss the latest twists in the housing market; delays in returning to the office; the role of climate in real estate; how technology is changing homebuying; and the impact of remote work and migration on Seattle and other big U.S. cities. In some ways, "it's our employees who are deciding where Redfin's headquarters are going to be," Kelman says. "We now have 1,000 headquarters. There are people who have moved all over the country." In literal terms, Kelman explains, he's committed to keeping Redfin's headquarters in Seattle. But he says the migration of employees creates a new dynamic for city officials seeking to work with business leaders to address economic inequality. We talked after the tech-oriented real estate brokerage released its second-quarter earnings report this week. Redfin's revenue jumped 121% to $471 million, and its net loss widened to $27.9 million from $6.6 million a year earlier. Kelman also addressed the dynamics prompting Redfin to focus on growth over profits. Earlier in the week, Redfin announced a new feature for home listings: a numerical rating that gives a climate score to a given house or property, analyzing the risk of heat, fire, drought, and storms over a 30-year period by county, city, neighborhood and zip code. Redfin is partnering with ClimateCheck on the feature. On the COVID front, Redfin had planned a broad reopening of its headquarters and field offices for Sept. 6, but told employees this week that the milestone would be pushed back indefinitely for now, promising to give them at least 30 days notice of the new date. Those working in the office must be vaccinated, and the company is asking those who haven’t been fully vaccinated to work from home. Microsoft said the full reopening of its U.S. workplaces will happen no earlier than Oct. 4. Amazon went even further, delaying its return to January 2022. Podcast edited and produced by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Microsoft announced its acquisition of LinkedIn for more than $26 billion five years ago, there was lots of skepticism, and for good reason. After all, Microsoft was a company known for taking huge write-downs when its biggest acquisitions (aQuantive, Nokia, etc.) failed to live up to expectations. But that was then, and after becoming the new leader of the venerable software giant, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was taking a different approach, sticking to Microsoft's strength in business technology by picking up the popular business social network. It remains the biggest deal in Microsoft's history, and with that in mind, now it also qualifies as Satya Nadella's biggest success as Microsoft CEO. This week, we learned that LinkedIn has joined the ranks of Microsoft's $10 billion-dollar businesses, crossing that threshold in annual revenue for the first time. Unfortunately, we still don't know for sure if LinkedIn is a profitable business, as Microsoft stopped disclosing LinkedIn's operating profits a couple of years ago. But based on the underlying economics of the business, and the prior trajectory of LinkedIn's bottom line, it's a relatively safe bet that it's operating in the black.  We discuss the LinkedIn deal, five years later, in the second segment of this week's GeekWire Podcast. My colleague John Cook are back in the GeekWire studio at our offices in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood for the first time in 18 months, along with podcast producer Curt Milton.  We start with a behind-the-scenes discussion of GeekWire's Great Race II, and conclude with a new feature, Number of the Week, plucked from our local coffee giant's latest results.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a special presentation of Day 2, GeekWire's podcast about everything Amazon. For more episodes, see geekwire.com/day2 or subscribe to Day 2 in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. Direct retail sales are poised to represent less than half of Amazon's business for the first time in its history — a fundamental shift that reflects the e-commerce giant's expansion beyond its roots as an online store. Revenue from Amazon Web Services, Amazon Prime, third-party seller services, online advertising and other services added up to 49.3% of Amazon's business in the second quarter. It almost matched the company's revenue from online and physical stores, and appears to be on a trajectory to surpass them in the future. That's one of several takeaways from Amazon's second-quarter earnings report, released Thursday afternoon. On this episode of Day 2, GeekWire's Podcast about everything Amazon, we nerd out over Amazon's numbers. Joining GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop for the discussion are two online retail industry veterans who pay close attention to Amazon's business: Our podcast collaborator, Jason Boyce, former Top 200 third-party seller, founder of Avenue7Media and co-author of The Amazon Jungle. Andrea Leigh, vice president of strategy and insights at Ideoclick, a Seattle-based e-commerce technology and services firm that works with vendors to Amazon’s first-party retail sales, and third-party sellers. Leigh was an Amazon general manager and retail category leader for nearly 10 years. Coverage of Amazon earnings: Amazon sales of $113B disappoint Wall Street but profits of $7.8B exceed expectations Amazon’s advertising business is surging amid industry-wide ad sales boom for tech giants Amazon boosting wages and hiring incentives to keep up in competitive labor market See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees recently that the company's long-term goal is to "bring the metaverse to life" — helping to create an interconnected world of physical, virtual and augmented reality spaces that will reshape the way we work, interact with each other, create new things, and generally experience life. So how exactly will Facebook approach such an audacious plan?  A new book called "Move Fast: How Facebook Builds Software" doesn't delve into the metaverse, specifically. But in looking at Facebook's engineering practices — the way the company makes stuff — the book examines the digital DNA of the social network, sheds new light on its most infamous motto, and explains the inner workings of a company that wants to reshape the human experience, again.  Facebook influences the engineering culture and economy not just in its hometown of Menlo Park, Calif., but also in its development offices in the Seattle area, where it employs 7,000 people. And of course, ultimately, Facebook's internal practices end up influencing people around the world who use its products. On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we talk with the author of the book, Jeff Meyerson, the longtime host of the Software Engineering Daily podcast, about the ways Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Google make things, and what those different approaches tell us about where they're taking us. Audio editing by Curt Milton, theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A new report details extensive gender and racial inequities in Washington state's technology workforce, and makes a series of recommendations to address them. Among the recommendations: creating state-supported worker-owned co-ops for independent and contract workers; establishing a state startup fund to support women and people of color in the technology industry; and broadening the focus of the state's technology industry point person and training programs to address equity issues. The report, Creating Quality Jobs for All in Washington’s Tech Sector, was published by OneAmerica, an immigrant and refugee advocacy organization, and authored by our guests on this week's episode of the GeekWire Podcast: researcher and consultant Kimberly Earles; and Marcus Courtney, a public affairs consultant who specializes in labor issues.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sir Richard Branson added new fuel to the billionaire space race July 11 when he and his Virgin Galactic crewmates floated in suborbital space.  "To all you kids down there, I was once a child with a dream, looking up to the stars," Branson said before unbuckling. "Now, I'm an adult in a spaceship with lots of other wonderful adults, looking down to a beautiful, beautiful Earth. For the next generation of dreamers, if we can do this, just imagine what you can do." Can Jeff Bezos top that? We'll soon find out. Amazon's founder is set to go even higher as a passenger July 20 on the first crewed flight for his space venture Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket.  On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast: the dawn of a new era in space tourism, what to watch when the Amazon founder blasts off next week, and what's next for commercial space exploration. Joining us is longtime space journalist Alan Boyle, GeekWire contributing editor, who has covered Bezos' space ambitions for years. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.