GeekWire: Recent Episodes
GeekWire
GeekWire brings you the week's latest technology news, trends and insights, covering the world of technology from our home base in Seattle. Our regular news podcast features commentary and analysis from our editors and reporters, plus interviews with special guests.
This week: SpaceX reports its first quarter as a public company, and Elon Musk says Starlink could deliver a majority of the world's internet within a decade, leveraging production facilities in Redmond. Musk also explains the company's data center ambitions, calling terrestrial infrastructure a trivial problem next to reusable rockets.
Plus: we bring two Washington tech universe posters into the studio, 17 years apart. The 2009 original turns up gems including Boeing's unlikely connection to Classmates.com, a 1990s forerunner to Facebook. The 2009 poster also brings back memories of Teledesic, the Craig McCaw venture backed by Bill Gates that tried to beam internet from space decades before Starlink.
Finally, the GeekWire Trivia Challenge returns, with a timely question about Google's origins.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
Related stories and links
SpaceX's first earnings call as a public company
- SpaceX earnings: Elon Musk says Starlink could deliver most of the world's internet within a decade
- Elon Musk's Mars illusion — Dominic Gates on the gap between the Mars vision and the timeline
- Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket explodes on pad during test; Jeff Bezos vows to rebuild
- Blue Origin's rocket blowup hits NASA and Amazon Leo as well
Mapping Washington's tech universe
- New map traces Washington state's tech 'universe' to a few key hubs, and shows what's at risk
- The Washington Tech Universe map from WTIA, and posters are available here
- Massive map shows how Seattle's tech ecosystem evolved over the last 30 years — the 2015 edition
- The original 2009 Puget Sound Tech Universe map. (Thanks to Ken Myer for digging this up!)
- GeekWire's Seattle engineering centers list
GeekWire Trivia
- The startup idea that convinced a UW computer science legend to leave Google after 27 years
- What a longtime Google AI leader told UW computer science students at their graduation
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This week: Microsoft and Amazon both reported quarterly numbers, and both stocks rose on cloud results that beat expectations. Is AI spending is paying off in real business? And in related news, Microsoft sees a rare annual headcount decline, hitting product R&D hardest.
Plus: Satya Nadella builds a Power BI dashboard out of an analyst's research report, and touts it on the earnings call to make a bigger point. Jeff Bezos names Amazon's chips business as the long-awaited fourth pillar. And AI House managing director Jacob Colker delivers a much-needed pep talk for Seattle tech, calling on the region to recognize and build on its strengths.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
Related stories and links:
Microsoft and Amazon earnings
- Microsoft Azure tops $100B in annual revenue as record AI spending cuts into cash flow
- AWS is 'booming,' but Amazon's free cash flow turns negative on record AI spending
- Microsoft R&D jobs drop for second straight year as total headcount falls for first time in a decade
- Which Microsoft businesses are growing and shrinking, according to obscure table in regulatory filing
Amazon's fourth pillar
- Jeff Bezos says this business is becoming Amazon's next 'pillar'
A rallying cry for Seattle tech
- Watch: A venture capitalist's passionate speech, a rallying cry, really, about Seattle
- Seattle's AI2 Incubator rebrands as AI House, and adds key investor as managing director
- 'I'm tired of that narrative': Seattle VC pushes back on tech exodus talk
The Washington tech ecosystem
- New map traces Washington state's tech 'universe' to a few key hubs, and shows what's at risk
- After hiring AWS exec and raising $107M seed round, Virginia startup plants flag in Seattle area
- GeekWire's Seattle engineering centers list
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On this special mid-week episode, we're sharing a remarkable installment of GeekWire’s new podcast, Positive Charge, which is all about finding slivers of hope in climate and sustainability.
In their latest show, reporter Lisa Stiffler and producer Laura Scott find that hope in an unexpected place: an innovative alternative to traditional burial and cremation. It might not be the topic you were planning to delve into today, but we think you'll find it enlightening and inspiring. You can follow and subscribe for more at geekwire.com/positivecharge.
John Cook and Todd Bishop will be back this weekend with the regular weekly show.
What if the greenest thing you ever do is die? This episode of Positive Charge digs into human composting — the process, also called natural organic reduction, that turns a body into clean soil instead of ash or embalmed remains. It's the end-of-life option Martha Stewart says she wants, and a Seattle entrepreneur is the reason it exists.
Katrina Spade set out to build a climate-friendly alternative to cremation and burial while still a graduate student in architecture, drawing on a practice farmers have long used to compost livestock. Turning that idea into a business meant clearing two enormous hurdles: engineering a process that safely breaks a body down into soil in a matter of weeks, and rewriting laws that made the practice illegal in all 50 states. We go inside Recompose, her Seattle facility, where bodies rest in stainless steel vessels and naturally occurring microbes generate all the heat that does the work.
Then the episode turns to the people signing up. Interest cuts across the political map, with as many customers coming from conservative Eastern Washington as from Seattle, and a surprising share of them are young. Tune in to hear why composting is catching on as death care, how the science actually works, and what it means to choose becoming soil.
Sources and references
Interviews:
- Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of Recompose
- Micah Truman, founder and CEO of Return Home
- Elyssa Tappero, customer of Recompose and tsunami program manager for the Washington Emergency Management Division
Additional sources:
- Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, chair of the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Washington State University
- Inside Recompose, where the human composting startup is ready to grow its formula beyond Seattle (GeekWire)
- 50+ & Unfiltered with Shawn Killinger, Episode 124 with Martha Stewart
- The environmental toll of cremating the dead (National Geographic)
- The Potential of Our Decay: Cemeteries That Save the American Landscape (Smithsonian)
This episode was hosted by Lisa Stiffler and Laura Scott, and edited and produced by Laura Scott, with editorial assistance from Todd Bishop. Sponsored by Amazon Sustainability.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Seattle startup funding drops 40% in the first half of the year while AI money floods everywhere else. We dig into the numbers and the implications for the region. Plus: a Seattle judge deals Kalshi a setback, Impinj marks a decade on the Nasdaq after a 26-year climb, and nearly 40 Seattleites trade their smartphones for flip phones for five weeks.
Related Stories
Venture funding drops in Seattle area as AI boom reshapes startup world
Helion raises $465M at $15.5B valuation as it aims to commercialize fusion
UK data center startup Nscale bets big on Bellevue for U.S. engineering hub
Anthropic expands in Seattle as AI boom offers hope for struggling office market
Seattle judge deals blow to Kalshi, rejects prediction market's federal defense
How Impinj has survived 26 years in a market that's 'just getting going'
Ditch your smartphone for a flip phone for a month?
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week: Silicon Valley legend Vinod Khosla's family is leading a group that's buying the Seattle Seahawks for a record $9.6 billion. We dug into hours of his talks and interviews to answer the big questions: Who is this guy, why does he want an NFL team, and what does his track record tell us about the kind of owner he'll be? Plus, the blind spot that could get him into trouble.
Featuring highlights from his 2015 talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Also: A mystery trove of aerospace artifacts is rescued from a Seattle-area electronics recycler, and we want to hear about your coolest tech history find. Send your comments, voice memos and photos to todd@geekwire.com.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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On this week's show, we're out on the GeekWire deck for our annual founder open house, where we dig into Microsoft's latest round of layoffs — including a major Xbox shakeup — and the surprising rise of hardware companies on the GeekWire 200.
Then we sit down with four guests to talk about how AI is reshaping how they build:
- Jana Schuster of StackIQ, whose AI-native platform helps companies find redundancy in their software spending — like Rocket Money, but for business — with a small team.
- Blake Resnick and David Benowitz of Brinc Drones, whose mechanical engineers are now vibe coding their own prototypes;
- Boaz Ashkenazy of Shift AI, who's setting up always-on agents and rethinking how we interact with AI tools.
Finally, the GeekWire Trivia Challenge: how a longtime T-Mobile executive got his start in the wireless business, and the star-studded history of T-Mobile celebrity endorsers.
Stories mentioned:
- Microsoft cuts 4,800 jobs, about 2% globally, revamps salesforce and launches massive Xbox overhaul
- GeekWire 200 update: New unicorns and a hardware surge remake our list of top Pacific NW startups
- Former GitHub CEO's startup Entire unveils its answer to the crush of AI coding agents
- Chicago software company plants flag in Seattle area as new leadership team seeks AI talent
- T-Mobile exec Mike Katz exits after 28 years, as carrier reshuffles top ranks and taps ex-AT&T leader
With Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the show, we're sharing the debut of Positive Charge, a new GeekWire podcast from reporter Lisa Stiffler and producer Laura Scott about the innovations that could help save the planet.
In this episode, they dig into the high-stakes race to harness the power of the sun and make fusion energy real, visiting two Seattle-area startups chasing this dream, and asking whether limitless clean power is finally within reach.
Also out this week: their debut episode on the "forever chemicals" in our water and the companies figuring out how to destroy them. Follow Positive Charge wherever you get your podcasts, or at geekwire.com/positivecharge.
Positive Charge is presented with support from Amazon Sustainability.
Sources and references
- David Kirtley, Helion Energy, CEO and co-founder
- Manav Singh, Helion Energy, director of electrical engineering
- Matthew Thompson, Zap Energy, senior vice president of fission technology and former vice president of systems engineering and pulsed power
- Laura Berzak Hopkins, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, associate laboratory director for Strategy and Partnerships, and deputy chief research officer
GeekWire’s related coverage:
- Helion gives behind-the-scenes tour of secretive 60-foot fusion prototype as it races to deployment
- Helion makes big bet on ‘Tiny Merge’ fusion testbed to meet aggressive Microsoft timeline
- Inside Zap: Fusion pioneer tries to build ‘a star in a jar’ to unlock abundant clean energy
- Zap Energy’s nuclear double play: Fusion startup adds traditional fission to its lineup, in industry first
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This week: F5 turns 30 years old this year, and the Seattle company has reinvented itself repeatedly to get here — starting, improbably, as a group of University of Washington students trying to build online video games.
On this week's GeekWire Podcast, recorded on location at F5 Tower, the company's chairman, president and CEO François Locoh-Donou joins us to trace that journey, from a 1990s internet load-balancing startup to a company that helps keep many of the world's biggest apps running and secure.
Today F5 is a publicly traded company with about 6,500 employees and more than $3 billion in annual revenue, and it counts over 80% of the Fortune 500 among its customers.
Locoh-Donou discusses F5's expansion into AI security, including its acquisition of SurePath AI this week, and the company's broader M&A strategy. On a personal note, he reflects on his path from Togo to Seattle, his leadership philosophy, and his message to high school students from underrepresented backgrounds who visited F5 Tower before the company took them to a World Cup match.
Plus: his World Cup predictions, and a GeekWire trivia question that stumps the room.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Anthropic takes its most powerful models offline after a U.S. order, with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy reportedly contributing to the concerns that helped trigger it. Todd and John dig into the Amazon-Anthropic dynamic, how agentic AI is upending Amazon's "working backwards" tradition, an AI-driven school arriving soon in the Seattle area, and the sensor-packed World Cup ball.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.
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In February, Seattle angel investor Charles Fitzgerald warned the region not to become the next Cleveland, prompting Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb to join the podcast and make the case for his city's comeback. This week we close the loop: Fitzgerald and GeekWire co-founder John Cook call in from an abandoned Westinghouse factory in Cleveland, where days of meeting entrepreneurs, civic leaders, and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine left them struck by a city hustling and aligned around jobs in ways Seattle no longer is.
Back home, we dig into Seattle's unanimous one-year moratorium on new large data centers, which Fitzgerald calls political theater, and he explains why he's sitting out the SpaceX IPO.
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Microsoft's Build conference was a firehose: in-house AI models, agent-first devices, new coding tools, and a Copilot "super app" that got teased but never shown. Todd Bishop and Mary Jo Foley sort through what's real and what's not quite fully baked, from Project Solara and the Scout agentic assistant to Microsoft's push for AI self-sufficiency and the mounting pressure on GitHub.
Related Stories:
- Inside Microsoft’s Project Solara: A new platform for devices that run AI agents instead of apps
- Microsoft unveils seven homegrown AI models in new bid for ‘long term self-sufficiency’
- Mary Jo Foley: No Copilot ‘Super App’ at Microsoft Build, but plenty of agentic fodder
- Microsoft’s OpenClaw team takes on the personal assistant challenge
Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the show: Mark Zuckerberg's superyacht arrives in Seattle the same day Meta discloses nearly 1,400 local layoffs, robot pizza startup Picnic flames out and sells to a mystery buyer, and corporate America confronts the rising cost of AI, including the leaderboard-gaming practice known as "tokenmaxxing." And we return to the theme of billionaire yachts for our trivia challenge.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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On this special episode, Eric Ries, author of the 2011 bestseller "The Lean Startup," discusses his new book, "Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great."
Ries explains why he's redefining profit as the maximization of human flourishing, reveals his role advising Anthropic's founders on their corporate structure, and makes the case that the era of shareholder primacy is already over. He also discusses the fall of Whole Foods, the Musk v. OpenAI trial, and why he believes mission-controlled companies dramatically outperform.
GeekWire's Todd Bishop recorded this conversation with Ries after interviewing him on stage at Seattle Flow Startup Day on May 15.
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This week on a supersized Memorial Day Weekend edition of the GeekWire Podcast: A massive IPO filing from SpaceX includes new details about Elon Musk's Starlink business and its satellite factory in Redmond. Jeff Bezos talks about wealth, inequality and eventually tech in an hour-long CNBC appearance. John goes to World Cup ticketing hell and turns to ChatGPT and Gemini when FIFA's support falls short. And a special Sam Altman/Seattle startup edition of GeekWire Trivia.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
Related Links:
- SpaceX is churning out 70 Starlink satellites a week in Redmond, and other tidbits from its IPO filing
- From the archives: SpaceX founder Elon Musk reveals new $10B 'Space Internet' plan at private Seattle event
- CNBC: Jeff Bezos blasts New York City school spending: It doesn’t get better outcomes
- Jeff Bezos describes his $38B startup Prometheus for the first time: ‘Nothing to do with robotics’
- Expedia at 30, the inside story: Online travel giant navigates its third tech disruption
- Seattle, we've got an image problem
- The view from Bellevue: Seattle has the foundation for future growth — if it can fix its taxes
- Former Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has a new gig — startup CEO
- Why this Seattle-area startup is putting its name on the front of an English Premier League soccer team
- CEO of Paul Allen’s $3.1B science and tech fund steps down less than a year after launch
- Award-winning Business Journal photographer Anthony Bolante dies at 58
- 'Soma' Somasegar, 1966-2026: Microsoft and Madrona leader was a champion of developers and startups
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Brian Evergreen worked in AI at Microsoft from 2016 to 2023, including a role helping Fortune 500 executives develop their AI strategies. He kept seeing the same pattern: most of those projects were failing. He set out to figure out why, and the answer became his book, Autonomous Transformation. In this live recording for GeekWire's Agents of Transformation series, presented by Accenture, Evergreen explains what companies keep getting wrong, and why vision matters more than technology.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week: As the Musk v. OpenAI trial heads to the jury, we dig into what Microsoft's internal board memos and executive testimony revealed about the origins of the company's massive bet on AI, and why this case matters beyond the billionaire drama. Plus, Howard Schultz, a former Washington governor, and the tech community weigh in on whether Seattle is squandering its edge as an innovation capital. And Todd owes John and the United Kingdom an apology.
RELATED STORIES AND LINKS
- Microsoft's CTO testifies about email at the heart of Elon Musk's allegations against the tech giant
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's stake in Helion Energy draws scrutiny in Musk trial and on Capitol Hill
- 'Strong, strong no': New filing reveals who Microsoft favored — and opposed — for OpenAI's board
- Musk v. Altman: Satya Nadella was worried about Microsoft being 'the next IBM' in OpenAI deal
- Are we on a Road to Nowhere? Seattle's growth masks deeper anxieties about its future
- Microsoft's multi-agent AI system tops Anthropic's Mythos on cybersecurity benchmark
- Seattle Turns Hostile to the Great Businesses It Made (Wall Street Journal, by Howard Schultz)
- Association of Washington Business 2026 Spring Summit (TVW, featuring former Gov. Chris Gregoire and former AG Rob McKenna)
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook
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This week on the show: Conversations with finalists and special guests at the annual GeekWire Awards about AI, innovation, startups, and the forces reshaping their industries, plus a special trivia challenge marking GeekWire's 15th year hosting the event. Guests include:
- Luis Poggi, CEO of HouseWhisper AI, winner of CEO of the Year
- Tracy Drinkwater, founder of the Seattle Universal Math Museum, STEM Educator of the Year honoree
- Ryan James, CEO of Dopl Technologies, finalist for Startup of the Year
- Laura Ruderman, CEO of the Technology Alliance
- Ross Finman, CEO of Augmodo, finalist for Hardware/Robotics/Physical AI of the Year
- Mohammad Rastegari, CEO of ElastixAI, finalist for Startup of the Year
Related stories
- 2026 GeekWire Awards revealed: Big winners — and big love for Seattle — at annual tech celebration
- Photos: Inside the 2026 GeekWire Awards
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop
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This week on the show: Todd reports from inside the Oakland federal courthouse where Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Microsoft, with jury selection revealing just how hard it is to find anyone neutral about Musk these days.
Meanwhile, Microsoft and OpenAI restructured their partnership the same morning the trial began — and less than 24 hours later, OpenAI's models landed on Amazon's cloud.
Then, Microsoft and Amazon both dropped blockbuster earnings, with Azure up 40%, AWS posting its fastest growth in 15 quarters, and the two companies combining for nearly $400 billion in capital spending this year alone.
We also discuss a wild Semafor story about a serial entrepreneur who handed his entire life over to an AI agent that now emails people as him, sets up meetings without his knowledge, and even ordered him a computer.
Plus, John tells the story of how Seattle's Flying Fish Partners — a VC firm with less than $250 million under management — hustled its way into a $1.1 billion seed round alongside Sequoia, Google, and Nvidia.
And we tackle the quickly debunked rumor that Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook might buy the Seahawks. And finally, the return of the GeekWire Trivia Challenge.
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Bill Hilf has spent decades enterprise tech, open-source technologies, and AI, from IBM and Microsoft to running Paul Allen's portfolio as the CEO of Vulcan. He now chairs the Allen Institute for AI and American Prairie. His debut sci-fi novel, "The Disruption," imagines AI gone very wrong, and implicitly challenges the industry to think differently about how it's building our real future today.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Microsoft is offering a voluntary retirement program for the first time in its history, with thousands of U.S. employees eligible. GeekWire's Todd Bishop joins KIRO Newsradio hosts Angela Poe Russell and Mike Lewis to break down the details, what makes this so unusual in the tech industry, and what it says about the company's approach to managing costs in the AI era.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, a week of Seattle-area startup news shows how the AI era is reshaping the regional tech scene. Q1 venture numbers reveal bigger checks going to fewer companies, with Seattle slipping behind the likes of Austin and Miami on deal volume.
And yet the distributed nature of modern startups is complicating what it even means to be a regional tech hub. (Does a mailbox in Pioneer Square really count as a Seattle headquarters?)
Founders and CEOs are navigating the shakeout in different ways. Those with enough cash in the bank are eyeing strategic acquisitions, including opportunities to absorb startups caught up in the AI shakeout.
Meanwhile, many startup leaders are completely rethinking how they hire and expand. More than a third of the GeekWire 200, our ranking of the top Pacific Northwest startups, saw year-over-year employment declines, as agents boost individual productivity and start to reshape the workforce.
Plus: Andy Jassy's shareholder letter signals Amazon is making bets again, in areas including chips and robotics. Driving home the point, the tech giant's ambitious Globalstar acquisition effectively means it's inheriting Apple's satellite roadmap.
And of course we have to talk about Allbirds. The sustainable shoe brand, which once challenged Amazon over knock-off sneakers, pivoted to AI infrastructure and saw its stock soar.
In our final segment, a trivia challenge on the No. 1 companies in GeekWire 200 history.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: we take the show on the road — or rather, on the rails — recording on Sound Transit's 2 Line as we ride the world's first light rail on a floating bridge from Seattle's Northgate neighborhood to Microsoft's campus in Redmond.
Along the way, we talk tech news, chat with fellow passengers, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the engineering from Sound Transit's Henry Bendon.
After arriving in Redmond, we sit down with Microsoft President Brad Smith to talk about the company's two-decade role in making the Crosslake Connection a reality — and hit him with a trivia question he didn't see coming.
We also discuss Anduril's autonomous warship facility on Seattle's ship canal, golf star Bryson DeChambeau's acquisition of Bellevue-based Sportsbox AI ahead of the Masters, and more.
With GeekWire's John Cook, Todd Bishop, and Kurt Schlosser. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week: Rec Room, the Seattle-based social gaming platform once valued at $3.5 billion, is shutting down — and Snap is picking up some of the pieces.
Todd talks about what it was like fielding calls from distraught users on the night of the announcement. John offers his thoughts on what the shutdown says about the VR hype cycle, and whether everyone betting on the AI boom should take notes.
Plus: Major League Baseball's new automated ball-strike system is already exposing umpires and creating a whole new kind of showboating — including one player who was so confident the robot would overrule the ump that he just started walking to first base.
Also on the show: Todd road-tests Amazon's new FedEx Office returns partnership (pro tip: don't ask for stamps), OpenAI makes a head-scratching move into media by acquiring tech talk show TBPN, John gets fooled by an April Fools' prank, WSU researchers take on the torpedo bat, and our weekly trivia segment ties Apple's 50th anniversary to a piece of Microsoft lore.
Thanks to this week's sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Microsoft, proud to call Washington state home and committed to strengthening the communities that made its growth possible — investing in infrastructure, workforce development, education, and nonprofit partnerships to help ensure innovation drives broad-based prosperity across the state. Read more.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Fresh off the big GeekWire AI summit this week, Todd and John unpack what they heard from Microsoft EVP Charles Lamanna, OpenAI applications CTO Vijaye Raji, and other speakers at the Agents of Transformation event in Seattle, presented by Accenture.
The big thread: the economics of AI, from token budgets becoming a hiring negotiation point to startups running on subsidized credits that may not last.
Plus, a startup founder whose engineer burned through $5,000 in AI tokens over a single weekend of vibe coding, OpenAI shutting down Sora amid $15 million-a-day processing costs, and why one panelist says the metrics most companies are tracking are "watermelon metrics" — green (profit) on the outside, red (losses) on the inside.
Also: how Todd used a Claude project over several months to prep for the event, John's experience bouncing between Gemini and ChatGPT, and why the simplistic chat era may be over.
And in this week's trivia: Sound Transit's light rail starts crossing Lake Washington on a floating bridge — but when did the original I-90 floating bridge open?
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Amazon is working on a new smartphone, code-named "Transformer," more than a decade after the Fire Phone debacle, according to Reuters. We dig into the connection to a past GeekWire scoop: former Microsoft Xbox leader J Allard joined Amazon's devices team in 2024, and he's now leading a group called ZeroOne with a mandate to create "breakthrough" gadgets. Is this an AI-native device? A companion to your iPhone? J Allard's shot at redemption? Maybe all of the above.
There's more great Fire Phone background in this Vergecast "Version History" podcast.
Then: Microsoft shakes up its Copilot team, shifting Mustafa Suleyman to a narrower role and unifying consumer and enterprise AI under a new leader. Todd has strong feelings about Microsoft's history of cutesy consumer tech, from Clippy to Mico.
Plus: Todd's adventure using Claude CoWork to browse LinkedIn (and the stern warning he got in response), King County Metro's slick new tap-to-pay feature catches the transit system up with the modern world, the opening of cross-lake light rail, and an Amazon Treasure truck trivia question.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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Brice Budke (President) and Zeek Earl (Executive Creative Director) run two Seattle studios: Shep, a video agency that works with tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft, and Packrat, a creative studio that specializes in miniature worlds, handmade sets, and retro creative projects.
You might know Packrat's work from the epic and widely watched 2025 Seahawks schedule release video, which won a Gold Clio. They also made Prospect, an indie sci-fi film that premiered at SXSW in 2018 with Pedro Pascal and Sophie Thatcher.
GeekWire met them last fall on the set of a stop-motion shoot for Kiro, an AI-powered agentic software development tool from Amazon Web Services. Check out the video they made from that shoot here.
On this episode, Brice and Zeek discuss how AI is transforming their work — from photorealistic storyboarding to stop-motion animation filled in by AI-generated frames — and what still requires human creativity, taste, and intuition. Plus: the psychology of working with "infinite tools," why AI doesn't always save money, and the GeekWire Trivia Challenge.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
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OpenAI just opened its largest office outside San Francisco, in downtown Bellevue, Wash. GeekWire was there on day one to tour the space. Chatting inside the OpenAI game room, we share our observations about the Mad Men-meets-Pacific Northwest aesthetic, which features open floor plans and lots of common areas, and try to figure out what it all says about OpenAI's culture.
Plus, we talk with Vijaye Raji, the former Statsig CEO who is now OpenAI's CTO of applications, about Codex, infrastructure, hiring, and the evolution and growth of Silicon Valley tech giants in the region.
In our final segment, it's the return of the GeekWire trivia challenge, with a question focusing on one of the earliest tech giants to establish an outpost in the Seattle area.
Related Story: Inside OpenAI’s new Bellevue office: A swanky statement about AI’s impact on the Seattle region
Upcoming Event: Agents of Transformation, March 24.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Anthropic acquired Seattle startup Vercept on Wednesday, raising familiar questions about the impact of early exits on the broader Seattle startup ecosystem, and the question of whether AI startups can compete long-term against the giants of the field.
We dig into the deal, the public feud between two of the company's early investors on LinkedIn, and why one co-founder's prior departure to Meta may have been worth more than the entire acquisition.
Plus, a new research paper envisions a 2028 "global intelligence crisis" driven by AI-fueled white collar job losses, and we're already seeing early signs in the news.
Then, the New York Times reported this week that Jeffrey Epstein built deeper connections inside Microsoft than any other major tech company. We break down the key revelations, including what we found when we searched the Epstein files for "GeekWire."
WSJ: Bill Gates Apologizes to Foundation Staff Over Epstein Ties
And stick around for GeekWire Trivia: With Xbox entering a new era under Asha Sharma, we look back at the celebrity who appeared on stage for the original Xbox unveiling 25 years ago.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Amazon promises 30-minute delivery with its new Amazon Now service. We put it to the test — live on the show — with help from Michael Levin and Josh Lowitz, co-founders of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners and two of the sharpest Amazon watchers we know.
While we wait for our order of yogurt, blueberries, and flossers (long story), Mike and Josh break down why Amazon closed its grocery stores, what its massive future 225,000-square-foot superstore in suburban Chicago could mean, and why Amazon's real play is becoming the ultimate convenience store.
Plus: Test your knowledge of Amazon with our weekly trivia question. Will Josh and Mike get it right?
Related stories and links:
- CIRP Amazon Report on Substack
- CIRP: By Closing Stores, Amazon Goes All-In on Delivery
- GeekWire: Amazon closing all Amazon Fresh and Go stores to focus on Whole Foods and grocery delivery
- Bloomberg: Amazon Dethrones Walmart as World’s Biggest Company by Sales
- "Learn and Be Curious," the new podcast from Doug Herrington, the Amazon Worldwide Stores CEO.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop, edited by Curt Milton.
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We're live this week in the "Center of the Universe" in Seattle for a special recording of the GeekWire Podcast, presented by the Fremont Chamber of Commerce at Fremont Brewing Co.
Fresh off the Seahawks' Super Bowl victory, we debate some potential ownership groups for the Seahawks and Sonics — from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez to Costco's Jim Sinegal. (Who wouldn't want $1.50 hot dogs and sodas at Lumen Field or Climate Pledge Arena?)
Then we dig into the debate over Seattle's tech future, sparked by angel investor Charles Fitzgerald's GeekWire column, "A warning to Seattle: Don't become the next Cleveland," which led to a response and ultimately a great conversation with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb.
Fremont Chamber Executive Director Pete Hanning joins us to talk about the neighborhood's tech corridor, why Fremont offices are seeing some of the highest return-to-office rates on the West Coast, and how the neighborhood balances its quirky identity with serious business.
In the final segment: Test your Seattle tech knowledge with our Fremont-themed tech trivia, plus audience Q&A, in which Todd comes clean about his relationship with Claude.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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GeekWire brought Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Seattle tech veteran Charles Fitzgerald together on the phone Thursday after a guest column warning Seattle not to repeat Cleveland's past mistakes sparked a big response — including from Bibb himself. What followed was a constructive conversation about what cities should do when the economic ground shifts beneath them. Plus: a Seattle-to-Cleveland trip may be in the works.
Related Links
- A warning to Seattle: Don’t become the next Cleveland
Cleveland mayor responds to GeekWire guest column, calls Ohio city a ‘case study of what’s possible’ - Mayor Bibb on LinkedIn: "For decades, national narratives have framed Cleveland as a cautionary tale. But that framing misses the bigger story."
Note: This is a special bonus episode. Our regular weekly show, recorded live Thursday night in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, will be out Saturday morning.
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Upcoming GeekWire Podcast Live Event:* Join us from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb 12 at Fremont Brewing for a live recording of the GeekWire Podcast with Todd Bishop and John Cook. Free for Fremont Chamber members, $15 otherwise. Register here.***
This week on the show: Andy Jassy tells Wall Street that Amazon is planning $200 billion in capital expenses this year, mostly to build out AI infrastructure, and investors give it a thumbs down.
Microsoft's financial results beat expectations but the company loses $357 billion in market value in a single day after investors learn the extent of its dependence on OpenAI.
Meanwhile, OpenAI leases 10 floors of office space in Bellevue, lawmakers in Olympia propose new taxes impacting startup exits and high-income earners, and the bots get their own social network.
In our featured conversation, recorded at a dinner hosted by Accenture in Bellevue, GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop sits down with computer scientist and entrepreneur Oren Etzioni to talk about AI agents, the startup landscape, the fight against deepfakes, and what good AI leadership looks like.
Etzioni is co-founder of AI agent startup Vercept, founder of the AI2 Incubator, a venture partner at Madrona, and the former founding CEO of the Allen Institute for AI.
Agents of Transformation: Check out the series and join us for the conference, presented by Accenture, March 24 in Seattle.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton. Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Upcoming GeekWire Podcast Live Event:* Join us from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Feb 12 at Fremont Brewing for a live recording of the GeekWire Podcast with Todd Bishop and John Cook. Free for Fremont Chamber members, $15 for everyone else. Register here.***
This week on the show, Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper hit the road for a driving tour of the news, making stops at Starbucks, Microsoft, and an Amazon Fresh store in its final days.
First up, Starbucks reports its first U.S. transaction growth in about two years — and announces plans for an AI "ordering companion" that translates cravings into custom drinks. Todd tests it the old-fashioned way, ordering a banana bread latte at the drive-through.
Then, Microsoft beats quarterly expectations but sees its stock drop 12% in a single day. The culprit? Investor concerns about the company's exposure to OpenAI, which now accounts for roughly 45% of Microsoft's contracted future cloud revenue.
Finally, Amazon is closing all of its Fresh grocery stores and Go convenience stores in the U.S., exiting its homegrown retail formats entirely. Todd and Taylor visit a Seattle location during its clearance sale, and find a long line at a store whose original promise was no lines at all.
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Newly unsealed court documents reveal the behind-the-scenes history of Microsoft and OpenAI · including a surprise: Amazon Web Services was the Silicon Valley AI lab's original partner.
Plus, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella debuts a new AI catchphrase at Davos, startup CEO Dave Clark gets attention for his "wildly productive weekend," Elon Musk talks aliens, and the latest on physical AI startups in the Pacific Northwest, including Overland AI and AIM Intelligent Machines.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.
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Someone listening to last week’s GeekWire Podcast caught something we missed: a misleading comment by Alexa during our voice ordering demo — illustrating the challenges of ordering by voice vs. screen. We followed up with Amazon, which says it has fixed the underlying bug.
On this week’s show, we play the audio of the order again. Can you catch it?
Plus, Microsoft announces a "community first" approach to AI data centers after backlash over power and water usage — and President Trump scooped us on the story. We discuss the larger issues and play a highlight from our interview with Microsoft President Brad Smith.
Also: the technology capturing images of every fan at Lumen Field, UK police blame Copilot for a hallucinated soccer match, and Redfin Glenn Kelman departs six months after the company's acquisition by Rocket.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon and Microsoft are racing to define the next era of consumer AI, on multiple fronts. We discuss Amazon's attempt to upgrade Alexa into a true generative AI home chatbot — complete with a new web portal and updated Alexa app — while Microsoft leverages its enterprise strength to win over retailers with a new Copilot Checkout feature.
Plus, we explore Google's upcoming "AI Inbox" for Gmail, which promises to act like an executive assistant for your email. We talk about a DIY bird feeder experiment that resulted in "fuzzy birds," and share our initial experience with AI automation on the PC desktop from Seattle startup Vercept.
We offer a Netflix recommendation, Cover-Up, the new documentary about investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. And on that theme, we lament the loss of a major American newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and reminisce about the time we made an appearance on its editorial page.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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The FCC delivered a massive shakeup to the drone industry right before the holidays, adding foreign-made drones (most notably from industry giant DJI) to its "Covered List" of national security threats. While the move effectively bans the sale of future DJI models in the U.S., GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and John Cook explore why this might be a golden economic opportunity for the Pacific Northwest.
Featuring highlights from a recent interview with Blake Resnick of Brinc, the Seattle-based maker of public safety drones, who lobbied for the U.S. policy change and supports the move.
Related story: Drone capital of the world? Seattle could be a big winner in the U.S. crackdown on DJI and others
Plus, the results are in. After ignoring John’s advice and deciding to retrofit his 2007 Toyota Camry with a modern infotainment system, Todd shares the verdict.
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Todd Bishop and John Cook reflect on the top tech stories of 2025, a pivotal year defined by the AI boom's dual nature: massive infrastructure spending alongside widespread layoffs.
We discuss Bill Gates' framing of AI as "intelligence becoming free," the tension between tech workers and corporate mandates to adopt AI, and the "best of times, worst of times" dichotomy playing out at Microsoft, Amazon, and across the industry.
We also cover the top story of the year — UW rethinking its computer science curriculum — the Statsig acquisition by OpenAI, Seattle's competitive position, and the human side of tech through Ambika Singh's heartfelt speech at the GeekWire Awards.
Featuring audio clips from Gates, Satya Nadella, Andy Jassy, Ken Jennings, and more.
Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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If you're looking for an uncommon thinker, how about a tech industry veteran developing and selling landline phones in 2025 — and selling out of them in the process. Chet Kittleson is the co-founder and CEO of Tin Can, a Seattle startup making Wi-Fi enabled landline phones designed to let kids talk to friends and family with just their voices. No screens, no AI.
GeekWire recognized Kittleson as one of our Uncommon Thinkers for 2025, a program presented in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners honoring inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs transforming their industries in unexpected ways.
In this episode, he talks about the moment at school pickup that sparked the idea, why his own kids don't own devices, what happened when he eliminated screens on family road trips, and the $12 million seed round led by Greylock that will fuel the company's next chapter.
Related stories:
- Tin Can dials up another $12M to meet soaring demand for landline-style phone for kids
- Uncommon Thinkers: Tin Can is Chet Kittleson’s calling, and a way to foster deeper connections
- Uncommon Thinkers: Hope for the future from our 2025 honorees
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.
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On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, recorded backstage at the GeekWire Gala at the Showbox Sodo, we sit down with five of the inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs selected as the Seattle region's 2025 Uncommon Thinkers, in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners.
Jeff Thornburg spent years building rocket engines for Elon Musk at SpaceX and Paul Allen at Stratolaunch. Now, as CEO of Portal Space Systems, he's moved past chemical rockets to revive a concept NASA studied decades ago but never pursued — a spacecraft powered by focused sunlight. He calls it a "steam engine for space." Read the profile.
Anindya Roy grew up in rural India without electricity, came to the U.S. with two suitcases and $2,000, and earned a spot in the lab of a Nobel Prize winner. Now, as co-founder of Lila Biologics, he's using AI to design proteins from scratch (molecules that have never existed in nature) to treat cancer. Read the profile.
Jay Graber runs Bluesky, the decentralized social network that's become a leading alternative to X and other centralized platforms. But while most tech CEOs build moats to lock users in, Jay and the Bluesky team are building a protocol designed to let them leave. She sees the network as a "collective organism," and she's creating a tech foundation meant to outlive her own company. Read the profile. Read the profile.
Kiana Ehsani came to Seattle from Iran for her PhD and spent four years at the Allen Institute for AI before becoming CEO of Vercept. She and the Vercept team are competing directly with OpenAI, Google and others in AI agents, building efficient agents that handle mundane digital tasks on computers so humans can spend less time on screens. Read the profile.
Brian Pinkard spent six months after college flipping rocks and building trails because he wanted to do work that mattered. That instinct led him to Aquagga, where he's proving that the industry standard of filtering and burying "forever chemicals" is obsolete. Instead, he's using technology originally designed to destroy chemical weapons to annihilate PFAS under extreme heat and pressure. Read the profile.
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed we're missing one honoree — Chet Kittleson, co-founder and CEO of Tin Can, the startup making WiFi-enabled landline phones to help kids connect without screens. Chet wasn't able to join us, but we plan to speak with him on a future episode.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Trevor Noah speaks with GeekWire's Todd Bishop after Noah taught a 5th grade class at Ardmore Elementary in Bellevue, Wash., for Code.org's Hour of AI during Computer Science Education Week. The former Daily Show host, comedian, author, podcast host, and Microsoft "Chief Questions Officer" talks about learning AI alongside kids, the importance of maintaining unbridled curiosity, and how artificial intelligence may — or may not — reshape the craft of comedy.
RELATED STORY: ‘We are all kids in the age of AI’: Trevor Noah teaches 5th graders — and learns a few things himself
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Amazon is experimenting again. This week, we dig into our scoop on Amazon Now, the company's new ultrafast delivery service. Plus, we recap the GeekWire team's ride in a Zoox robotaxi on the Las Vegas Strip during AWS re:Invent. And in our featured interview, from the show floor, AWS Senior Vice President Colleen Aubrey discusses Amazon's push into applied AI, why the company sees AI agents as "teammates," and how her team is rethinking product development in the age of agentic coding.
RELATED STORIES
- Stars on the ceiling, Cher on the speakers: Notes from our first ride in Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi
- Groceries in a flash: We tested ‘Amazon Now’ in Seattle — and got our delivery in 23 minutes
- AWS CEO Matt Garman thought Amazon needed a million developers, until AI changed his mind
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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What's the real value in AI tools — and what separates those who use them well from those who don't? Sam Ransbotham, professor of business analytics at Boston College and host of the "Me, Myself and AI" podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review, compares notes with GeekWire Podcast host Todd Bishop in a two-part collaboration between the shows.
On this episode, they discuss the new digital divide emerging in the classroom, AI's measurement problem (and what Wikipedia teaches us about it), the "race to mediocre," how AI is democratizing startup creation, and the tension between AI productivity, time, and the moments that make us human.
Find the rest of their conversation in the Me, Myself and AI podcast feed.
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This week: Jeff Bezos is back in startup mode (sort of) with Project Prometheus — a $6.2 billion AI-for-the-physical-world venture that instantly became one of the most talked-about new companies in tech. We dig into what his return to the CEO title really means, why the company’s location is still a mystery, and how this echoes the era when Bezos was regularly launching big bets from Seattle.
Then we look at Amazon’s latest real-world experiment: package-return kiosks popping up inside Goodwill stores around the Seattle region. It’s a small pilot, but it brings back memories of the early days when Amazon’s oddball experiments seemed to appear out of nowhere.
And finally…Todd makes the case for upgrading his 2007 Toyota Camry with CarPlay, Android Auto, and a backup camera — while John questions the logic of sinking thousands into a beloved older car.
All that, plus a mystery Microsoft shirt, a little Seattle nostalgia, and a look ahead to next week’s podcast collaboration with Me, Myself and AI from MIT Sloan Management Review.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop
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This week: A glimpse of the AI frontier in workplace productivity through the eyes of David Shim — serial entrepreneur, Read AI co-founder and CEO, former Foursquare leader, and this year’s GeekWire Awards CEO of the Year. Shim spoke with GeekWire co-founder John Cook at a recent dinner event hosted in partnership with Accenture, in conjunction with our new Agents of Transformation editorial series, exploring AI, productivity, and the future of work.
They discuss the rapid rise of workplace AI, why Shim believes today’s boom is fueled by real revenue rather than dot-com-style subsidies, and where he sees both hype and genuine value emerging. Shim offers insights on AI assistants, cross-team “multiplayer AI,” global adoption, and the controversial idea of “digital twins” built from employees’ work data.
Recorded by Jessica Reeves; edited by Curt Milton.
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Seattle’s consumer-hardware ambitions are once again colliding with economic reality. The struggles of Glowforge and Rad Power Bikes echo a long regional history of big raises, high hopes, and hard landings — shaped by the pandemic, VC, and the unforgiving nature of building real products.
GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook recorded this conversation for the purpose of providing the audio to an AI tool that turned the conversation into a written column that was edited and reviewed before publication. Check it out here.
Related Stories:
- Glowforge hits restart: After restructuring, co-founders acquire key assets of laser engraver startup
- Rad Power Bikes faces possible shutdown as it tries to survive ‘significant financial challenges’
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What’s it like to pitch your dream on Shark Tank, get rejected on national TV in front of eight million people — and then turn that failure into a company Amazon later buys for more than a billion dollars. Ring founder Jamie Siminoff did just that. A serial inventor and entrepreneur, Siminoff joins us to talk about his new book, Ding Dong: How Ring Went from Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door (out Nov. 10), sharing the messy, high-stakes, and ultimately inspiring story behind the company.
Now back at Amazon as a vice president leading Ring and the company’s home-security businesses, Siminoff reflects on failure, reinvention, and what comes next in the age of AI.
Related links and stories
- Pre-order the book on Amazon.
- GeekWire: Ring founder Jamie Siminoff rejoins Amazon in new VP role
- Business Insider: Amazon VP says his division is hiring and promoting based on employees’ AI usage
- Inc.: The tech founder who wants to fix small-town America
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
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Why is Amazon laying off 14,000 people during a massive AI boom? Todd and John analyze the Seattle tech paradox, digging into Andy Jassy's 'startup' reasoning and debating whether the AI frenzy is a bubble. Then, they take on the Cascadia high-speed rail: a necessary connector or a misguided project?
Related headlines from the week
Amazon layoffs
- Amazon confirms 14,000 job cuts, says push for ‘efficiency gains’ will continue into 2026
- A tale of two Seattles in the age of AI: Harsh realities and new hope for the tech community
- Filing: Amazon cuts more than 2,300 jobs in Washington state as part of broader layoffs
- Amazon layoffs hit software engineers hardest in Washington
- Amazon layoffs reaction: ‘Thought I was a top performer but guess I’m expendable’
- Amazon CEO says massive corporate layoffs were about agility — not AI or cost-cutting
Amazon earnings
- Amazon stock soars 11% after topping Q3 estimates with $180B in revenue, $21B in profits
- Amazon’s Anthropic investment boosts its quarterly profits by $9.5B
- ‘Big Beautiful’ tax benefit: Amazon and other tech giants reap the rewards of new law, for now
Microsoft Azure, earnings and OpenAI
- Microsoft’s Azure reports cloud outage, disrupting global customers including Alaska Airlines
- Microsoft beats expectations, reports nearly $35B in Q1 capital spending amid Azure outage
- Microsoft gets 27% stake in OpenAI, and a $250B Azure commitment
Seattle-Portland-Vancouver
- Slowly but surely, high-speed rail backers believe Cascadia mega-project will become a reality
- Cascadia’s AI paradox: A world-leading opportunity threatened by rising costs and a talent crunch
- The ‘enormous barrier’ that threatens economic growth in the Pacific Northwest
- Beta’s unique electric airplane flies into Seattle to wow state officials and aviation experts
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop
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From empty offices in 2020 to AI colleagues in 2025, the way we work has been completely rewired over the past five years. Our guest this week studies these shifts closely along with her colleagues at Microsoft. Colette Stallbaumer is the co-founder of Microsoft WorkLab, general manager of Microsoft 365 Copilot, and the author of the new book, WorkLab: Five years that shook the business world, and sparked an AI-first future, from Microsoft’s 8080 Books.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.
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Veteran technology journalist Ed Bott has "seen things," after more than 30 years of covering Microsoft and the PC industry, and he recognizes a pattern in the company's latest AI features for Windows. It's part of a high-stakes effort to avoid missing the next big platform shift — attempting to avoid what happened to the company in the mobile revolution.
Ed joins the GeekWire Podcast to analyze this big bet, digging into the new "Hey Copilot" voice commands, the promise and security risks of "Copilot Actions" that can work on your local files, and Microsoft's strategic shift to bring AI features to all Windows 11 PCs, not just the premium Copilot+ PC models. Plus, we discuss whether users will ever really want to talk to their computers and the timing of it all, right as Windows 10 support comes to an end.
Ed Bott on ZDNet:
- Microsoft debuts its next big high-stakes feature in Windows — can you trust it?
- Windows 10 PC can't be upgraded? You have 5 options - and must act now
Microsoft announcement: Making every Windows 11 PC an AI PC
GeekWire coverage:
- Microsoft’s new AI features aim to give Windows a voice and mind of its own
- A new era for Windows: Can Microsoft’s longtime engine power another tech revolution?
Thanks to Buzz Bruggeman of ActiveWords for suggesting this episode.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
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Chris Pirillo, the longtime tech enthusiast and entrepreneur, joins the show this week to discuss how AI software development tools are opening up new possibilities for everyday users, as illustrated by his own experience going from commentator to creator, building nearly 100 apps and games.
He’s launching a free, in-person event series called CTRL+ALT+CREATE Live, where anyone can build something real using AI and no-code tools. The first event takes place from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m on Thursday, Oct. 16 at the Amazon AWS Skills Center in Seattle.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: How artificial intelligence is changing the way companies are created, built, and operated. We're on location at Pioneer Square Labs in Seattle with investor and entrepreneur T.A. McCann, a managing director at the startup studio and venture capital firm.
He explains how AI agents are automating complex functions, letting small teams do the work that once required large groups of people. As AI makes product development easier, he says, the key strategic moat for many startups is now shifting to distribution and data.
Other topics include:
- The wearable AI recorder that captures everything he says throughout the day.
- The rise of the "one-person billion-dollar company" powered by a suite of specialized AI agents.
- How AI-generated personas are replacing human focus groups for market research.
- The future of "agent-to-agent" conversations, where different AI systems negotiate with each other on behalf of their companies.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
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The U.S. tech and startup community was stunned by an executive order last week imposing a $100,000fee for employers seeking new H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers, a program heavily used by the technology industry.
This move brings a longstanding debate back to the forefront: are skilled immigrants taking American jobs, or are they a vital engine for innovation and economic growth?
Our guest this week has a strong point of view on this topic. Shirish Nadkarni is a serial entrepreneur and Microsoft veteran who founded companies acquired by BlackBerry and Rosetta Stone. An immigrant himself, he just released a timely new book, The Indian American Tech Success Story, which makes the case that immigrant founders, particularly from India, are one of America's greatest economic assets — creating far more jobs than they could ever be accused of taking.
Related Links and Stories
- Startup leaders warn new $100K H-1B visa fee will hurt U.S. entrepreneurship and innovation
- New TiE Seattle president on how the $100K H-1B fee could snuff out entrepreneurial flame
- Will new U.S. visa fee boost Canada’s tech sector? B.C. sees an opening against Seattle and Silicon Valley
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: How artificial intelligence is reshaping media and advertising, and what it says about the future of the creative process. Our guest is Jay Richman, an Amazon vice president of product and technology who leads the technology team developing AI tools used by sellers and brands to create and deploy ads across Amazon's platforms.
His career has tracked the evolution of digital media, from early apps for the Palm Pilot to the first wave of streaming at NBC Universal, and the reinvention of podcast ads and monetization at Spotify.
Richman, who's based in New York, was in town this week for Amazon's Accelerate seller conference, where he announced new agentic AI capabilities within Amazon's Creative Studio.
Related Post: Amazon unveils new agentic AI tools for sellers amid heightened scrutiny
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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This week: Executive coach and AI strategist Mark Briggs explains why your "personal operating system" needs an upgrade, and how to use AI to get more time back in your day.
He shares practical tips for turning scattered notes into a powerful knowledge base and discusses how AI can act as a collaborator to fight procrastination and provide instant feedback.
Plus, we play a game of "Bot or Not" to see if you can tell the difference between a human and an AI assistant, and learn how better productivity can lead to achieving personal goals.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his NBA team, the Clippers, face scrutiny over an alleged salary-cap dodge tied to star Kawhi Leonard. We unpack the report and Ballmer’s emphatic denial, while reflecting on his history in tech and sports.
Also: OpenAI's surprise $1.1 billion acquisition of Seattle startup Statsig, and what it says about the AI talent wars. Plus, the ironic role of Microsoft’s own antitrust past in the landmark ruling against Google’s search monopoly this week.
Seattle journalist, radio host and bar owner Mike Lewis joins GeekWire's Todd Bishop for this episode, which also features a highlight from a segment with KUOW's Kim Malcolm.
Related Stories
- OpenAI acquires Statsig for $1.1B, names CEO to key role in surprise exit for Seattle-area unicorn
- ‘Absurd’: Steve Ballmer responds to report that Clippers funneled money to star player via endorsement deal
- Pablo Torre details his investigation on "Pablo Torre Finds Out."
- ESPN's Ramona Shelburne interviews Steve Ballmer.
- Google antitrust ruling gives Microsoft a shaky bridge over search giant’s competitive moat
- KUOW: Is the Google antitrust ruling a ‘big whiff,’ or an advantage for rivals like Microsoft?
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In light of his estate's launch of the new $3.1 billion Fund for Science and Technology, we revisit a classic 2011 interview with the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to explore the "Idea Man" mindset that continues to shape his legacy. The conversation reveals the personal motivations behind his "big bet" philanthropy, his candid thoughts on his partnership with Bill Gates, and his passion for everything from brain science to jamming with rock stars.
Related stories and links:
- Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s final act: New $3.1B foundation bets big on science and tech
- In an age of billionaire backlash, Paul Allen’s lasting legacy stands out in Seattle
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop and Kurt Schlosser.
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What does Seattle gain — and lose — in times of dramatic change? University of Washington Foster School of Business marketing professor Jeff Shulman has spent years studying that question, as host of the Seattle Growth Podcast, director of the Product Management Center, and a civic voice on issues ranging from housing affordability to the campaign to bring back the Sonics.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Shulman joins us to talk about Seattle’s place in the global AI boom, why the city has struggled to produce superstar startups, what AI means for marketing and education, and how civic identity, tech and sports have fueled the region.
RELATED STORIES
- Seattle is a global AI hub — but where are the superstar startups?
- Despite status as a global tech hub, Seattle passengers still can’t hail a driverless ride
- Ken Griffey Jr. Wants Role in Bringing Seattle Sonics Back
Seattle Now Podcast: Casual Friday with Todd Bishop and Jeff Shulman
Also check out the Seattle Growth Podcast and "On the Brink" documentary.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton
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Our guests this week: Adam Brotman and Andy Sack, co-authors of the book AI First: The Playbook for a Future-Proof Business and Brand.
Brotman was Starbucks’ chief digital officer and later co-CEO of J.Crew. Sack is a founder, investor, and longtime advisor to tech leaders. Together, they run Forum3, a company that helps brands rethink loyalty and customer engagement.
For their book, they interviewed experts including Bill Gates, Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman and Ethan Mollick, and spent time with companies that have had early success with AI implementation.
We talk about their "holy sh*t" moment with Sam Altman, how Moderna achieved 80% employee participation through AI contests, the CEO who supercharged sales by using AI to analyze call transcripts, and what leaders should actually be doing to roll out AI within their organizations.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
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Longtime University of Washington computer science professor Ed Lazowska — newly retired at 75 after nearly a half-century on the faculty — joins us to discuss the evolution of computer science, how AI is changing what and how students learn, why specialization is rising, the role of universities in Seattle’s tech economy, and what he plans to tackle next across teaching, advising, and policy.
Read more on GeekWire.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Microsoft soars past Wall Street expectations, briefly hitting a $4 trillion valuation, while Amazon faces sharper scrutiny over its AI strategy. Todd Bishop and John Cook break down the contrasting earnings results, analyst reactions, and what it all means for the future of AI — and Seattle's place in it. Plus: insights from Microsoft's Mustafa Suleyman on the future of Copilot, a throwback lesson from the Zune era, and a guestbook entry that shows just how mainstream ChatGPT has become.
Related stories and links
- Microsoft plans record $30B in quarterly capital spending
- Microsoft cut product R&D jobs, added operations roles over the past year
- Microsoft beats expectations, says Azure revenue tops $75B annually
- Internal memo: Nadella urges long-term thinking as Azure marks 15 years
- Microsoft reaches $4 trillion valuation after big earnings report
- Amazon Web Services profits squeezed amid AI spending surge
- Amazon tops Q2 estimates with $167.7B in revenue, $18.2B in profits
- Can Seattle own the AI era? 20 investors and founders weigh the potential
From Startup to Exit: Microsoft@50: Birth of Xbox, with Chief Xbox Officer, Robbie Bach
Colin & Samir Podcast with Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman
Tim Ferriss Podcast with Expedia and Zillow co-founder Rich Barton
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Our guest this week is Brad Anderson — a tech engineering and product leader who spent more than 17 years at Microsoft and is now approaching 5 years at Qualtrics, the experience management technology company, where he’s president of products, user experience, engineering, and security.
I’ve known Brad for a while, in fact I’ve been on two of his shows back when he was an enterprise mobility and cloud technology leader at Microsoft, and it was all the rage for executives to have their own video shows.
- There was “Lunch Break with Brad Anderson,” where he drove his guests around the streets of Redmond in his Tesla, introducing me to "Insane Mode" at the time.
- And there was “The Ship Room,” where he talked about the cloud and played games with guests, challenging me to distinguish real startup names from fake ones.
For this week’s show, I went to the Qualtrics Tower in downtown Seattle to talk with Brad about how he thinks about building tech today — how AI is starting to change the way products come together, and how expectations are shifting for both the people using the tools and the people building them.
I also turn the tables on Brad in the final segment with a game about cloud and AI terms called "Real or Ridiculous" — stick around to play along.
But first, he reminded me about the random case of mistaken identity that brought us together in the first place, back in the day. Listen to the show to hear the story, and see the related post on GeekWire to read highlights. — GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
Edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
How are companies really using AI? And is it truly working? AWS Vice President Francessca Vasquez joins the GeekWire Podcast to talk about what companies are actually doing with AI today, and what's holding them back. We discuss real-world deployments, lessons from AWS customers across industries, and the challenges and opportunities in scaling generative and agentic AI.
Related Stories and Links:
- Amazon gives $100M boost to AWS Generative AI Innovation Center, betting on agentic AI
- Gartner: Over 40% of Agentic AI Projects Will Be Canceled by End of 2027
- AWS News Blog: Top announcements of the AWS Summit in New York, 2025
- Amazon cuts hundreds of AWS cloud jobs after strategic review, says AI wasn’t the main factor
- Meta snags Seattle startup co-founder for Zuckerberg’s elite superintelligence team
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we’re joined by Colin Sebastian, senior research analyst at Baird and one of the most respected voices in tech and internet investing. We dive into how Amazon, Google, and Meta are positioning themselves in the AI era — from Amazon’s Alexa+ and infrastructure strategy, to Google’s balancing act between search and generative chatbots, to Meta’s AI talent push.
Colin also shares his take on the broader investment climate, how he separates hype from lasting value, and how AI is reshaping his own research process. Plus, we get his outlook on the next wave in gaming, the signals he’s watching in the data, and how today’s AI boom compares to the dot-com era that marked the start of his career.
See these research disclosures for Colin Sebastian and Baird.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Executive coach and former Microsoft leader Sabina Nawaz talks about her book, You’re the Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need) — and why she believes pressure, not power, is what truly corrupts leaders.
We discuss the thinning layer of middle management, how AI tools are changing the landscape, and why many younger workers no longer aspire to lead. Sabina shares actionable strategies from the book, including Micro Habits, the power of Blank Space, and how managers can stop micromanaging and start serving as the “container, not the content.”
She also reflects on her time advising Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer — including a memorable moment involving an umlaut — and explains why getting promoted might be the riskiest moment in your career.
Topics Covered:
- Why pressure is more dangerous than power
- Managing when the middle layer disappears
- The double-edged sword of AI-powered management
- Tools: Micro Habits, the Yes List, Blank Space
- Communication fault lines and “sage speak”
- Leadership lessons from Gates and Ballmer
- How to lead without burning out
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, our guest is Hanson Hosein — an Emmy Award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and communication strategist who has spent his career making sense of the world in times of change.
His latest project is American Dignity, a short documentary that follows the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement from Seattle to Selma to Washington D.C., and considers what those lessons mean for America today.
He started out as an NBC News correspondent, reporting from conflict zones in the Middle East and the Balkans. Later, he founded the Communication Leadership program at the University of Washington and became an early voice for digital storytelling, using technology to find new ways of reaching audiences.
We visit his self-contained studio on the former site of a chicken coop, and talk about how he made this film as a one-person operation, what he learned along the way, and where he thinks media is headed. We also dig into how AI is changing the creative process and what it takes to tell meaningful stories in this new world.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we discuss how AI is transforming our local tech giants, changing the fundamental nature of work, and blurring the lines between human and machine.
We dive into the memo that has Amazon employees either signing up for AI training or updating their resumes; unpack why you're answering emails at 10 p.m.; and explain how one of us ended up quizzing his dentist's office assistant (or was it an AI chatbot?) about whether he or she (or it?) was human. Then we ask the new Alexa+ what it (she?) thinks about the exchange.
Related stories
- Andy Jassy’s long game: Amazon’s reinvention enters its 5th phase as AI upends the workforce
- Amazon CEO: AI will shrink corporate workforce in coming years
- The ‘infinite workday’ is here — and Microsoft says AI will make it worse if we’re not careful
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A message from GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop: This episode of the GeekWire Podcast is unlike any we’ve done before. It touches on some of the most contentious and disputed issues in the tech industry, and in the world more broadly.
It started with my curiosity and desire to understand something that happened in March, at GeekWire’s independent Microsoft @ 50 event. I was on stage interviewing Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith when the conversation was interrupted by a protester.
The group behind the protest, called No Azure for Apartheid, represents current and former Microsoft employees who want the company to end its cloud computing and AI contracts with the Israeli military. They cite concerns over how they believe their work is being used by Israel.
Addressing the larger issues raised by the group, Microsoft said in a May 15 post that it conducted internal and external reviews and “found no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza.”
After covering Microsoft’s statements and the group’s response — and seeing the continued protests unfold at Microsoft events — I decided to dig deeper and learn more.
As part of that, I invited one of the organizers of No Azure for Apartheid to join me on this podcast, for a conversation about the motivations behind the group, their views on Microsoft’s responsibilities, and how the tech industry intersects with international conflicts.
Our guest is software engineer Hossam Nasr, who was fired by Microsoft last year related to protests on the Microsoft campus. In fact, he was the first to protest inside the GeekWire event.
What followed was a complex conversation — one that at times went beyond Microsoft’s role into broader political and ethical criticisms of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
These are deeply polarizing issues, and we know there are strong, divergent opinions about them. I’ve added context conveying Microsoft’s responses, and noting areas where statements and characterizations about Israel, Palestine, and Gaza are the subject of dispute.
The conversation includes detailed descriptions of the ongoing conflict in Gaza and some historical comparisons that some listeners may find disturbing or offensive. And lastly, we recorded this conversation in late May, before the latest developments in the Middle East.
Related Links:
- Microsoft: Statement on the Issues Relating to Technology Services in Israel and Gaza
- Associated Press: As Israel uses US-made AI models in war, concerns arise about tech’s role in who lives and who dies
- AP: Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza
- +972: Leaked documents expose deep ties between Israeli army and Microsoft
- The Verge: Microsoft blocks emails that contain ‘Palestine’ after employee protests
- Guardian: Microsoft deepened ties with Israeli military to provide tech support during Gaza war
Editing by Curt Milton. Read more at GeekWire.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Fifteen years ago, Steve Jobs and Apple had just introduced the first iPad, Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft had been left for dead, and nerdy online bookseller Jeff Bezos was still getting Amazon settled into its South Lake Union HQ. That’s when we started this podcast.
This week, we’re going back to 2010, revisiting clips from the earliest days of the show. We remember what was happening with Amazon, Microsoft, and Seattle’s startup scene, and try to wrap our heads around all the things that have changed since then.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
Audio editing by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we discuss Amazon's new licensing deal with The New York Times for AI content training, and go behind the scenes at two different office spaces: Microsoft's redeveloped Redmond campus and Remitly's new Seattle HQ.
- Amazon inks deal with New York Times to license newspaper’s content for AI platforms
- Rebooting Redmond: Microsoft’s new campus reflects ongoing transformation, uncertain future
- A world away in the heart of Seattle: Remitly’s new HQ provides more room to collaborate — and grow
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop and reporter Kurt Schlosser.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Satya Nadella’s offhand remark at Build, about Elon Musk once interning at Microsoft, sparked a mystery that sent us digging through biographies and transcripts in search of confirmation.
We also break down Microsoft’s new AI moves, announced this week at the company's Build developer conference, and consider what its agentic ambitions mean for tech jobs and the economy.
Plus, a sharp warning from Microsoft President Brad Smith on Washington state’s fading focus on innovation.
RELATED STORIES
- Elon and Satya, together again: Microsoft brings Musk’s xAI models to Azure, despite OpenAI feud
- Microsoft expands AI roster with Anthropic and xAI integrations, looking beyond OpenAI alliance
- Businessweek: Microsoft’s CEO on How AI Will Remake Every Company, Including His
- Washington state cuts back economic development program amid criticism of innovation approach
- ‘We better wake up’: Microsoft’s Brad Smith sounds alarm as state enacts controversial tax plan
- Washington governor approves new business taxes, acknowledges potential ‘unintended consequences’
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Box CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie joins the GeekWire Podcast to talk about the company’s latest AI initiatives, including a new integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot and a suite of Box AI agents designed to help businesses analyze content, extract data, and generate insights.
Levie shares how AI is changing the way he and his team work, explains why he believes 2025 is still “day one” for enterprise AI agents, and offers a realistic take on what AI can — and can’t — do today. He also reflects on Box’s evolution, the shifting role of content in the enterprise, and why he thinks AI is creating more work, not less.
RELATED LINKS
- GeekWire: Box tightens Microsoft ties with new Copilot integration, builds out its own suite of AI agents
- Aaron Levie: How AI is changing my work as CEO at Box
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: The rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence takes center stage in business technology spending, in Washington D.C., and in the global tech power struggle.
We break down a headline-grabbing U.S. Senate hearing on AI and U.S.–China competitiveness, featuring testimony from Microsoft’s Brad Smith and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. There was also a fun Seattle tech callback in the form of a hot-mic moment from Sen. Maria Cantwell during Sen. Ted Cruz's opening statement.
Plus, we dive into a new global survey from Amazon Web Services showing just how quickly companies are making generative AI their top tech priority — even ahead of cybersecurity.
U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation: Winning the AI Race: Strengthening U.S. Capabilities in Computing and Innovation
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: ChatGPT will ‘probably not’ replace Google as top search engine
- Previously: Microsoft asks Trump to loosen chip export limits
- Bloomberg: Trump plans to rescind AI chip export curbs
Amazon Web Services Generative AI Adoption Index
- Generative AI tops cybersecurity in 2025 tech budget priorities, new AWS study finds
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Recorded live at the 2025 GeekWire Awards in Seattle, this episode features industry leaders navigating a shifting tech and political landscape. Amid celebrations of AI breakthroughs, startup milestones, and community-building, guests discuss deeper concerns: capital flight, regulatory headwinds, and what the region needs to retain its innovation edge.
Featured on the show:
- Ambika Singh, founder and CEO of Armoire (Workplace of the Year winner)
- Joseph Williams, Washington State Department of Commerce (Public Policy Champion for Innovation)
- Emer Dooley, Creative Destruction Lab, University of Washington (Geeks Give Back honoree)
- Laura Ruderman, CEO of the Technology Alliance
- Aviel Ginzburg, co-founder at Foundations (Geeks Give Back honoree)
- Anand Subbaraj, CEO of Zuper (CEO of the Year finalist)
Related coverage:
- GeekWire Awards 2025 revealed: Community ‘alive and well’ at annual celebration of best in tech
- Photos: Inside the GeekWire Awards, where it was ‘game on’ for a night of networking and more
Presented by Astound Business Solutions, with category sponsors BECU, Baker Tilly, JLL, WTIA, Alltech, Wilson Sonsini, and First Tech.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we break down a public clash between Amazon and the White House over tariffs, transparency, and politics.
After a report from Punchbowl News suggested Amazon would start displaying the cost of President Trump’s tariffs on product prices, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it a “hostile and political act” during a press briefing — saying she had just spoken to the president about it.
Amazon responded by clarifying that the idea had come from a small team behind its Amazon Haul discount storefront but was never approved and “not going to happen.” Meanwhile, CNN reported that Trump personally called Jeff Bezos to complain.
Related links and content
GeekWire: ‘Not going to happen’: Amazon responds to White House barb over purported tariff transparency plan
Punchbowl News: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers
Reuters, 2021: Amazon partnered with China propaganda arm
CNN's Alayna Treene on X: "Scoop: Trump called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos Tuesday morning to complain about reports that his company was considering displaying the cost U.S. tariffs next to prices for certain products on its website, two senior White House officials told @CNN."
Amazon statement: "The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products. This was never approved and is not going to happen.”
GeekWire Podcast: How Amazon is adapting to the TikTok generation, and what it says about the state of Prime
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this week’s GeekWire Podcast: Microsoft sees a future where humans manage fleets of AI agents — promising to fundamentally change the way companies are run and work gets done. Plus, we dive into the story of Chainguard, the $3.5 billion cybersecurity startup proving that a fully remote company can scale fast without a physical office. And we explore how AI is reshaping everyday life, from travel planning to home repairs.
Related stories
Meet your new AI teammate: Microsoft sees humans as ‘agent bosses,’ upending the workplace: Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index envisions a future where employees manage AI agents, fundamentally reshaping organizational structures.
Chainguard doesn’t have an office. Here’s how the $3.5B cybersecurity startup makes remote work: A look at how Chainguard successfully operates as a fully remote company, including intentional communication and periodic in-person gatherings.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop and editor Taylor Soper. Edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we’re joined by Marcus Fontoura, technical fellow at Microsoft and CTO for Azure Core. Fontoura is the author of A Platform Mindset, a new book that explores how to build scalable systems, support high-performing teams, and foster a culture of collaboration.
We talk about the evolving role of platforms in tech, the impact of AI on engineering productivity, and why creativity and autonomy are more important than ever. Fontoura draws on decades of experience at Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and IBM to share insights on leadership, technical debt, and why great engineers should be treated more like artists than managers-in-waiting.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Melinda French Gates joins us to discuss her new book, The Next Day, a personal and philosophical reflection on life’s transitions. French Gates opens up about her emotional and spiritual journey of the past few years, the lessons she’s learned from therapy and motherhood, and how she’s now using her full voice through her company, Pivotal Ventures. We talk about her billion-dollar commitment to women’s advancement, the promise and pitfalls of AI, and what it means to pause, reflect, and take action — especially in uncertain times.
Hosted by GeekWire reporter Lisa Stiffler. Audio editing by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we're featuring highlights from a live interview with Nathan Myhrvold, CEO of Intellectual Ventures and former chief technology officer at Microsoft. Myhrvold worked at Microsoft from 1986 to 2000, where he laid the groundwork for Microsoft Research, recruited top computer scientists, and played a key role in shaping the company’s technology strategy.
Since leaving Microsoft, he has worked across fields including energy, science, physics, paleontology, photography, and high-tech cuisine.
In this conversation, recorded at Town Hall Seattle as part of GeekWire’s Microsoft@50 event, Myhrvold shares his thoughts on the rise of AI, his longtime collaboration with Bill Gates, the future of energy, the secrets of Microsoft’s success, and what’s next in his Modernist Cuisine book series.
Edited by Curt Milton; With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we talk with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about the company's 50th anniversary, and where it's headed from here.
Plus, highlights from Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event in Redmond, which featured a rare joint appearance by Nadella with former leaders Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
The day also reflected Microsoft's role in an increasingly complex global landscape, with a CNBC interview focusing in part on the impact of tariffs on the company and the global economy, and a protest outside the event condemning the use of the company’s technologies to support Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza.
Related coverage:
- Inside Microsoft’s 50th: Iconic moments, strong memories, and the realities of the outside world
- Gates, Ballmer, Nadella and Copilot: Microsoft CEOs past and present engage in podcast chat with AI
- Inside the Microsoft Archives: How the tech giant preserves, shares, and learns from its history
Microsoft@50 is an independent GeekWire editorial project supported by Accenture.
More in GeekWire’s Microsoft@50 series
- AI Dreams: Microsoft@50, Chapter 1
- Microsoft President Brad Smith on AI, global turmoil, and key issues facing the tech giant at 50
- Microsoft’s startup story: How the company became a tech giant, and what we can learn from it today
- A new era for Windows: Can Microsoft’s longtime engine power another tech revolution?
- ‘The Road Ahead’ at 30: What Bill Gates’ classic book about the future says about the world today
- Bill Gates on Microsoft at 50, and what’s next for AI and innovation
More: Microsoft@50
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: A conversation with Daniel Rausch, Amazon’s vice president of Alexa and Echo, recorded at the company’s Seattle headquarters.
Rausch explained the company’s vision for Alexa+, Amazon's next-generation voice assistant, in advance of its upcoming rollout through an early access program. Alexa+ promises more fluid conversations with users, integrating with more services and devices for new capabilities, including the ability act autonomously on behalf of a user.
It's a significant upgrade for Amazon's longtime voice assistant, judging from the live demos that Rausch walked us through before and after the podcast recording.
But it remains to be seen how much value people will find in using their voice in those situations, rather than the tried-and-true simplicity of using a smartphone app or web browser. And at a fundamental level, Amazon is playing catch-up with OpenAI's ChatGPT and many other AI chatbots in the world of conversational artificial intelligence.
Related links:
- What Alexa’s AI upgrade means for Amazon’s business and Alexa users
- Amazon’s new Alexa+ uses generative AI to personalize conversations and automate tasks
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, as part of our Microsoft@50 special series, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reflects on his remarkable tenure at the company he helped shape for more than three decades.
We talk about his early days working alongside Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the biggest mistake during his tenure, and his take on the company these days as its largest shareholder. He also opens up about his post-Microsoft pursuits — from his data-driven mission with USAFacts to transforming the NBA fan experience with the L.A. Clippers. And we hear his message for his former Microsoft colleagues.
Ballmer's conversation with GeekWire's Todd Bishop was recorded live in front of an audience at GeekWire's Microsoft@50 event at Town Hall Seattle, March 20, 2025.
Microsoft@50 is an independent GeekWire editorial project supported by Accenture.
More in GeekWire’s Microsoft@50 series
- AI Dreams: Microsoft@50, Chapter 1
- Microsoft President Brad Smith on AI, global turmoil, and key issues facing the tech giant at 50
- Microsoft’s startup story: How the company became a tech giant, and what we can learn from it today
- A new era for Windows: Can Microsoft’s longtime engine power another tech revolution?
- ‘The Road Ahead’ at 30: What Bill Gates’ classic book about the future says about the world today
- Bill Gates on Microsoft at 50, and what’s next for AI and innovation
More: Microsoft@50
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: A conversation with Microsoft President Brad Smith, on stage at GeekWire’s Microsoft@50 event this week at Town Hall Seattle, discussing the company’s anniversary and what’s next for the industry and the world.
Related Links
- Microsoft@50 recap: Company faithful mark first 50 years and look to future at GeekWire event
- Microsoft president: Proposed Washington state business taxes would weaken tech sector
Links discussed in the podcast intro:
- Using AI to uncover allegations in the JFK files of the CIA secretly funding a series of spy novels to influence public opinion in the 1960s.
- Fireballs, foxholes, and cryogenic suspension: Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman’s greatest quips
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we discuss the big real estate technology news of the week: Rocket Companies, the mortgage, real estate and personal finance giant, is buying Redfin, the Seattle-based tech-powered real estate company that has been a longtime disrupter in the world of buying and selling homes.
Joining us to assess the implications are Stephanie Reid-Simons, who oversees the news team at RealEstateNews.com as a senior vice president with the news site; and Tim Ellis, a former Redfin market analyst who's a podcaster and blogger, and a veteran of Seattle-area startups including Porch, Moz, and Glowforge.
Also on the show: Microsoft brings its Copilot AI technology to gaming, but can Microsoft prove this is more than Xbox meets Clippy? We’ll consider that question in the final segment with Thomas Wilde, an independent video-game journalist and editor who writes about games for GeekWire, Hard Drive, and other publications.
Join us at Microsoft@50 at Town Hall Seattle this Thursday, March 20.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week: Michael Levin and Josh Lowitz of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) discuss the state of Amazon's Alexa and Echo business, and what the recently announced Alexa+ service means for the company and users. CIRP studies consumer behavior to provide insights for investors and industry leaders.
Related links and coverage
- CIRP: Amazon Report on Substack. (Check out CIRP's Apple Report, as well.)
- CIRP's Amazon Report: Alexa, Should I Pay for Alexa+? Or Get a New Echo?
- GeekWire: Amazon’s new Alexa+ uses generative AI to personalize conversations and automate tasks
- Amazon: Introducing Alexa+, the next generation of Alexa
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the Geekwire Podcast: Google prepares to say goodbye to Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, we get ready to say farewell to Skype; and we take a quantum leap with one of Microsoft's top technical leaders in the field: Chetan Nayak, technical fellow and corporate vice of quantum hardware for the company.
Related stories and links:
- End of an era: Microsoft to shut down Skype, shifting users to Teams, 14 years after $8.5B deal
- Microsoft quantum breakthrough promises to usher in the next era of computing in ‘years, not decades’
- Amazon’s new quantum chip joins race to enable next era of computing
- Google sets long-term plan to exit Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, consolidate in South Lake Union
- Tech investors on why AI makes this a great moment for startups — with one caveat
With GeekWire's Taylor Soper and Todd Bishop; Audio editing by Curt Milton
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we discuss Microsoft's quantum computing breakthrough; a Washington state bill that targets Uber and Lyft surge pricing; the latest update to the GeekWire 200 ranking of Pacific Northwest startups; and Amazon's move to take creative control of the James Bond movie franchise.
Related Links
- Microsoft quantum breakthrough promises to usher in the next era of computing in ‘years, not decades’
- GeekWire 200 update: Here are the hot tech startups moving up our list for Q1 2025
- Lawmakers take aim at Uber and Lyft with bill targeting surge pricing after big events
- Amazon MGM Studios strikes deal for 007, takes over creative control of James Bond film franchise
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop and editor Taylor Soper.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
A new book, The Insider's Guide to Innovation at Microsoft, finds universal business lessons in the company's successes and also its failures, through case studies about different products and teams in various scenarios and stages of evolution.
The book was written by two Microsoft business strategists and innovation leaders: Dean Carignan, who now focuses on AI in the company's office of the chief scientist; and JoAnn Garbin, who created and led Microsoft's Regenerative Datacenter of the Future program as part of its sustainability initiatives.
We speak with Carignan about the book on this special episode of the Geekwire Podcast, as part of our Microsoft @ 50 series.
Microsoft @ 50 is an independent GeekWire editorial project supported by Accenture. Learn more and register here for our Microsoft @ 50 event, March 20 in Seattle.
More in GeekWire’s Microsoft @ 50 series
- AI Dreams: Microsoft @ 50, Chapter 1
- Microsoft’s startup story: How the company became a tech giant, and what we can learn from it today
- A new era for Windows: Can Microsoft’s longtime engine power another tech revolution?
- ‘The Road Ahead’ at 30: What Bill Gates’ classic book about the future says about the world today
- Microsoft alums were surprised by the sheer scale of its success, new oral history project shows
- Bill Gates on Microsoft at 50, and what’s next for AI and innovation
Hosted by Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It has been a wild few weeks and eventful few months in AI: DeepSeek, OpenAI, Stargate, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Salesforce, Google, Elon Musk, and more.
In all of this, there's a heightened focus on what it takes to train AI models and the importance of open-source AI. This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we get insights from Ali Farhadi, CEO of the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2), the Seattle-based nonprofit that has been innovating in open-source AI since long before it was popular.
"If the U.S. wants to maintain its edge ... we have only one way, and that is to promote open approaches, promote open-source solutions," Farhadi says, reflecting on the past few months. "Because no matter how many dollars you're investing in an ecosystem, without communal, global efforts, you're not going to be as fast."
Related Coverage and Links:
- Allen Institute for AI's new open-source iOS AI app runs on-device for secure, private, offline use
- Allen Institute for AI challenges DeepSeek on key benchmarks with big new open-source AI model
- Allen Institute for AI’s new model points to items in images, aims to make bigger point in industry
- New York Times: An Industry Insider Drives an Open Alternative to Big Tech’s A.I.
- Ken Yeung, "The AI Economy" newsletter: Ai2: The AI House That Paul Allen Built
- Ai2 Blog: OLMoE, meet iOS
Hosted by GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
For this latest installment in our Microsoft @ 50 series, we talk with Bill Gates about the company's 50th anniversary, parallels between AI and the early days of the PC, and where he sees the next big opportunities for innovation.
This is part of a wide-ranging interview coinciding with the release of his new book, Source Code: My Beginnings. We published Part 1 of the interview last week, focusing on his upbringing in Seattle, the influential people in his life, the early days of the company, and his perspective on events now unfolding in the world.
Microsoft @ 50 is an independent GeekWire editorial project supported by Accenture. Learn more and register here for our special Microsoft @ 50 event, March 20, 2025, in Seattle.
More in GeekWire’s Microsoft @ 50 series
- AI Dreams: Microsoft @ 50, Chapter 1
- Microsoft’s startup story: How the company became a tech giant, and what we can learn from it today
- A new era for Windows: Can Microsoft’s longtime engine power another tech revolution?
- ‘The Road Ahead’ at 30: What Bill Gates’ classic book about the future says about the world today
- Microsoft alums were surprised by the sheer scale of its success, new oral history project shows
Hosted by GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Our guest this week is Corey Quinn, the chief cloud economist at The Duckbill Group, the host of the AWS Morning Brief and Screaming in the Cloud podcasts, and the curator of Last Week in AWS, a weekly newsletter. Apart from his newsletter and podcasts, Quinn's day job involves helping AWS customers understand and manage their bills. Amid all the AI hype and billions in capex spending, he uses those insights to provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse and a reality check on the state of the cloud market today.
RELATED LINKS
- Amazon on pace for $100B+ in yearly capex; Jassy expects cost efficiencies to drive AI demand
- Amazon’s quarterly profits soar to a record $20 billion, but cloud growth comes up short
- Platformonomics: Charles Fitzgerald breaks down Amazon's capital expenditures
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In advance of the release of his new memoir, Source Code: My Beginnings, Bill Gates sat down with GeekWire for a wide-ranging conversion on topics including his extraordinary upbringing in Seattle, the key people and influences in his life, the remarkable circumstances and luck that led to his work in software, and his outlook on the world today.
RELATED: Bill Gates’ book ‘Source Code’ is a surprisingly candid memoir of the Microsoft mogul’s early years
We're presenting this interview in two parts, this one focusing on Gates' new book and his life, and where the world is headed from here. On an upcoming episode, as part of our Microsoft @ 50 series, we'll hear his thoughts on the evolution of the company that he and Paul Allen started five decades ago, the opportunities in artificial intelligence, and what's next for Microsoft and the industry.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Contributing: Kevin Lisota.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we dive deep into DeepSeek, the AI project that shaking up the tech world, to better understand the underlying technical advances and the long-term implications for the industry.
Joining us is Bill Howe, an associate professor at the University of Washington's Information School and the co-founding director of the UW Center for Responsible AI Systems and Experiences, among other UW roles.
Related stories:
- DeepSeek’s new model shows that AI expertise might matter more than compute in 2025
- Allen Institute for AI challenges DeepSeek on key benchmarks with big new open-source AI model
- Microsoft CEO says AI use will ‘skyrocket’ with more efficiency amid craze over DeepSeek
- Who will win in AI? DeepSeek’s breakthrough stirs questions around value capture
We open the show from the Microsoft campus in Redmond, after getting an inside look at the company's history for an upcoming installment in our Microsoft @ 50 series. John marvels at the size of new campus project, which is still under way, and we experience first-hand the company's vast parking garage when we try to leave.
Also on our agenda this week: Amazon's lawsuit against Washington state over a Washington Post public records request, and what it says about the conflicts inherent to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' ownership of the newspaper.
Related story: Bezos vs. Bezos: Amazon sues WA state over Washington Post request for Kuiper records
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week, we delve into the Project Stargate announcement by OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, in conjunction with President Trump, and assess the implications for OpenAi's relationship with Microsoft. We explain what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella really meant with his CNBC zinger about the Stargate investment, and consider how Elon Musk's involvement in the new administration could play out in the tech industry.
PLUS, we discuss Madrona's big new funds and the potential impact on startup activity in the Pacific NW, and find a revealing piece of Microsoft history on an old CD-ROM.
Related stories:
Microsoft and OpenAI tweak the terms of their cloud deal, enabling $500B Stargate AI project
‘I’m good for my $80 billion’: What Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella really meant by his Stargate zinger
CNBC: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on $500B Stargate project: Our partnership with OpenAI continues
Madrona raises $770M for new funds — here’s what the Seattle VC firm is betting on
Cascade PBS: The rise of Bluesky, a not-so-Seattle-based social media company
Microsoft @ 50: ‘The Road Ahead’ at 30: What Bill Gates’ classic book about the future says about the world today
Learn more and register here for our special Microsoft @ 50 event, March 20, 2025, in Seattle.
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop and John Cook. Editing by Curt Milton.
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For this installment in our Microsoft @ 50 series, GeekWire revisited Bill Gates’ classic book from the mid-1990s, The Road Ahead, with the benefit of three decades of hindsight. We found in its pages a vision for technology that was essentially on the mark — foreseeing pervasive access to information, the rise of smart devices, and the central role of the internet in business, education, and the home. We also discovered striking parallels and insights relevant to the AI revolution we're experiencing today.
https://www.geekwire.com/2025/the-road-ahead-at-30-what-bill-gates-classic-book-about-the-future-says-about-the-world-today/
On this episode, we get the behind-the-scenes story of the book from Peter Rinearson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, writer, entrepreneur, and former Microsoft VP, who co-authored The Road Ahead with Gates and former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold.
Microsoft @ 50 is an independent GeekWire editorial project supported by Accenture. Learn more and register here for our special Microsoft @ 50 event, March 20, 2025, in Seattle.
https://www.geekwire.com/events/geekwire-microsoft50/
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: An inside look at Amazon's classic process for strategic thinking and decision-making, with a former Amazon product and technology director who has written new book about the documents used by the company to determine its direction. What can others learn from its approach?
Plus, we break down this pivotal moment in Amazon's history, as employees return to the office five days a week; and we check in on the state of the Seattle startup world.
Our guest is Marcelo Calbucci, a serial entrepreneur and longtime Seattle startup community leader who has worked for both Amazon and Microsoft. His new book is The PRFAQ Framework: Adapting Amazon's Innovation Framework to Work for You. It's available in hardback and Kindle.
Calbucci has also created a giveaway contest for GeekWire readers and listeners. Enter here for a chance to win a copy of the book.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.
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This week, Seattle-area software developer and AI entrepreneur Patrick Husting of Ghostwriter AI and the Equestrian App returns to the show to talk about the evolution of artificial intelligence over the past two years, how people are using the technology today, and where things are headed in 2025.
Related links
- Can Microsoft avoid the ghost of Clippy? Familiar theme emerges in Copilot rollout for Office apps
- ‘Ghostwriter’ in the machine: How this software developer is integrating AI into work and life
- Microsoft Word gets ChatGPT integration with new ‘Ghostwriter’ third-party add-in
- WSJ: Microsoft Is Forcing Its AI Assistant on People—and Making Them Pay
- Elon Musk's xAI Launches Standalone Grok App
- Boy Genius Report: ChatGPT o1 hacked a chess game to cheat against a better opponent
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton
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What happens when you mix modern AI with a piece of vintage technology and the musical stylings of a very amateur guitarist? You might be surprised.
That's the subject of this week's episode. GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop's fun holiday project, revisiting a favorite gadget from his youth, illustrated some bigger themes about the AI that has emerged in the past two years, and the role it can play in life and work.
Read more here: 'From impossible to merely difficult': AI meets a vintage 1980s musical gadget
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Michael Schutzler, the newly retired CEO of the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA), joins us on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast to reflect on his 11 years running the not-for-profit trade association, assess the state of the tech industry in Seattle and Washington state, and discuss what's next for him.
Schutzler, who has been succeeded as WTIA's CEO by Kelly Fukai, previously its COO, wrote about the extraordinary history of the state's tech industry in a recent post marking the WTIA's 40th anniversary and his retirement.
See more highlights from the episode in this GeekWire post.
Related coverage:
- WTIA CEO Michael Schutzler retiring after 11 years leading Washington state tech group
- WTIA honors 40 years of boosting Washington’s tech sector as new CEO aims for more impact
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we sit down with some of the Seattle region’s “Uncommon Thinkers” — inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the world.
We recorded the episode on location, backstage at the GeekWire Gala, where we recognized five Uncommon Thinkers through this annual awards program, presented in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners.
Speaking on the episode are:
- Uri Shumlak, co-founder and chief scientist at Zap Energy, a physicist leading a team in pursuit of fusion energy, taking a different approach from others in the field. Read the profile.
- Ingrid Swanson Pultz, CTO at Mopac Biologics, and translational advisor at the UW Institute for Protein Design, a microbiologist who led the development of a gluten-destroying enzyme. Read the profile.
- Chris Dunckley, director of chemistry and engineering of TerraPower Isotopes, a chemical engineer who leads a team turning radioactive waste into cancer therapy. Read the profile.
- Andy Lapsa, aerospace engineer and CEO of Stoke Space, a company focused on developing fully and rapidly reusable space vehicles using a liquid cooling technique for re-entry. Read the profile.
Also featured in in the Uncommon Thinkers series: Hanna Hajishirzi of the Allen Institute for AI and the UW's Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, who focuses on open-source Ai models. Read the profile.
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Amazon's AI strategy came into focus this week with the unveiling of Amazon Nova, its new family of homegrown AI models, a new AI model marketplace for Amazon Bedrock, and other news from the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.
It turns out we've seen this before. As the company's AI strategy emerges, there are numerous similarities to its e-commerce business including low cost, broad selection, products from Amazon and its selected vendors, and a marketplace. (This Fortune piece by reporter Jason Del Rey explores these parallels in detail.)
After spending four days in Las Vegas, attending sessions, and talking with AWS executives and attendees, GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook offer their takeaways and dissect Amazon's AI strategy on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, recorded on location at the GeekWire Studios booth on the show floor.
Related links and coverage
- Apple makes surprise cameo at AWS re:Invent
- Amazon unveils ‘Nova’ AI models, looking to make its mark in the generative AI revolution
- ‘An easy button to get off Windows’: Amazon’s new AI moves Microsoft apps to Linux
- Amazon expands Bedrock with new AI model marketplace, a day after unveiling its own ‘Nova’
Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, our guest is Sam Schillace, a deputy CTO at Microsoft and author of the new book, "No Prize for Pessimism," the first title from Microsoft's new publishing imprint, 8080 Books. Schillace discusses the importance of optimism in innovation, drawing parallels between the early cloud era and the current AI revolution. He also shares his past experiences as one of the creators of Google Docs, and emphasizes the value of tackling difficult, non-obvious problems.
Related Links:
- Sam Schillace's Sunday Letters on Substack.
- The No Prize for Pessimism custom GPT.
- No Prize for Pessimism on Amazon.
- GeekWire: Microsoft turns a new page in the book business with its own publishing imprint
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we discuss Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, which now includes Microsoft, and assess the complexities of the OpenAI-Microsoft partnership, as illustrated by early email exchanges revealed in the lawsuit.
We also consider the latest update to the GeekWire 200, our ranked index of Pacific Northwest technology startups, including the rise of Highspot to the top spot, and other trends in the Seattle region's startup ecosystem.
And we share highlights from tech events around the region this week, including the WTIA's 40th Anniversary, where Mayor Bruce Harrell addressed AI and the incoming presidential administration; and an interesting takeaway from a panel of startup leaders whose companies made the latest Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list.
Related links and coverage
- Internal emails: Elon Musk wanted to keep OpenAI from becoming ‘Microsoft’s marketing bitch’
- GeekWire 200 update: A new No. 1 rises to the top of our startup rankings
- WTIA honors 40 years of boosting Washington’s tech sector as new CEO aims for more impact
- Seattle mayor, who sits on a federal AI panel, says he’ll seek ways to work with Trump administration
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we dive into Amazon's launch of a new discount storefront called Amazon Haul, and explore what it says about the future of e-commerce and generational shifts in shopping. Guests Michael Levin and Josh Lowitz of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) provide insights into the long-term trends around Amazon Prime membership and consumer behaviors on the platform.
Related links and coverage
- CIRP's Amazon Report on Substack.
- Hands-on with Amazon Haul: First impressions of the e-commerce giant’s new Temu and Shein rival
- Amazon launching discount storefront ‘Amazon Haul’ with items under $20, longer delivery times
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This special edition of the GeekWire Podcast is the first in a four-episode series that we’ll be publishing in the months ahead as part of our year-long Microsoft @ 50 project, recognizing the company’s 50th anniversary in April 2025.
On this episode, we’ll take a fresh look at Microsoft’s startup story with tech historian and author Margaret O’Mara of the University of Washington, author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America; plus highlights from a recent conversation with David Marquardt, Microsoft’s first outside investor and a longtime board member.
Register here for our Microsoft @ 50 event, March 20, 2025, in Seattle.
Microsoft @ 50 is an independent GeekWire editorial project supported by Accenture.
With GeekWire Co-Founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, it's a grab-bag of topics, including self-driving wheelchairs, Expedia Group Chairman Barry Diller's comments on the prospects for an acquisition by Uber, and an update on GeekWire's upcoming events and coverage.
In the final segment, we discuss what the new Trump administration could mean for technology regulation, including the FTC's antitrust case against Amazon and oversight for tech M&A.
Related coverage and links
- NYT: Tech Giants Face a Familiar Uncertainty With Trump
- Expedia chairman Barry Diller on potential deal with Uber and Washington Post’s ‘blunder’
- Sea-Tac Airport’s self-driving wheelchairs are getting stymied by unexpected obstacles
Upcoming GeekWire Events
- GeekWire Gala, Dec. 12: Register here.
- Microsoft @ 50: Special series and March 20 event.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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This week, with just days to go before the Nov. 5 election, we take a fresh look at AI, social media, and some surprising trends in the spread of fake content and misinformation, with Danielle Lee Tomson, research manager for election rumors at the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public.
Guest host Ross Reynolds speaks with Tomson about AI, social media, and some surprising trends in the spread of rumors online.
Related links and stories:
- Substack: Election Rumor Research @ Center for an Informed Public
- New York Times: As Election Looms, Disinformation ‘Has Never Been Worse’
- Washington Post: Don’t say ‘vote’: How Instagram hides your political posts
Edited by Curt Milton. Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Our guest on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast is Panos Panay, Amazon's senior vice president of Devices & Services, a longtime leader in the world of consumer technology. It has been one year since he started at Amazon, after his surprise departure from Microsoft, where he oversaw products including Surface and Windows.
Panay's division at Amazon includes the Alexa voice assistant and Echo devices, but that's just the start. His purview also spans Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Zoox self-driving taxis, Eero wireless networking devices, Ring and Blink cameras, Fire TV devices, and Kuiper, the company's nascent satellite internet business.
The focus this week is Kindle, with the Oct. 30 release of the Kindle Colorsoft, the first color device in Amazon's line of market-leading e-readers, selling for a premium price of $279.99. It's part of a new era for the Kindle business, driven in part by book-loving social media influencers and consumers looking for simplicity and focus in a world of non-stop smartphone alerts.
We also talked about AI, including the generative AI summaries coming with the next-generation Kindle Scribe tablet, due out in December. Panay wasn't ready to dish on what's next for Alexa in conversational AI, but he made it clear that he's bullish on AI in general, and doesn't believe it's a passing fad.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
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Our guest this week is Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who says he has never been as excited about anything in his career as he is about the latest developments in artificial intelligence — AI agents that can autonomously reason, plan, and take action on behalf of businesses.
Benioff is almost as strong in his negative sentiments toward Microsoft's Copilot. He calls Copilot the second coming of Microsoft's much-maligned "Clippy" Office assistant, and asserts that the Redmond company is giving AI a bad name by disappointing customers with underwhelming results and lax security.
We spoke with Benioff in advance of the general availability of the San Francisco company's Agentforce AI technology for sales and service. We also talked about Benioff's ownership of Time magazine, and what that means for his political involvement; and the status of his past pledge to turn Seattle into Salesforce's HQ2.
Related Links
- Is the world ready for autonomous AI? Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff makes the case for agents
- Microsoft 365 Copilot rollouts slowed by data security, ROI concerns
- Salesforce founder Marc Benioff swears off politics after buying Time magazine
- Seattle will become Salesforce HQ2 via $15.7B Tableau deal, as Benioff gushes about talent pool
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week, we imagine the possibility of Uber buying Expedia Group, based on a report by the Financial Times this week that the ride-hailing company has considered a bid for the online travel giant. It would be notable in part because Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was Expedia Group’s CEO from 2005 to 2017 and remains on the company’s board.
In the second segment, we enjoy highlights from the "60 Minutes" profile of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and a separate appearance by University of Washington historian and author Margaret O'Mara on an episode of the podcast "60 Minutes: A Second Look" about the rise of Silicon Valley in the early 1980s.
And finally, we talk about our new Geekwire project, Microsoft @ 50, and get a window into what's next in AI from Peter Lee, the Microsoft Research president. He shares the top three technical challenges and opportunities on his mind when it comes to the future of artificial intelligence. This is bonus content from an interview for the first story in the series, published this week, tracing the evolution of AI inside Microsoft.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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Artificial intelligence and automation are transforming the way companies get stuff to stores and doorsteps, changing the world of logistics, transportation and the supply chain, as demonstrated by a few Amazon-related stories we covered this week:
- Amazon's unveiling of a new "Vision-Assisted Package Retrieval (VAPR) system for the cargo hold of its electric Rivian vans;
- The announcement of Amazon’s next-generation fulfillment center, with updated and expanded versions of its robotics systems in Shreveport, La.
- Former Amazon executive Dave Clark's launch of a new supply chain technology startup, based in the Seattle area, with $100 million in funding out of the gate.
Those are our topics in our first two segments of the show this week. In the third segment, we hear more about the new Cancer AI Alliance spearheaded by Seattle’s Fred Hutch Cancer Center, in partnership with other national cancer research organizations and major tech companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Nvidia.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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We were looking for a guest expert to discuss the new Microsoft Copilot features on the show this week, when we realized, why not go straight to the source?
Our guest host for the first segment of the show is Microsoft Copilot, taking advantage of the new voice interaction mode rolled out by the company this week.
RELATED: New Microsoft Copilot features include natural AI voice interactions and daily news summary
In the second segment, we get a behind-the-scenes view of this and other new features with a couple of clips from Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, from the closing session at Madrona’s Intelligent Applications Summit on Wednesday afternoon in downtown Seattle. He spoke on stage with S. “Soma” Somasegar, a former Microsoft executive who is now a managing director with the venture capital firm.
RELATED: Microsoft AI CEO sees long-term memory as key to unlocking future AI experiences
And in the final segment, GeekWire's Todd Bishop and John Cook — two humans! — assess Todd's conversation with Microsoft Copilot in the first segment, reflecting on the evolution of artificial intelligence and where it still falls short of human capability.
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Charles Simonyi is known in the tech industry for his work at Microsoft. He played a leading role in creating Word, Excel and other programs back in the 1980s. He rejoined the company in 2017 with its acquisition of his startup, Intentional Software.
But he's had a longtime fascination with space, taking two trips to the International Space Station, in 2007 and 2009, and helping to fund a long-awaited new space survey telescope in Chile that bears his family's name.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Simonyi speaks with Geekwire contributing editor Alan Boyle, the veteran space and science journalist, about the new Simonyi Survey Telescope, the potential for new discoveries, and his longtime fascination with space.
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Amazon's decision to bring its employees back to the office five days a week is a window into the challenges facing the e-commerce and technology giant, and CEO Andy Jassy's larger plan to get the company to operate like "the world's largest startup" again.
Plus, GeekWire's John Cook gets into the back seat of a driverless car for the first time since 2018, and has a very different experience.
Coverage of Amazon's announcement:
- Amazon ‘will return to being in the office the way we were’ before the pandemic, CEO tells employees
- ‘The way we were’: Amazon tries to rekindle its future by rediscovering a spark from the past
- Thoughts on Amazon’s full return to the office from a CEO who knows the value — and the trade-offs
- A ‘home run’ or a ‘cowardly’ decision? Amazon’s new in-person work policy elicits cheers and jeers
- Amazon’s new back-to-office mandate fuels debate over remote work and productivity
Waymo links and related stories:
- NPR: Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars
- GeekWire in 2018: We rode in Uber’s self-driving car, and now we’re less confident in the future of autonomous vehicles
- Video of John's Waymo ride this week.
- The Verge: Waymo and Uber expand their robotaxi partnership to Austin and Atlanta
With John Cook and Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
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Our guest this week is Anupreeta Das, author of the new book, "Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King: Bill Gates and His Quest to Shape Our World." Das is the South Asia correspondent for The New York Times. This week's guest host, Ross Reynolds, is an interviewer and moderator who is well-known in the Seattle region from his 34 years at KUOW, the public radio station from which he retired in 2021.
Edited by Curt Milton.
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The market for E Ink tablets reached a pivotal moment this week with reMarkable's unveiling of its new Paper Pro — now with color E Ink, not just black-and-white. Now the big question is whether Amazon will join the trend with a color Kindle e-reader or Kindle Scribe. The technology enabling the shift from black-and-white to color is the Gallery 3 color display, from E Ink Holdings, a company that spun out of the MIT Media Lab in 1997. On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we learn more from Timothy O’Malley, associate vice president of U.S. operations at E Ink, about the evolution of the technology and the growing applications for E Ink displays.
Related links:
- Challenged by Amazon, reMarkable unveils new ‘Paper Pro’ color tablet.
- Launch event video for the reMarkable Paper Pro.
- Here's the color-changing car mentioned by Tim on the show.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we revisit the controversy over Starbucks' hybrid work policy for its new CEO, Brian Niccol; discuss the cyberattack that crippled computer systems at Sea-Tac Airport in the Seattle area this week; and provide an update on last week's episode about AI text-to-music generators.
Articles and topics discussed on this episode:
- Hybrid policy for new Starbucks CEO sparks debate over remote work, corporate jet emissions
- Starbucks’ New CEO Has a Big Carbon Footprint - WSJ
- Starbucks’ New CEO Will Take Charge Without Training Wheels - Bloomberg
- Steve Ballmer Chases NBA Glory at Intuit Dome, the LA Clippers’ Gleaming New Home
- Plane English: Sea-Tac Airport turns to pen and paper to replace digital displays after cyberattack
- Port of Seattle outage continues two days after suspected cyberattack by ‘nefarious characters’
- GeekWire’s quest for an AI theme song opened our ears to the debate rattling the music industry
- GeekWire Podcast listener Fortunato Vega shares his AI-generated theme song on LinkedIn.
With Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Our regular GeekWire Podcast segment “My AI” didn’t have a musical jingle. So of course, we decided to use AI to create one.You can hear the results and our reactions on this week’s show. It's a glimpse into the issues rattling the music industry. Even when the music isn't great, the technology is pretty incredible. But as we discuss, the underlying issues are a lot more complicated.
With John Cook, Todd Bishop, and Taylor Soper; Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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The naming of Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol as the new Starbucks CEO on Tuesday gives the Seattle-based coffee giant a new leader from the restaurant and fast casual industry with experience leading a digital transformation. We discuss what that could mean on this special mid-week episode of the GeekWire Podcast.
Related Coverage: Starbucks’ new CEO brings extensive digital experience from prior role leading Chipotle
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we look at the implications of the Google antitrust ruling for Microsoft Bing, and conclude that they probably aren't as rosy for the Redmond company as they might have appeared initially.
Plus, a rural community offers a window into Amazon's relationship with the independent companies that deliver its packages around the world.
And finally, the City of Seattle gets support from Amazon and resistance from workers in response to its decision to bring them back to the office for three days a week, up from two days previously.
Related coverage
- ‘Google is a monopolist’: Tech giant loses antitrust suit over search business in huge victory for DOJ
- City of Seattle increasing in-office work to three days for more than 13,000 employees
- Driven away: Overloaded by Amazon, rural delivery companies reach the end of the road
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop and editor Taylor Soper.
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Zillow Group named a new CEO, longtime company executive Jeremy Wacksman, announcing that co-founder and two-time CEO Rich Barton will be shifting to the new role of co-executive chair of the real estate media and technology company, joining co-founder Lloyd Frink in the role. Barton and Wacksman join GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop to talk about the transition on this special episode.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we take a closer look at the earnings reports from Microsoft and Amazon this week, as a litmus test for artificial intelligence demand and the state of the economy. We also consider the implications of Boeing's new CEO being based in the Seattle region, discuss a new AI tool that aims to streamline marketing tasks, and weigh in on the backlash to Google's Olympics ad for its Gemini AI chatbot
- Microsoft capital spending soars to $19B, betting big on AI, as Azure growth underwhelms Wall Street
- Amazon sales come up short, profits nearly double
- Amazon looks to reduce costs to compete more aggressively on price as consumer habits shift
- Boeing chooses its next CEO — and he will reportedly be based back in Seattle
- Seattle tech vets launch 'Spok,' an AI copilot that aims to streamline marketing tasks – GeekWire
- CNBC: Google pulls AI ad for Olympics following backlash
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop and editor Taylor Soper.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, our guest is Ben Gilbert, the entrepreneur and investor, and co-founder and co-host of the hit podcast Acquired.
Ben and his colleague David Rosenthal have developed a huge following for their deep-dive, long-form podcasts telling the stories behind some of the most successful companies in the world, and they recently released Microsoft Volume II, the second installment in their epic exploration of the Redmond-based technology giant.
We talk about Microsoft's misunderstood era, with help from some archival highlights from GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop's interviews with Bill Gates over the years. It’s a timely topic given Microsoft’s 50th anniversary in 2025 and the company's resurgence as one of the most valuable and relevant companies in the tech industry with the rise of AI.
Before we jump in, we ask Ben to catch us up on all things Acquired. The podcast is the talk of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, as documented in a Wall Street Journal profile. Acquired just announced a live arena show coming up on Sept. 10 featuring Mark Zuckerberg at Chase Center in San Francisco, the home of the Golden State Warriors.
Edited and produced by Curt Milton.
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This week: the aftermath of the CrowdStrike outage, the larger forces at play, the future of cybersecurity, and where the world is headed long-term.
Our guest is Erik Moore, a veteran of the cybersecurity field and program director for the online Master of Science Program in Cybersecurity Leadership at Seattle University's Albers School of Business and Economics.
Moore says cybersecurity companies are facing faster and more complex threats due to factors including AI, and geopolitical and financial forces, requiring quicker responses. Current testing and deployment processes need to be overhauled handle these new challenges effectively. But long-term, he's optimistic about where the field and the world are headed.
Related Links
- GeekWire News Coverage: ‘A little frightening’: CrowdStrike outage puts Microsoft’s role in global IT back in the spotlight
- CrowdStrike Blog Post: Technical Details on Today’s Outage
- Microsoft: Helping our customers through the CrowdStrike outage
- Seattle University: Master of Science Program in Cybersecurity Leadership
- CNBC: CrowdStrike update that caused global outage likely skipped checks, experts say
- KING-5: CrowdStrike Outage Hits Microsoft
- Channel News Asia: What do we know about CrowdStrike?
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we catch up on the latest twist in the New York Times' lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft over the alleged use of its reporting to train GPT-4 and other large language models. The NYT is fighting OpenAI’s request to turn over reporters’ notes, interview memos, and other materials used to produce stories, to prove they were worthy of copyright.
On a related topic, we take a closer listen to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's comments about AI and fair use at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which were more nuanced than some of the coverage might have made them appear. Watch Suleyman's full conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin here.
Turning to the Seattle startup scene, an entrepreneurial supergroup has quietly formed a new electric vehicle charging startup, Juicer Energy, that appears poised to create a marketplace connecting homeowners and others with personal EV charging stations to EV owners in need of places to charge up their vehicles.
In the return of our "My AI" segment, we explore the concept of using AI to turn email into a database that can be intelligently mined, in this case with Google Gemini in Gmail and Google Workspace.
We also talk about using Microsoft Copilot in the Edge browser for domain-specific queries, and discuss the importance of treating AI not as an authoritative oracle but rather as a partner in the quest for insight.
On a related note, we suggest an episode of the "Think Fast, Talk Smart" podcast, called "How to Chat with Bots." (Thanks to Mark Briggs for the recommendation.)
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop.
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Greg Fyke is president and CEO of ecobee, the Toronto-based smart home company known for its pioneering smart thermostat and a growing ecosystem of devices, including security systems and smart doorbells.
A former Amazon Alexa executive, he’s personally based in Seattle, exemplifying how remote work has transformed the geography of the tech industry. Fyke succeeded ecobee founder Stuart Lombard as the company's CEO last fall upon Lombard's retirement.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Fyke discusses the emerging "golden age" of smart home technology; ecobee's focus on simplicity, long-term functionality, and integration across ecosystems; its competition with Amazon and Google; and its approach to automation and artificial intelligence.
Other topics include ecobee's November 2021 acquisition by Generac, and their broader focus on energy management solutions, leveraging components like home batteries, solar energy, and intelligent control systems.
- The Verge: How Ecobee is becoming the smart home company Nest should have been
- Greg Fyke on the HomeKit Insider podcast.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we get a deeper understanding of ADHD and neurodivergence in the tech industry and the workplace. Our guest is Brett Greene, a tech community leader in the Pacific Northwest who specializes in this field in his work with companies and individuals as an executive coach.
Related links
- Find a list of ADHD Resources on Brett Greene's website, brettgreenecoaching.com.
- Upcoming event: ADHD Strategies for Tech Founders and Investors: Understanding and Leveraging Neurodivergent Team Members for Maximum Success, July 18 in Bellevue, Wash.
- Brett Greene is founder and CEO of New Tech Northwest.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.
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As the creator and host of the "Startup Project" podcast, Seattle-area tech senior product manager Nataraj Sindam talks with a wide range of investors and entrepreneurs, contributing to his broad perspective on the future of artificial intelligence, investing, startups, and business technology. He's also author of the Above Average email newsletter, and venture partner with Incisive Ventures.
Our topics this week include:
- The opportunity to apply the power of large language models and generative AI to the larger world of business-to-business applications, including services tailored to workflows in specific industry verticals.
- How AI will drive a massive increase in data centers in the next 5-10 years to meet increased demand for compute and storage, and will require new "intelligence layers" in cloud infrastructure.
- The opportunities and challenges for startups to compete with large tech companies in developing foundational AI technologies, and where tech investors are focusing when it comes to AI startups.
- The different incentives in a traditional startup approach (focusing on getting to a minimum viable product) vs. long-term AI moonshots, exemplified by former OpenAI leader Ilya Sutskever's new venture.
- Apple's efforts to integrate AI into its applications and operating systems, and the tradeoffs between the Apple ecosystem and the more wide-ranging Windows/Android platform approach.
- In the return of our "My AI" segment, we discuss a useful way to quickly get a summary of YouTube videos using the Copilot sidebar in the Microsoft Edge browser.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.
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It was a big week for cybersecurity for Seattle's tech giants. Microsoft President Brad Smith was in Washington D.C., testifying before the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee about the Redmond company's security challenges. Listen for highlights at the end of the show.
Meanwhile, Amazon held its annual AWS re:Inforce cloud security conference in Philadelphia.The rise of AI has added some big new wrinkles to the issue of cybersecurity, and AI was one of the main topics in a conversation that I had a few weeks ago with one of the people who keynoted the AWS event this week, Steve Schmidt, Amazon's chief security officer.
Hosted by Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.
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Our guest this week on the GeekWire Podcast is Léonard Boussioux, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, and adjunct assistant professor at the UW Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.
Boussioux received his doctorate in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research combines areas including machine learning and AI with a focus on healthcare and sustainability. Last year he launched a class called "Generative AI in the Era of Cloud Computing" at the Foster School.
- Foster School: A New Era Of AI And Human Ingenuity In The Classroom
- Boussioux's website, including photography and AI art: www.leobix.us
- TEDxMIT Salon presentation: Let Art Be Your Superpower
- TEDxBoston: How to Solve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals in 5 mins.
Related Story: How a photo of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, enhanced by AI, sparked a journalistic debate at GeekWire
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we explore the frontier of crowd-augmented cognition, the concept of humans working together with the help of technology, including new ways that artificial intelligence is changing the field.
Our guest is Aniket (Niki) Kittur, a professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where his research focuses on new methods of augmenting human intellect using crowds and computation.
We also talk about a related project that Kittur and his colleagues developed called Skeema, a browser tab manager that helped users organize their work, projects, and ultimately their brains in the process.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Microsoft and major PC makers this week announced a plan to incorporate artificial intelligence directly into personal computers, adding on-board neural processing units (NPUs) as part of a new architecture that promises better performance, longer battery life, and local AI processing that unlocks new capabilities and features.
We discuss the new Copilot+ PCs with our guest on this week's GeekWire Podcast, Stefan Weitz, an investor and entrepreneur who worked at Microsoft for 18 years in groups including Microsoft Bing and MSN. He is the founder of the new HumanX conference on AI taking place in March 2025 in Las Vegas.
Weitz is bullish on the potential for Copilot+ PCs to improve the overall computing experience and motivate Windows PC users to upgrade their machines, a long-awaited milestone for Microsoft's flagship operating system.
The new Copilot+ PCs have also raised security and privacy concerns, focused primarily on the "Recall" feature that takes regular screenshots of user activity on the machine, creating an index that can be queried using AI. The company released an FAQ that emphasized the underlying security and privacy controls for users, but also made it clear that the feature will be activated if users accept the defaults during initial bootup of a new machine.
Weitz also shares some of his favorite AI apps and tools, including Cleft Notes and Read AI.
Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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This week's episode features an interview with Loretta Napoleoni, conducted by Ross Reynolds, the longtime public radio host and occasional GeekWire Podcast guest host, in an event presented by Town Hall Seattle on April 18, 2024.
Loretta Napoleoni is an Italian economist and journalist whose books include "Rogue Economics" and "Insurgent Iraq." Her newest book is “Technocapitalism: The Rise of the New Robber Barons and the Fight for the Common Good."
In this interview, she explains the concept of the "present future." This refers to the disorienting era in which we're living, characterized by rapid technological change that creates anxiety and a feeling of being constantly behind.
She also discusses the control of technology by a few powerful entrepreneurs, whom she calls "technocapitalists," and the failure of society and the state to direct technological innovation for the common good.
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This week, we go inside the GeekWire Awards, our annual recognition of the top people, companies and innovations in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, which drew a sold-out crowd to the Showbox Sodo on Thursday May 9 in Seattle. We talk with finalists about AI, the economy and key trends in their industries, and we hear from some of the winners on stage during the program.
RELATED
- Photos: Inside the GeekWire Awards, with the big winners, musical numbers and surprise guests
- GeekWire Awards 2024 revealed: Winners bask in momentum of AI and potential of region
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we discuss Amazon's efforts to compete with Trader Joe's, and the related tactics revealed in "The Everything War," the new book by Dana Mattioli of the Wall Street Journal. We also revisit last week's episode with Mattioli and share some of the reactions to the discussion.
Plus, the FTC probes Amazon's internal use of Signal's disappearing messages feature, a newly disclosed email shows how Microsoft scrambled to catch up in artificial intelligence, and a new report says that Bill Gates is still a highly influential figure inside Microsoft, especially when it comes to the company's AI strategy.
Finally, we go inside the Seattle courtroom where a prominent figure from the cryptocurrency world, Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, received a controversial prison sentence this week.
Other stories discussed on the show:
- Amazon stock rises as Q1 earnings top estimates with $143.3B in revenue; AWS sales up 17%
- DoorDash rips Seattle over minimum wage law; reports record quarterly revenue of $2.5B
- Prudential to shut down Assurance, the insurance tech startup it acquired for $2.35B in 2019
- KING5: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao sentenced to 4 months for allowing money laundering
- Business Insider: Bill Gates is still pulling strings at Microsoft, overseeing AI ideas
- Internet Archive: Full text: An epic Bill Gates rant
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A conversation with Dana Mattioli, Wall Street Journal reporter and author of the new book, "The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power." With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
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This week on the show, we get a sneak preview of the GeekWire Awards, coming up at the Showbox SoDo in Seattle on Thursday, May 9.
- We look back at the past winners of the Next Tech Titan title in the awards, and consider the event's track record in predicting major companies to emerge from Seattle and the Pacific Northwest.
- We also contemplate the evolution of the "Workplace of the Year" category through the rise of remote and hybrid work.
- And finally, we consider the impact of migration on another part of state: Spokane, Wash., and the Inland Northwest.
See more GeekWire Awards coverage, and learn more about the event, which is presented by Astound Business Solutions.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the show, we sit down with Werner Vogels, the Amazon chief technology officer, at Amazon in Seattle. We talked about the evolution of artificial intelligence, the promise of AI in healthcare and the environment, his broader tech predictions for the year, and one of his most iconic traditions at the company's annual cloud conference.
Read more on GeekWire: Amazon CTO Werner Vogels on the rapid progress of AI, and its impact on society
- Werner Vogels - All Things Distributed
- Archive of Now Go Build episodes
- AWS re:Invent 2023 - Keynote with Dr. Werner Vogels
- Tech Predictions for 2024 and beyond
- @Werner on X.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the show: Computer scientist Juan Lavista Ferres is corporate vice president and chief data scientist at Microsoft, and the lab director of Microsoft's AI for Good research lab, leading a team of data scientists and researchers in AI, machine learning and statistical modeling, focusing on global challenges like health, climate change, and digital literacy. He's one of the editors and authors of the new book AI for Good, Applications, in Sustainability, Humanitarian Action and Health, featuring case studies from Microsoft, to be published by Wiley on April 9.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Reporter Kurt Schlosser takes us inside a Tesla Cybertruck, explains what it was like to drive one, and tells us how people reacted to the futuristic vehicle as it debuted on the streets of Seattle.
Also on the show, Kurt shares details from his recent story about Nala, the Seattle Police Department's electronics-detecting police dog, and explains how these law-enforcement K9s are trained to find all sorts of devices.
And in our final segment, we hear a clip from comedian Pete Ballmer, the son of Steve Ballmer, about growing up as one of the kids of the former Microsoft CEO.
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop and Kurt Schlosser.
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This week on the show, we peel back the layers of Microsoft's hiring of AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman and colleagues from Inflection AI, considering how it plays into the trend of the Redmond company striking deals that look a lot like acquisitions, without actually being acquisitions. Then, we delve into the U.S. Justice Department’s landmark antitrust lawsuit against Apple, and consider the parallels to the DOJ's prior case against Microsoft. And finally, we ponder Washington state's plan to fight graffiti with drones.
Additional Links
- S. "Soma" Somasegar: Analysis: Microsoft’s big hires foreshadow bold new move into consumer AI
- Newcomer: Microsoft’s Non-Acquisition Acquisition (second item)
- The Information: Microsoft Agreed to Pay Inflection $650 Million While Hiring Its Staff
- Bill Barr in the Wall Street Journal: Siri, Does Apple Violate Antitrust Law?
- DOJ: Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets
- The Verge: DOJ’s sweeping Apple lawsuit draws expert praise
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: The rise, fall, and revival of Zulily. We revisit one the most prominent ecommerce brands to come out of Seattle, explain its decline, and consider a plan by Beyond Inc., led by investor and entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis, to acquire its brand assets and relaunch the site.
With GeekWire managing editor Taylor Soper and co-founder Todd Bishop.
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Artificial intelligence is a powerful technology that promises to reshape the future, but it also poses many risks. One of the most pressing issues is the lack of regulation and oversight of the data used to train AI models. A new nonprofit, the Seattle-based Transparency Coalition (transparencycoalition.ai) aims to address this issue.
The co-founders of the group, veteran startup founders and technology leaders Rob Eleveld and Jai Jaisimha, join us on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast to discuss their reasons for starting the organization, and their goals to help shape emerging legislation and public policy in this area.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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A new report points to a crisis of trust in innovation, and the risk that rapid technological change — especially in the field of artificial intelligence — will fuel increased populism and polarization across societies.
Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, discussed these and other findings from the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer during visits last week with the global communications firm's clients in tech-heavy Seattle and San Francisco. GeekWire sat down with Edelman during his visit to the firm's downtown Seattle office for this episode of the GeekWire Podcast.
- He discusses the shift in trust from top-down authority figures to local relationships, with employees and consumers expecting companies to take a stand on important issues.
- Edelman suggests that businesses and technology leaders need to focus on implementation, adaptation, and acceptance of innovation, and to be transparent and clear in their communication with the public.
- He calls for collaboration between businesses, government, NGOs, and media to ensure that innovation is well-managed and benefits society as a whole.
Related links
- Access the full 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer report.
- Edelman: 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer Reveals Innovation has Become a New Risk Factor for Trust
- Richard Edelman: Technology Industry Watch Out, Innovation at Risk
- Axios:Public trust in AI is sinking across the board
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, our guests are John Rossman and Kevin McCaffrey, authors of the new book, "Big Bet Leadership."
It's a playbook for business leaders to systematically make bets in a way that reduces risk and increases long-term flexibility. The book draws lessons from the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, T-Mobile and SpaceX, while also leaning heavily on the first-hand experience of the authors overseeing and implementing big bets.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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Entrepreneur and investor Chris DeVore had an inside view of Techstars Seattle as one of the original leaders of the local startup accelerator in 2010, serving as its managing director from 2014 to 2019.
His Feb. 21 post "What went wrong at Techstars," looked closely at the organization's evolution — including its increased focus on corporate sponsorships and shift to centralized fundraising — as the backdrop for the news last week that Techstars is closing its Seattle accelerator as part of a broader reset.
So where should Seattle's tech community go from here? And what role do startup accelerators serve in the age of AI and remote work? Devore, the founding managing director of the Founders Co-op venture fund, joins us on this bonus episode of the GeekWire Podcast to share his thoughts about what happened, and his optimism about what's next. "I think Seattle is setting itself up for a great moment in its entrepreneurial journey," he says.
RELATED LINKS AND STORIES
- David Cohen: Techstars is evolving and growing
- Techstars: Techstars 2.0: Supercharging Founder Success
- Chris DeVore: What went wrong at Techstars
- GeekWire: Techstars Seattle is shutting down as accelerator shifts focus to cities with more VC activity
- Marcelo Calbucci: The most successful accelerator cohort ever: How this Techstars Seattle class produced 3 unicorns
- GeekWire Podcast: Techstars Seattle’s demise leaves a gap in the startup market
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Techstars Seattle helped launch more than 160 startups over the past decade, partnered with the likes of Microsoft and Amazon to spark even more startups, and led to the creation of three companies currently valued at more than $1 billion — making it one of the most successful programs in the Techstars network.
Founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colo., Techstars provides fledgling startups with early capital, coaching, mentorship, a chance to pitch to investors, and an opportunity to work for three months in a shared space with other entrepreneurs.
Techstars expanded to Seattle in 2010, and for more than a decade, it worked. And then, this week, it ended. TechStars announced that it's closing its Seattle accelerator as part of a broader restructuring.
So what happened? And what's next? GeekWire managing editor Taylor Soper joins the show this week to address those questions.
Related stories
- Seattle tech leaders lament departure of Techstars but remain bullish on new opportunities
- Techstars CEO responds to former Seattle managing director, tells him to check his facts
- Techstars Seattle is shutting down as accelerator shifts focus to cities with more VC activity
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, stick around to the end for a late-breaking addition to the show — a bonus segment about OpenAI's new AI video generation technology Sora. Joining the show is Rahul Sood, CEO and co-founder of Irreverent Labs, a Seattle-area startup that is working on AI to turn images and text into video.
We also discuss the Seattle-area startups that are bringing employees into the office five days a week; look ahead to the upcoming release of what appears to be a juicy Amazon book, due out in April; and preview the GeekWire Awards in advance of the Feb. 29 deadline for nominations. And in our "My AI" segment, we talk about a specific approach to chatting with ChatGPT on the go.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, Todd Bishop and John Cook examine the timing of Jeff Bezos' plan to sell up to 50 million shares of Amazon stock, in the context of his public announcement that he would be moving to Miami; assess Satya Nadella's track record as Microsoft CEO as he reaches 10 years in the role; and test an example of how text-to-speech applications could change the way we engage with printed books — or maybe not, based on the way one of them reacts.
Audio editing by Curt Milton; theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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First up this week on the GeekWire Podcast: an inside take on developing software for the Apple Vision Pro.
We talked with a longtime software developer for Apple platforms, Ken Case, co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based Omni Group, which makes productivity apps for Mac, iPhone, and iPad, and just released a version of its OmniPlan project management software for the newly launched Apple Vision Pro.
- Related story: Apple Vision Pro: Why one longtime software shop is jumping head-first into spatial computing
Then, it's AI, politics, and a new attempt to detect and defuse deepfakes.
A few weeks ago on the show, Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington computer science professor and longtime artificial intelligence specialist, hinted at a secret project in the works. This week, he unveiled nonprofit, nonpartisan technology organization, TrueMedia.org, that is developing an AI-powered tool to detect AI-generated deepfake videos, photos, and audio, aiming to combat political disinformation in the leadup to the 2024 elections.
We jumped back on the line with Etzioni to get the details on the new initiatives, and discuss the pros and cons of the rapid development of new generative AI tools for democracy and society.
- Related story: New nonpartisan AI nonprofit TrueMedia, led by Oren Etzioni, is making a political deepfake detector
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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Our guest this week is someone who is experimenting every day with AI, pushing the capabilities of the existing tools and technologies: Kevin Leneway, principal software engineer at the Pioneer Square Labs startup incubator in Seattle. He talks about the tools he's using across his personal and work life, and how they're transforming the process of innovation and creativity. He also shares details about a new project he's been working on, an AI coding assistant called JACoB.
Hosted by GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we consider Microsoft's latest AI product, the $20/month Copilot Pro, compare it to the likes of ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro and Otter.ai — and realize in the process that one of us is already paying way too much for AI assistants on a monthly basis.
Plus, a deep dive on Zulily bolsters a hypothesis about the motives of the private equity firm that acquired and later shut down the online retailer.
And finally, we compare, contrast, and appreciate the very different approaches taken by Costco and Amazon for authenticating the identity of customers at store entrances and check-out.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop.
Related Stories:
- Copilot Pro vs. ChatGPT Plus: Microsoft’s new paid service offers alternative to OpenAI subscription
- Zulily’s downfall: How the high-flying online retailer soared, sank, and shut down
- Zulily sues Amazon, alleging that price-fixing and supplier coercion sank its attempts to compete
- Scanning against scammers: Costco testing membership card readers at store entrances
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Liz Hamren has been CEO of Amazon's Ring business for almost a year, as the successor in the role to Ring founder Jamie Siminoff.
Hamren previously held technology and business leadership positions at companies including Dropcam, Microsoft, Oculus, and Discord, and was involved in product launches including Xbox consoles and Meta VR headsets. In addition to Ring, she leads Blink, Amazon Key, and Amazon Sidewalk in her current role. She spoke with us recently in her first public interview since becoming Ring CEO last year.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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This week's guest, Nancy Wang, is a technology product and engineering executive, advisor, and investor. A former Amazon Web Services general manager and former Google lead product manager, she is a venture partner at Felicis Ventures, where she invests in early-stage startups in cybersecurity, enterprise infrastructure, and business-to-business software as a service. She is also founder and board chair of Advancing Women in Tech, and a contributor to Forbes.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Our guest this week on the GeekWire Podcast is computer scientist and entrepreneur Oren Etzioni, assessing the past year in AI, and looking ahead to what's next. Etzioni, an AI leader for many decades, is professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence board member, AI2 Incubator technical director, and Madrona Venture Group venture partner.
In the first segment of the show, GeekWire's John Cook and Todd Bishop discuss the big AI news of the week: The New York Times Co.'s landmark lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI over their use of the newspaper's articles in AI models.
- The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for training AI chatbots on its copyrighted work
- NYT v. GPT: Microsoft finds itself on the other side of an industry-defining copyright dispute
- Francesco Marconi in the WSJ: AI and Journalism Need Each Other
Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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Our guest this week is Kristi Coulter, whose latest book is Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career. It’s a memoir about what she learned in her 12 years at Amazon about work, gender bias, and herself. Exit Interview is Coulter's second book. Her first, Nothing Good Can Come From This, is a collection of essays about quitting drinking. As you’ll learn from this podcast conversation, it intersects with her Amazon career.
Guest hosting is Ross Reynolds, whose voice is well-known in the Seattle region from his 34 years at KUOW, the public radio station from which he retired in 2021.
Production assistance from Curt Milton.
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GeekWire's reporters have spent the past month profiling a group of six “Uncommon Thinkers”: Seattle-area inventors, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs transforming industries and driving positive change in the world.
This editorial series, presented in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners, was based on the deliberations of a panel of outside judges who chose the Uncommon Thinkers from nominations submitted by GeekWire readers.
Working on these profiles helped us identify the commonalities among our honorees, including their inspirations, mindsets, and approaches. On this week's GeekWire Podcast, we talk with four of our Uncommon Thinkers in interviews recorded backstage at the GeekWire Gala, where we honored them this week.
Read the six “Uncommon Thinkers” profiles here:
- UW prof and entrepreneur Shwetak Patel has a rare ‘creative brilliance’
- Elizabeth Hansen uses her job as an anesthesiologist to cut carbon emissions
- Boundless CEO Xiao Wang on his quest to fix the immigration process
- For USAFacts’ Poppy MacDonald, ‘facts are paramount’ for democracy
- Blake Resnick finds a larger purpose in tech, making drones for public safety
- MagniX CTO Riona Armesmith geeks out over electric aviation
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
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AI was the big theme inside the long-running Amazon Web Services re:Invent cloud conference in Las Vegas this week, where the company's announcements included a new AI assistant for work called Amazon Q. We spoke with Matt Wood, AWS vice president of product, about the new service and the new era of AI for business.
Related Coverage:
- Sphere of influence? Google’s big Vegas ad buy clouds the landscape at Amazon re:Invent
- AWS unveils ‘Amazon Q’ AI assistant, jabs at Microsoft and OpenAI at re:Invent
- Inside the AI chip race: How a pivotal happy hour changed Amazon’s strategy in the cloud
- Amazon puts Fire TV Cube to work, repurposes streaming device for desktop computing
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we assess the outcome of the drama at OpenAI, considering what the removal and ultimate return of its CEO Sam Altman, and everything that happened in between, means for Microsoft.
While Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella earned kudos for masterfully navigating the mess, the situation also showed how the company was vulnerable to being blindsided due to OpenAI's convoluted structure.
And while for-profit interests are likely to get more influence on OpenAI's reformulated board, it's not yet clear if Microsoft will end up with a seat on that board, leaving the ultimate outcome for Microsoft unclear, for now.
We also look at Amazon's move into car-buying, and examine the Seattle region's dwindling flock of unicorns.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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The surprise removal of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is the buzz of the tech industry — raising questions about the company’s role in the AI revolution, the ambitions of Altman and his team, the impact of his exit on the rest of the tech industry, OpenAI’s complex corporate structure, and its unusual partnership with Microsoft.
This week, we recap the latest developments in this fast-moving story, and then talk with Matt McIlwain of Madrona Venture Group about the broader implications of Altman's ouster for Microsoft, Amazon, and the tech industry.
RELATED STORY: Sam Altman’s ouster puts a new twist into OpenAI’s complicated relationship with Microsoft
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Fei-Fei Li's new book is the story of her journey from China to the U.S., from small business to Big Tech, and from academic research to corporate life, and back again. But more than that, it's the story of the dawn of artificial intelligence, as told through her experience as one of the people summoning this new day and standing there awestruck, excited and concerned about what it will mean for humanity.
Dr. Li joins us on this episode to discuss the book, The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI, published by Moment of Lift Books, an imprint from Melinda French Gates and Flatiron Books.
Known for her foundational contributions to AI and computer vision, Dr. Li is the inventor of ImageNet, a large-scale dataset of images that enabled rapid advances in deep learning for visual recognition. She is a professor of computer science at Stanford University and a co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, who worked as Google Cloud's chief scientist for AI/ML during a 2017-2018 sabbatical.
Note: GeekWire's Todd Bishop will be speaking further with Dr. Li on Monday evening Nov. 13 at Town Hall in Seattle. See this site for details and tickets.
Edited by Curt Milton.
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What should we make of Jeff Bezos' decision to move his primary residence from Seattle to Miami? That's our first topic on this week's episode. Plus, Convoy's final destination; a new AI feature from Seattle startup Yoodli that helps startup founders hone their pitches; and Amazon tests Bluetooth earplugs for warehouse workers.
Related stories and links
- ‘Seattle, you will always have a piece of my heart’: Jeff Bezos leaving Amazon’s hometown for Miami
- Jeff Bezos’ move out of Washington state sparks questions about wealth taxes
- Swimming from Seattle? Jeff Bezos’ big move brings us full circle from the mid-1990s
Flexport buys Convoy’s tech; Convoy CEO Dan Lewis, other employees to join freight company
AI-powered ‘VC pitch coach’ from Yoodli helps startup founders prepare to face investors
Amazon tests letting warehouse workers listen to music and other audio via Bluetooth earplugs
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we're featuring a panel discussion from the recent GeekWire Summit in Seattle, with three technology and business leaders offering first-hand insights into the new era of artificial intelligence.
- Bridget Frey, CTO at Redfin, the tech-powered real estate company that operates in more than 100 markets in the U.S. and Canada.
- Inbal Shani, chief product officer at GitHub, the software development platform used by more than 100 million developers around the world.
- David Shim, CEO at Read AI, a Seattle-based startup using AI to provide a new window into meetings, and transform them in the process.
Frey, Shani and Shim share real-world examples of AI impacting software development, real estate, and meetings. They address topics like privacy, bias, education, and the future of work. They also discuss the changing nature of technical jobs, and a blurring of the line between developers and non-developers.
From the audience, we get questions about adapting AI to account for emotional intelligence; advice for aspiring engineers; preventing synthetic content from corrupting human experiences; protecting proprietary corporate data; and the prospects for improving work-life balance as AI increases productivity.
See GeekWire.com for notes and takeaways. Hosted by GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Podcast audio editing by Curt Milton. On-site A/V by Adavanza.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we examine the market forces, debt, and other dynamics that put the digital freight marketplace Convoy out of business, bringing one of the Seattle region's top startups to the end of the road.
Related coverage:
- ‘The markets crushed us’: In tearful farewell to employees, Convoy execs reflect on shutdown
- Convoy collapse: Read CEO’s memo detailing sudden shutdown of Seattle trucking startup
Convoy raised $260 million just 18 months ago, at a valuation of $3.8 billion. Its investor list was a who's who of tech moguls and celebrities, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, and even Bono and The Edge of U2 fame.
GeekWire co-founder John Cook, who has covered startups and venture capital since before the dot-com bust, compares Convoy's implosion to past flameouts of high-profile startups, and explains the long-term trends in investing that served as the backdrop for Convoy's demise. After a long stretch of free-flowing capital at astronomical valuations, fundamental business realities are catching up to some heavily funded startups.
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Our guest this week is Geordie Rose, co-founder and CEO of Sanctuary AI.
The global conversation about robots and the workforce has shifted substantially in recent years, from concern about robots taking jobs to questions about how quickly they can fill gaps in the labor market.
One of the ventures at the forefront of this issue is Sanctuary AI. It's a Vancouver, B.C.-based company that has raised more than $100 million Canadian dollars to pursue its vision for labor as a service.
Sanctuary makes a 5-foot, 7-inch general-purpose humanoid robot called Phoenix, powered by an advanced AI system called Carbon.
Related: With new Phoenix robot, Sanctuary AI looks to usher in ‘labor as a service’
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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified this week in Google's antitrust case in Washington, D.C., supporting the U.S. Justice Department's contention that the search giant unfairly leverages its market power to stifle competition, a charge that Google vehemently disputes.
On this episode of the podcast, we reenact portions of Nadella's testimony, explain the positions staked out by Microsoft and Google in the case, and discuss the irony of Microsoft siding with the DOJ two decades after fighting its own antitrust battle against the agency.
Read additional excerpts in this GeekWire Post: What Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in court about Google, Apple, search, and the future of AI
Plus, Generative AI and the "Ghost of Lesser Seattle." We revisit our attempt to channel the late, great Seattle newspaper columnist Emmett Watson with the help of ChatGPT, and assess the reaction.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
Related links and coverage:
- Testifying in Google trial, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warns AI could extend search giant’s lead
- The Verge: Satya Nadella tells a court that Bing is worse than Google — and Apple could fix it
- Emmett Watson meets ChatGPT: What if the champion of ‘Lesser Seattle’ could see us now?
- Marketplace: There’s a corner of the internet where YouTubers read strangers’ obituaries. Why?
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On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we dive deep into the landmark lawsuit filed by the FTC against Amazon with insights from former Amazon seller Jason Boyce, co-author of "The Amazon Jungle," host of the Day 2 podcast, and CEO of Avenue7Media, an agency that works with online sellers.
We discuss the implications of the lawsuit for Amazon, consumers, and sellers in the context of the changing dynamics of the online retail. Boyce, with his 17 years of experience as a seller and his current role working with third-party sellers, offers a unique perspective on Amazon's practices and the broader e-commerce landscape. We also touch upon Amazon's evolving relationship with sellers, the challenges of omni-channel retail, and the rise of new online marketplace competitors.
GeekWire coverage
- FTC and 17 states sue Amazon for maintaining alleged monopoly power that stifles competition
- FTC targets alleged secret Amazon pricing algorithm ‘Project Nessie’ in antitrust complaint
- FTC’s case against Amazon hinges on internal messages and secrets yet to be revealed
Lawsuit: FTC et al vs. Amazon, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington
New York Times: For Amazon’s Andy Jassy, a Cleanup Job Just Got a Lot Bigger
Reuters: Amazon drops planned merchant fee as FTC lawsuit looms
CNBC: FTC Chair Lina Khan: Amazon lawsuit is about protecting free and fair competition
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Kate Johnson is based in Denver in her role as Lumen Technologies CEO and president, but she has been spending a lot of time in the Seattle area recently, and not just because one of the local stadiums bears the company's name.
Johnson sees the Seattle region an ideal test bed and proving ground for Lumen's offerings, including consumer and business broadband, voice, and data services.
Yes, it helps that she has a home here, as a holdover from her prior role as Microsoft's U.S. president. But beyond that, she cites the region's importance as a major U.S. tech hub, the home of the biggest cloud platforms, a strong community of tech companies, and tech-savvy families who understand the appeal of fiber internet service.
"The market is growing, and we are well-positioned to serve it," she said. "I've been spending time making sure we're making the appropriate investments, that I'm understanding our opportunities, and that we're capitalizing on them."
It's part of a broader effort by Johnson and her team to reinvent the publicly traded telecommunications company, which was formed by the combination of Level 3 Communications and CenturyLink in 2017 and rebranded as Lumen in 2020. Johnson was named Lumen CEO a year ago and took over the role in November 2022.
Educated as an engineer, with past experience at companies including Oracle, Red Hat, and Deloitte, Johnson is one of 53 female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. She is charged with sparking new growth at a company that reported a net loss of $1.5 billion last year, after special charges, on revenue of $17.5 billion, down 11% year-over-year.
In a recent podcast interview at Seattle's Lumen Field, she discussed topics including:
- The evolution of the telecommunications industry and the need to reinvent the classic telecom business model amid the rapid increase in data and the rise of generative artificial intelligence.
- Her ongoing efforts to change Lumen's culture, including an unusual series of internal meetings that have been ultimately constructive but initially unsettling for some longtime employees and executives.
- Her tenure at Microsoft, and her recent experiences using Microsoft 365 Copilot as part of her work. Lumen has been one of the companies piloting Microsoft's corporate AI tools prior to their broader release in November.
Audio editing by Curt Milton. Hosted by Todd Bishop.
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It was a big week for Microsoft, with the unveiling of the company's latest Windows and AI features and new Surface devices at a special event in New York City on Thursday.
This was preceded, by only a few days, by the surprise resignation of Panos Panay, the chief product officer in charge of the company's Windows and Devices division. Shortly after that announcement, Bloomberg News reported that Panay was set to join Amazon as the new leader of its Devices & Services division, a surprise twist that has yet to be confirmed as of publication time.
To help sort it all out, we're excited to be joined on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast by someone who has covered the company for many years, journalist Mary Jo Foley, editor in chief at DirectionsOnMicrosoft.com.
Related Stories
- Directions on Microsoft Blog: Microsoft to start selling Microsoft 365 Copilot on November 1
- GeekWire: ‘It’s kind of like the ’90s are back’: Microsoft previews unified AI ‘Copilot’ initiative
- Longtime Microsoft hardware leader Panos Panay is leaving the company after 19 years
- Report: Departing Microsoft exec Panos Panay set to lead Amazon’s Alexa and Echo business
- Should Amazon be ‘pumped’ to land Panos Panay? A closer look at longtime Microsoft devices leader
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Chris Pirillo is an entrepreneur, creator, event organizer, and online community leader who has been a guide to the world of tech for everyday users since the early days of the web.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we catch up with Chris about his latest project, CreatorTech.net, an email newsletter and monthly meetup focused on the intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence. The next CreatorTech meetup is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 25, at the Microsoft Reactor in Redmond.
We also discuss some of the latest AI and tech tools that Chris has been finding useful, and hear his take on corporate return-to-office mandates — spoiler alert, he's not a fan!
- Chris Pirillo on the new iPhone 15, and the edited take discussed on the show.
- The latest CreatorTech email with a list of 25 AI tools to check out.
- Our last GeekWire Podcast/Radio conversation with Chris in June 2013.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Our guest on this special episode is journalist and biographer Walter Isaacson, whose new book about Elon Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla founder and X (Twitter) owner, was published this week. Isaacson addresses the question of whether Musk is "calculated or crazed," as one anecdote in the book puts it; discusses Musk's role in some of the world's most vital infrastructure, including SpaceX's Starlink satellites; compares Musk's approach and style to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos; addresses Musk's outlook on artificial intelligence and space travel; and outlines the key issues that could determine Musk's legacy.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited and produced by Curt Milton.
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Tye Brady, chief technologist for Amazon Robotics, joins us on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast to talk about the company's latest warehouse robots, explaining how they represent the emergence of the larger vision that prompted him to join Amazon more than eight years ago. Our conversation at Amazon HQ in Seattle followed a trip by GeekWire's Todd Bishop to Austin and San Marcos, Texas, to see many of Amazon's newest autonomous robots first-hand.
Related coverage:
- New robots are making Amazon’s warehouses more efficient — can they also make them safer?
- Video: Amazon's Robots, explained
- Amazon’s Sparrow is leaving the nest: Trailblazing warehouse robot is ready for a wider rollout
- Video: Up close with Amazon's Sparrow Robot
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy made it clear in a recent internal meeting that he wants employees to "disagree and commit" to the company's policy of working three days in the office, and find somewhere else to work if it doesn't work for them. We discuss the news in our first segment this week, and ponder why Amazon seems to be getting a bigger backlash than other big companies implementing similar policies.
In our second segment, we consider new changes in the MLB automated ball/strike system for Triple-A games, as an update to Seattle Mariners CEO John Stanton's comments in a recent interview with our GeekWire colleague Taylor Soper.
And finally, we give a sneak preview of the upcoming GeekWire Summit, scheduled for Oct. 19 at the iconic Seattle movie theater formerly known as the Cinerama.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop. Edited and produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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On this week’s GeekWire Podcast, we're featuring an episode of Shift AI, a podcast hosted by Boaz Ashkenazy, CEO of AI solutions provider Simply Augmented, with guest Matt McIlwain of Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group.
A thriving tech hub requires access to ideas, people, and experiments that produce collective lessons sooner and with greater fidelity than anywhere else. This is what made the Seattle area the cloud capital of the world. It also positions the region as one of the world’s top centers of excellence for artificial intelligence.
That’s one of the insights from Matt McIlwain, managing director at Madrona Venture Group, on this episode of Shift AI, a show that explores what it takes to thrive and adapt to the changing workplace in the digital age of remote work and AI. We discuss Matt’s background and experience building companies and advising founders, and get his take on the future of AI.
Subscribe to ShiftAI and hear more episodes at ShiftAIPodcast.com.
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How can startups differentiate themselves in the new era of AI?
We've been discussing that question a lot recently on the GeekWire Podcast, and on this episode, we'll get a first-hand look from business and technology veteran Pete Christothoulou, who has been immersed in this world for many years.
Christothoulou is the former CEO of Marchex, the call and conversational analytics company, who is now founder and CEO of Xembly, a Seattle-based startup developing AI-powered technology that replicates a chief of staff and executive assistant, automating tasks such as meeting notes, scheduling, and action items.
Xembly was founded in Madrona Venture Labs nearly three years ago, long before the current mania over large language models. The company has raised $20 million from major venture capital firms and angel investors. It employs about 45 people, with customers including Salesforce, Qualtrics, and Twilio, among others.
We talk about the rapid developments in AI over the past year, and take a close look at Xembly as a case study for insights into how startups can differentiate themselves in this new era of AI.
In the final segment, we consider the big-picture implications of AI in the current deluge of information and the quest for meaningful productivity.
Related links and resources
- An executive assistant for every worker: Startup’s AI takes meeting notes, follows up on email, and more
- Seattle startup Xembly raises $15M for AI ‘chief of staff’ that automates tedious conversational tasks
- Microsoft’s optimistic view of AI sees technology ending the drudgery of ‘digital debt’
- What Happened to All of Science’s Big Breakthroughs? (New York Times)
- Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time (Nature)
- A Decline in Scientific Innovation? (Science)
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How can baseball embrace technology and new traditions while honoring its legacy and listening to its fans? Those were the questions at the heart of the Seattle Mariners CEO's conversation this week with Taylor Soper, at the GeekWire Rooftop BBQ and Mariners Day at the First Mode headquarters in Seattle.
Stanton brings his experience as a longtime business and tech leader to his role with the Mariners. He also chairs Major League Baseball's competition committee, the group leading some of the biggest changes in the history of the sport, including the pitch clock that has dramatically shortened game times this year. He spoke with Taylor in the midst of a Mariners' winning streak that has since been extended to eight games with a 9-2 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Friday.
An early McCaw Cellular executive and founding partner at Bellevue, Wash.-based venture firm Trilogy Equity Partners, Stanton was CEO of Western Wireless and VoiceStream, the predecessor to T-Mobile USA, and also served as chairman of broadcast communications provider Clearwire.
Listen for highlights from Stanton's remarks in the second segment, and read an extended writeup with more of his comments on GeekWire.
In the first segment, GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop revisit a recent conversation with Brinc CEO Blake Resnick based on John's sighting of the company's technology during an armed standoff in his neighborhood this week.
In the final segment, John and Todd offer their thoughts on Stanton's remarks, Todd rants about an annoying tradition carried on by Seattle Mariners fans in the stands during a pivotal moment in a game this week, and they discuss Todd's idea to use technology to help fans keep more engaged with the action on the field.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we look at how Amazon is positioning itself in the emerging era of generative artificial intelligence. We play and assess clips of Amazon CEO Andy Jassy explaining the company's AI strategy on its earnings call this week.
We also discuss the history of AI usage by startups, and consider advice from investors and startup leaders at Seattle Tech Week for emerging tech companies looking to stand out with their own AI applications and solutions.
And finally, we reconsider our approach to interacting with machines and contemplate the possibility of artificial intelligence reflecting not just the worst but the best of humanity.
Related links and headlines
- Amazon’s online store sales dip below 40% of net sales for first time, and other earnings notes
- Leaked email shows Amazon formed a new group to work on the 'most ambitious' AI models
- How Seattle startups are ‘supercharging’ internal operations with AI
- Why Using a Polite Tone with AI Matters
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Blake Resnick built a fusion reactor in his garage at age 14, and interned at McLaren Automotive, Tesla, and DJI, before dropping out of Northwestern University in 2017 to launch drone startup Brinc.
Now, at age 23, he oversees a team of nearly 100 people making drones and other technology for public safety agencies, serving more than 400 customers.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, recorded on-location at the company's headquarters in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, Resnick talks about Brinc’s origins, its move from Las Vegas to Seattle, the upcoming release of its Lemur 2 drone, his recent White House visit, and the geopolitical forces impacting its products.
He also explains the mind-blowing series of events that led OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to become the company’s first investor. Listen to the end for that.
Related stories and links
- Video of the Lemur 2
- Video of the Brinc Ball
- Drone startup Brinc prepares for take off with ex-Amazon engineers and geopolitical tailwinds
- Meet Blake Resnick, the 22-year-old engineer who just moved his fast-growing drone startup to Seattle
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Microsoft staked its financial claim in the AI gold rush this week, announcing the pricing for its upcoming Microsoft 365 Copilot technology: a whopping $30/user per month on top of its existing enterprise subscription license fees.
Wall Street loved it. One analyst called it "eye popping." Investors sent the company's shares to a new record on the day the pricing was announced.
The upcoming product, fueled by Microsoft and OpenAI technologies, is designed to integrate with Microsoft productivity apps and work with internal business data, going beyond the capabilities of web-based generative AI technologies.
But will companies see that much value in what Microsoft has to offer? Microsoft 365 Copilot is still in private preview, for now, but the pricing suggests that the company likes what it's seeing and hearing from early users.
It's part of a big week that also saw the company clear a major hurdle in its $69 billion Activision-Blizzard acquisition, winning a key court ruling and giving itself an extra three months of breathing room to complete the blockbuster gaming deal.
But behind the scenes, Microsoft is grappling with shaky morale amid ongoing cutbacks, and growing questions about the gap between employee and executive compensation. Meanwhile, a high-profile U.S. government breach by a Chinese hacking group is raising new questions about the security of Microsoft products, and threatening to undermine a growing source of revenue for the company.
It's shaping up as one of the biggest years in Microsoft history, and this was perhaps the biggest week of the year so far for the company. Next up: Microsoft will make its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday.
Stories discussed on this week's show:
- Microsoft sees ‘massive’ economic opportunity in AI; stock nears record on business pricing news
- Microsoft, Amazon, other tech companies make commitment with White House for responsible AI
- Microsoft’s stock has risen almost 1,000% since Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, netting him a reported $1 billion in compensation (Fortune)
- Google Tests A.I. Tool That Is Able to Write News Articles (New York Times)
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This week, we take a closer look at Amazon's Alexa in a world where generative AI is enabling increasingly sophisticated conversations with digital assistants.
How does Alexa stack up against ChatGPT? Is that even a fair comparison? How will privacy play into all of this? And what's Amazon's commitment to Alexa in this era of corporate cutbacks. Those are some of the topics we discuss with Rohit Prasad, the longtime senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, whose role has expanded in the past year to lead the entire Alexa business.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited and produced by Curt Milton.
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If the use of generative AI in the workplace didn’t seem complicated enough already, just consider what it means for big cities and other governmental agencies.
The implications of common AI problems such as algorithmic bias and attribution of intellectual property are magnified in the public sector, and further complicated by unique challenges such as the retention and production of public records.
Jim Loter, interim chief technology officer for the city of Seattle, grappled with these issues as he and his team produced the city’s first generative AI policy this spring. Loter recently presented on the topic to the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio, and he joins us to discuss the issue on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited and produced by Curt Milton.
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For more than four decades, since the 1980s, pointing and clicking has been the primary method of using a personal computer. What if that changed to simply thinking, typing and doing? That's one promise of AI. Rather than remembering the keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot, or the setting to shift the screen into dark mode, you could just tell the computer what you want it to do in natural language.
Microsoft is moving in this direction with the development of Windows Copilot, an adaptation of its Open AI-powered Bing search chatbot integrated directly into the operating system, showing as a persistent sidebar once activated by users via a new taskbar button.
This week, the company started to give users in the Windows Insider preview program a very early look at Windows Copilot.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're featuring a conversation with Aaron Woodman, the Windows vice president of marketing, recorded shortly after Windows Copilot was unveiled a few weeks ago.
Here is the full video of Windows Central's hands-on with the Windows Insider early preview of Windows Copilot, as highlighted in the intro to this episode.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
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"Our rule is, we risk capital — we don't risk people."That was the guiding principle for Everett-Wash.-based OceanGate, as described by its CEO, Stockton Rush, at the GeekWire Summit in October 2022.
Rush's engineering decisions, and his tolerance for risk, as reflected in his comments at our event, are getting new scrutiny after the apparent implosion of OceanGate's Titan submersible, near the site of the Titanic wreck deep under the North Atlantic Ocean this week, killing Rush and four others on board.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're joined by Alan Boyle, GeekWire contributing editor, who has been covering OceanGate for the past seven years. He tells the story of Stockton Rush and the company, discusses the tragedy of the past week, and contemplates what's next for OceanGate and the larger world of ocean and space exploration.
- Now what? OceanGate sub tragedy sets off a torrent of questions without answers
- OceanGate submersible and crew declared lost after discovery of debris near Titanic
- Watch the full video: Stockton Rush at the 2022 GeekWire Summit
- Read an archived version of Rush's OceanGate bio, and a New York Times obituary.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
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Our guest this week is Jason Del Rey, a business reporter who covered Amazon, Walmart and the business of online retail for more than a decade at Recode and Vox Media. His new book is "Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for our Wallets," which takes an inside look at what he calls "the defining business clash of this generation—a battle waged for our loyalty and wallets, with hundreds of billions of dollars at stake and millions of jobs on the line."
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.
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This week: the origins of data, and the future of the digital species.
Our guest is business and tech leader Bob Muglia, a startup investor and advisor who played key roles in the emergence of Microsoft's database, server, and business software products, and served as the CEO of data warehouse company Snowflake Computing. He's the author, with Steve Hamm, of a new book called "The Datapreneurs: The Promise of AI and the Creators Building Our Future," published by Peakpoint Press.
Muglia connects the dots between early data innovation and the emerging era of artificial intelligence; talks about lessons from one of his favorite authors, Isaac Asimov; compares Microsoft and IBM to Microsoft and OpenAI; explains why he's ultimately an optimist about technology and humanity; and tells the story of the data center he built in his house when he was a Microsoft executive.
"We've gone from the verbal way of recording information ... to various forms of writing, to the printing press, to ultimately digital computers and the internet. And now data of every type is recording society in a way that essentially has a permanence attached to it. And these intelligent entities that we can create in the future will learn from all of this. ... It's a little scary, for sure, but it's pretty exciting."
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday unveiled the company's new $3500 Vision Pro headset, declaring a new era for spatial computing, and it was difficult not to notice the similarities to Microsoft's unveiling of its HoloLens headset back in 2015.
The comparison of Vision Pro and HoloLens, and the way the devices match a certain historical pattern, is one of our topics this week in a broader discussion about the new Apple device and what it means for the future of technology and computing.
Our guest is John Tomizuka, co-founder and CTO of Seattle-based tech startup Taqtile, which makes augmented reality work instruction software for enterprise companies. Taqtile has been working on HoloLens applications since the beginning, and the company said this week that it plans develop for the Vision Pro, as well.
Related Posts
- ‘Tears in my eyes’: Seattle startups sound off on Apple’s Vision Pro headset
- Analysis: Apple’s Vision Pro sets up a clash with Valve, Sony, Meta over future of VR/AR
- Apple vs. Microsoft: Vision Pro, HoloLens, and a familiar pattern in a classic tech rivalry
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Hundreds of Amazon employees walked out of the office in Seattle this week, gathering in between the company's headquarters towers while holding signs, participating in chants and listening to speakers urge the tech giant to do better. It was part of a global walkout that organizers said drew participation from more than 2,000 Amazon employees worldwide.
So why did they walk out, and what do they hope to accomplish?
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we hear from Amazon employees in the crowd and speakers at the podium, explain the company's perspective, and put the walkout in the larger context of the tectonic shifts taking place in the tech industry.
With GeekWire reporter Kurt Schlosser and co-founder Todd Bishop.
Related stories:
- Amazon employees walk out, seeking bolder climate action and end of return-to-office policy
- How big was that Amazon walkout crowd?
- Amazon employee groups expect nearly 2,000 workers to participate in walkout
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we're coming to you from our mobile recording studio, aka Todd's car, as he and John make the most of their time in a clogged parking garage to discuss the comments they had just heard from T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert at the Technology Alliance annual State of Technology luncheon.
Topics include artificial intelligence, national security concerns over Chinese hacking, downtown safety, and getting employees back to the office. From there, we take an impromptu driving tour of Amazon HQ to see things first-hand.
Stories discussed on this week's show:
- How T-Mobile plans to use AI to improve one of its most important business metrics
- ‘It’s your responsibility’: T-Mobile CEO exhorts tech industry leaders to return to the office
- Car and foot traffic data show impact of Amazon’s return to office mandate on Seattle commutes
- Microsoft says critical U.S. infrastructure targeted by Chinese hackers
- Amazon responds to walkout plan: ‘We respect our employees’ rights to express their opinions’
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Audio clips of Sievert provided by the Tech Alliance. See GeekWire.com for more coverage.
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The theme at this week's GeekWire Awards was Star Wars, but we didn't need to go to a galaxy far, far away to find the force that promises to reshape the technology industry. The game-changing potential of AI was on the minds of many finalists and attendees, and integral to the business models of many of the companies featured on stage. This episode features conversations with finalists and attendees about the economy, artificial intelligence, and more ... plus lots of cool tech along the way.
- GeekWire Awards 2023 revealed: Community honors top innovation in Pacific Northwest tech
- Seattle Seahawks legend, NASA astronaut, ‘Love is Blind’ star share wisdom at the GeekWire Awards
More Coverage: GeekWire Awards 2023
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We're back this week on the GeekWire Podcast as humans, not bots, we promise, but we've still got a lot of AI to talk about.
On this week's episode, Todd shares highlights from his visit to Google I/O, including two of the generative AI tools that demonstrated the potential of technology to change the way we process and convey information.
Todd and John wrestle with the implications of these AI tools for human creativity, consider the long-term impact on society, balance these concerns against their natural sense of awe and wonder about innovation, and discuss ways that new tech realities are shielding companies from scrutiny.
Stories and topics referenced on this week's show.
- We had our AI voice clones read an AI-generated GeekWire Podcast script — listen to the result
- Microsoft’s optimistic view of AI sees technology ending the drudgery of ‘digital debt’
- In search of AI’s killer app … and other notes from Google I/O
- Project Tailwind (Google)
- Google Workspace Duet AI (Google)
- Google teases Project Tailwind — a prototype AI notebook that learns from your documents (The Verge)
- Dan Deacon's pre-show Google I/O performance. (YouTube)
- How Gmail's New AI Feature Will Write Your Emails for You (CNet)
- As storm clouds clear for travel, Expedia Group looks to become a bigger tech provider to industry
- Trump's Town Hall, Santos Charged, and STFU with Dan Lyons (Pivot)
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop.
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For all the hype over generative artificial intelligence, how far has AI really advanced? Where is the new line between humanity and technology, and what does it mean for the future of our daily lives and work?
GeekWire is exploring these questions in our Bot or Not series, and this week on the GeekWire Podcast, we share and assess the preliminary results of an experiment that we’ve been doing as part of this effort. We created AI voice clones for GeekWire's John Cook and Todd Bishop, and had those clones read an AI-generated podcast script.
You can hear a short clip from this experiment in the first segment of this week’s episode, followed by reactions from our colleague Kurt Schlosser, and from John, who was hearing his own voice clone for the first time.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a more in-depth look at this process and the larger issues raised by AI voice cloning as part of our Bot or Not series.
- In the second segment, we get Kurt’s first-hand report from Amazon headquarters as the tech giant’s employees return to the office en masse for the first time in more than three years.
- In the final segment, listen for a preview of the GeekWire Awards, coming up May 18 in Seattle. Check out all of our GeekWire Awards coverage here, and learn more on the GeekWire Awards event site.
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Today's top STEM teachers embrace learning opportunities wherever they arise, whether it's baby squirrels that have fallen from their nest, or engineering design failures that literally go up in smoke.
At the GeekWire Awards on May 18, we’re celebrating two STEM Educators of the Year:
- Ted Rodriquez, an instructor for high school juniors and seniors at the Sno-Isle TECH Skills Center in Everett, Wash.
- Melissa Pearcy teaches kindergarten-through-fifth-grade students in her role as a science specialist at Jefferson Elementary, which is part of Spokane Public Schools.
These teachers are among the best in delivering science, technology, engineering and math education. They're teaching students fundamental scientific principals -- but perhaps even more importantly, they're helping them learn how to solve problems, take risks, and recover from failure.
The GeekWire Awards recognize the top innovators and companies in Pacific Northwest technology. Our STEM educator honorees were selected based on community nominations, along with input from GeekWire Awards judges.
We recently spoke with the two teachers to learn more about their creative, engaging efforts to inspire the next generation of STEM leaders. Bank of America is the sponsor of this award, now in its third year.
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Biomedicine pioneer Leroy Hood says that artificial intelligence will play a key role in the future of healthcare by accelerating the progress of "scientific wellness," an approach that he has championed for many years.
Hood, co-founder of the Institute for Systems Biology, delves into this approach in his new book, “The Age of Scientific Wellness,” which he wrote with co-author Nathan Price, an ISB professor and chief scientific officer of Thorne HealthTech.
In this week's GeekWire Podcast we talk with Hood about the book, how AI is key to the future of medicine, and what the average person can do now to live a healthy life.
"AI will be the core foundation for the diagnosis and delivery of actionable possibilities for the information that comes from data-driven health in the future," he said. "It will be able to take each individual and map out exactly how they should optimize their health and keep track of it."
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we're joined by a University of Washington professor whose Twitter account was abruptly suspended last week for reasons that seemed inexplicable at the time. The story is a glimpse into the erratic, arbitrary, and divided state of social media, communications, and modern economics.
We also get a reality check on the new era of artificial intelligence, including the ongoing tendency of OpenAI's ChatGPT to generate facts out of thin air.
And in the final segment, we hear why the late David Bowie was right all along about the "exhilarating and terrifying" future in which the rest of us our now living.
Our guest is Kathy Gill, a tech veteran who is an adjunct professor at the University of Washington and Bellevue College, focusing on communications and user experience. Her current courses include a writing class for UW engineering students. She's a writer, motorcyclist, and self-described news hound. Follow her @kegill or @kathygill, and read her work at wiredpen.com.
Related links and resources
- TechDirt: Twitter Suspends User For Sharing Washington Post Story About Pentagon Docs Leaker
- WiredPen: Yes, ChatGPT can answer questions. Can you trust it? Nope
- Conducting research: a guide for undergrads, by Kathy Gill
- Watch the full interview with David Bowie from the BBC in 1999, as resurfaced by Michael Warburton this week.
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's annual letter to shareholders this week delivered a dual message: while the company might not be done streamlining its operations, it's also not scaling back its ambitions for future growth.
Jassy outlined the company's strategy to expand further into generative artificial intelligence, healthcare, satellite broadband and other sectors, even as he hinted that the company might continue to cut costs in other areas.
He also made it clear the company isn’t backing down from its push to get employees back in the office for at least three days a week starting in May.
GeekWire's Todd Bishop and John Cook share some of their key takeaways from Jassy's shareholder letter and talk about the future of the tech giant on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast. Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.
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Humans have become increasingly vulnerable to technology engineered to grab our attention, pulling us away from more meaningful and fulfilling moments and interactions in our lives. Can technology itself be part of the solution? Our guest this week on the GeekWire Podcast is Caroline Cadwell, co-founder and CEO of Unpluq, a recent graduate of the Techstars Seattle accelerator program. The startup offers an app, subscription service, and keychain tag designed to help people become more conscious and mindful about their use of smartphones, social media, and other addictive apps and services.
Related links:
Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and others, seeking compensation for youth mental health crisis
Rational Overrides: Influence Behavior Beyond Nudging — research that helped to inspire Unpluq's approach.
Could You Live Without a Smartphone? — TedX talk by Anastasia Dedyukhina of Consciously Digital, who is referenced by Caroline Cadwell on the episode.
Our favorite startup pitches from Techstars Seattle Demo Day
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we're joined by Ali Partovi, a technology investor, entrepreneur, and mentor who is the CEO of Neo, a startup accelerator, mentorship community, and venture firm.
Neo's accelerator this week announced a new AI track, working in collaboration with OpenAI and Microsoft to help startups build businesses on newly emerging artificial intelligence capabilities.
Partovi, who grew up in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war, sold his startup LinkExchange to Microsoft in 1998, was an early investor in companies including Airbnb, Dropbox, Facebook, and Uber, and 10 years ago co-founded Code.org with his twin brother Hadi Partovi, who continues to lead the computer science education nonprofit.
On this episode, Ali Partovi discusses the role that AI will play in the startups, Microsoft's relationship with OpenAI, his experience at Microsoft reporting to a young Satya Nadella as his manager, Neo's approach to identifying and supporting a diverse group of technical and entrepreneurial leaders, the backdrop for the Silicon Valley Bank meltdown, and more.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast ...
We catch up on the latest on the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, and consider the long-term implications of the meltdown on the startup ecosystem and the U.S. financial system.
Then, a point-counterpoint on the issue of the return to office, as Downtown Seattle Association President Jon Scholes laments the "affliction" of remote work, and Zillow Group CEO Rich Barton says the ways we work (and the places we work) have changed forever.
And finally, we catch up on the latest in the world of generative artificial intelligence, listening to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's pitch for the company's new Microsoft 365 Copilot. We consider the potential of AI to change the way we work, the competition between Microsoft and Google, and touch briefly on antitrust issues.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop.
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Startups and investors cheered the U.S. government's promise this weekend to fully protect deposits after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. But the move left many unresolved questions and challenges for the U.S. financial system and the tech industry.
Our guests on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast discuss their recent experiences and offer their informed opinions on what could come next. Speaking with GeekWire co-founder John Cook are: Kirby Winfield, founding general partner of Seattle venture capital firm Ascend; and Aviel Ginzburg, general partner at Seattle VC firm Founders’ Co-op.
They both reflect on what happened last week, explaining how they and their portfolio companies navigated the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
But most of the discussion focuses on how things could play out from here — including Ginzburg's concerns about the likely impact on venture debt due to the loss of Silicon Valley Bank, and Winfield's more optimistic hypothesis about the potential for recent events to set the stage for a venture capital rebound later this year.
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This week, we go behind the scenes of Hype Aviation, a news aggregation site that you might think of as Techmeme for aviation, space and defense news. Our guests are Robin Koenig, who started the site, and Isaac Alexander, a Seattle-area aviation geek who serves as its chief content officer.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.
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What was previously a point of pride on Silicon Valley Bank's website now reads like a warning sign: nearly half of U.S. venture-backed technology and life sciences companies bank with the financial institution. Financial regulators on Friday morning shut down Silicon Valley Bank and put it in the hands of the FDIC, a jaw-dropping move that has created a crisis for startup founders and their financial backers.
Based in Santa Clara, Calif., Silicon Valley Bank has long been a key player in the Seattle region. GeekWire's reporting suggests that the percentage of tech startups in the Seattle area that used Silicon Valley Bank was even higher than the national average, upwards of 80% or more of the venture-backed companies in the area.
GeekWire co-founder John Cook, who started covering startups and venture capital before the dot-com bust, calls this an "absolute meltdown," the likes of which he hasn't seen before on the startup beat. On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we talk about what caused the situation, what it says about the state of the tech economy, and what could be next for those impacted by the shutdown.
Related coverage:
- Tech startup leaders concerned about making payroll following Silicon Valley Bank meltdown
- Regulators close Silicon Valley Bank in stunning downfall for financial mainstay of tech industry
- Seattle VC firms tell startups to assess positions with Silicon Valley Bank amid funding concerns
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The workplace and the job market are a volatile mix of variables these days, including the economy, tech layoffs, inflation, pay transparency, remote work, and a push by some companies to bring employees back to the office. So how are all of these changes impacting pay and perks? Our guest this week is Lexi Clarke, chief people officer at Payscale, the Seattle-based compensation software and data company, which just came out with its 2023 Compensation Best Practices Report.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: What happened when Microsoft's new Bing AI search chatbot was called upon to help report a story for a small-town community newspaper. Plus, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's back-to-office plan draws opposition from the company's employees and support from Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell. And Jeff Bezos appears serious about buying an NFL team.
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop and Kurt Schlosser.
Stories and topics discussed on this week's show.
- Report: Jeff Bezos using investment firm to explore bid for NFL’s Washington Commanders
- Seattle mayor praises Amazon’s back-to-office policy in ‘State of the City’ address
- Wall Street Journal: Amazon Corporate Workers Face Pay Reduction After Shares Slip
- Amazon changes back-to-office policy, tells corporate workers to come in 3 days a week
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Software developer Patrick Husting is excited about the potential of generative AI to transform daily work and life, but he's also cautious about the role of big tech companies -- and he sees an opportunity for independent operators such as himself to unlock the potential of artificial intelligence for users across different platforms.
Husting is the developer of a new third-party add-in called Ghostwriter that lets users query OpenAI’s ChatGPT in a Word sidebar and watch content generated by the natural language chatbot unfurl directly in the document they’re drafting. It's available for Microsoft Word, Outlook and other Office products coming soon.
Husting, a Seattle-area business leader, serial entrepreneur, and software developer who worked in Microsoft’s consulting business in the late 1990s. He came up with the idea last fall when he was using ChatGPT for writing assistance, and got tired of cutting and pasting, and switching between windows.
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Yusuf Mehdi is a Microsoft veteran of more than 31 years, who has been involved in the development and launch of some of the company's biggest products, including Windows 95 and Windows 11, the Xbox One console, and past versions of Microsoft's search engine. He's currently the corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer.
He spoke with GeekWire's Todd Bishop on the Microsoft campus on Tuesday, a few hours after introducing the new Bing search engine and an updated version of Microsoft's Edge browser with a sidebar that uses AI to generate and analyze web content.
Topics of the discussion include the potential impact of AI search on content creators, Google's preemptive response to Microsoft's announcement, the precautions Microsoft is taking to prevent another "Tay" moment, and both the capabilities and limitations of this new generation of AI.
The new Bing, along with an updated version of Microsoft’s Edge browser, are available in a limited preview, with a wait-list for those who want to try the AI search and web copilot as they roll out more broadly.
Related Coverage
- Arguing with AI: My first dispute with Microsoft’s brilliant and boneheaded Bing search engine
- Microsoft reveals new search engine and browser with AI ‘copilot,’ escalating battle with Google
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Popular methods of artificial intelligence have an "explainability problem," the inability to understand exactly what's happening between input and output, and this black box will hinder new advances from neural networks
That's one of the predictions for 2023 from Mark R. Anderson, founding chair and CEO of Strategic News Service (SNS) and the Future in Review Conferences. An author, scientist, and entrepreneur, he's known for using pattern discovery to accurately predict the future, and his predictions are part of the reason SNS has been followed closely in the industry since 1995.
Anderson happens to have vested interest in his take on neural networks as the CEO of machine learning company Pattern Computer, which uses an alternative approach, focusing on pattern recognition.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Anderson explains Pattern's approach and shares details from two more of his predictions for 2023: skeptical takes on the near-term future of autonomous systems and the metaverse.=
The full list of predictions is available to SNS subscribers. Anderson is also the featured speaker at an upcoming dinner event, Feb. 9 in Bellingham, Wash., benefitting the Rotary Club of Bellingham. Tickets available here.
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The ongoing layoffs across the tech industry are impacting women at a disproportionately higher rate than men, representing a possible setback for the industry's efforts to improve its gender diversity. That’s according to research conducted by talent intelligence platform Eightfold AI. Our guest this week is Sania Khan, chief economist at talent intelligence platform Eightfold AI, and a former U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics senior economist.
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This podcast features Kirill Zubovsky, a startup founder and consultant, who is now working with AI to create applications. He talks about his journey over the past few months with AI, his experience with generative AI and GPT-3, and the application of AI he has been working on, Smartynames, a domain and business name finder. He also talks about his experience living in a van with his two kids and two pets and his thoughts on the current "App Store moment" for artificial intelligence.
(This summary was produced by SwellAI.com based on its AI analysis of the content in this week's episode, with only minor human edits for style.)
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One of the defining tech industry trends of the past decade, along with the meteoric growth of big companies and their insatiable appetite for talent, was the growing influence of engineers commanding ever-increasing salaries.
That's changing with the waves of layoffs by Amazon, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet, Salesforce, Facebook parent Meta, and others. The big salary increases that workers could expect when changing jobs are becoming a thing of the past.
It's one of the major behind-the-scenes shifts happening as a result of the Big Tech cutbacks, our topic this week on the GeekWire Podcast.
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop and John Cook.
Full memo: Microsoft to cut 10k jobs, about 5% of workforce, and take $1.2B restructuring charge
Microsoft and Amazon job cuts mark new phase for tech industry after decade of massive growth
Commentary: Washington state’s tech industry will continue to grow, despite layoffs
Bloomberg: Amazon, Microsoft Job Cuts Deal Another Blow to Ailing Seattle
Stanford News: Why are there so many tech layoffs, and why should we be worried? Stanford scholar explains
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Seattle Public Schools is suing TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat for damages stemming from what the suit describes as a youth mental health crisis.
That crisis, the suit alleges, has been caused by the deliberate actions of the companies in deploying algorithms designed "to maximize engagement by preying on the psychology of children."
GeekWire broke the news of the lawsuit last weekend, and it went on to be covered by media outlets across the country.
Critics say the suit over-simplifies the causes of mental health challenges by pinning the blame on social media companies and not recognizing the responsibilities of parents and schools, and other societal factors.
The suit, modeled after e-cigarette litigation, will also need to overcome some significant legal hurdles. But beyond the outcome of the lawsuit itself, what's at stake is the national conversation over social media and youth mental health.
The suit already succeeded in drawing more attention to the issue of youth mental health, and the roles and responsibilities of the companies behind some of today's most popular apps.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're replaying highlights from GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop's conversations about the lawsuit on two radio programs this week: Soundside on KUOW Public Radio in Seattle with host Libby Denkmann; and The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC Public Radio in New York.
Related Post: Are social media companies to blame for youth mental health crisis? It’s complicated
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What would a combination of OpenAI's ChatGPT natural language chatbot with Microsoft's Bing search engine look like?
We discuss the potentially surprising possibilities with longtime journalist and Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley, editor-in-chief at DirectionsOnMicrosoft.com, following a report this week by The Information, citing unnamed sources who say Microsoft is working on just such an integration.
Also read Mary Jo Foley's posts for more on the topic:
- Could OpenAI's ChatGPT make Microsoft's long-rumored Bing chatbot a reality?
- Microsoft's plan to turn its Power Platform into a 'Power House'
Hosted by GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop, todd@geekwire.com.
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How closely were you reading GeekWire this year? Here's your chance to put that accumulated knowledge to the test. It's our 2022 News Quiz — this year featuring multiple planes, a famed arcade, breakthrough innovations in science and technology, and the adventures of our local tech moguls.
If you want to take the quiz yourself before listening to the show, see geekwire.com/2022newsquiz.
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Startup entrepreneur and investor Ben Gilbert, co-founder and managing director of Pioneer Square Labs and PSL Ventures, is always watching for the next big tech wave. He concedes that there have been plenty of false starts in the industry in the past: augmented and virtual reality, "personal audio computing," and more.
But Gilbert, who also co-hosts the popular podcast "Acquired," didn't hesitate for a moment when asked what he believes will be the most important technology of 2023.
"ChatGPT based on GPT 4," he said, referencing a future version of OpenAI's conversational AI chatbot running on the next version of its large language model.
Gilbert and his Acquired co-host David Rosenthal were two of the business and tech leaders who spoke with us about the challenges of the past year and their outlook for the future at the GeekWire Gala on Dec. 4. The potential for generative and prescriptive AI to transform industries was a key theme running through many of the conversations.
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Amazon is resetting its business. Is it doing enough to change its mindset?
In an analysis published this week, advisor, speaker, author, and former Amazon executive John Rossman presents a blueprint for turning the company around — advocating a "zero-based mindset" in which every initiative needs to be justified from scratch, and a "brutal rationalization of capital expenses," among other steps.
"I honestly think that Jeff's biggest concern about Amazon was always that it would become a bureaucracy," says Rossman, referring to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. "And I think this is the opportunity to change the forward-looking narrative on Amazon: are they going to go into the slow bureaucratic mindset, or are they going to return to their roots as a scrappy, small, team-oriented, highly accountable organization?"
Rossman joins GeekWire's Todd Bishop to discuss Amazon's path forward.
Rossman is the founder of Rossman Partners, a management consulting team, he worked previously at turnaround consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal. During his tenure at Amazon, from 2002-2005, helped to launch and build Amazon Marketplace before leading the company’s Enterprise Services business. He has authored three books, including The Amazon Way, and he writes the weekly Digital Leader Newsletter, found at Substack.
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For anyone reading the news about Ticketmaster and Taylor Swift, or Twitter and Elon Musk, the problem of malicious bots might seem insurmountable.
These automated programs can snap up concert tickets in the blink of an eye, or pose as humans on social media, among countless other mischievous tasks. Bad bots are a big problem, accounting for one-quarter to as much as one-half of global internet traffic, or even more, by different estimates.
But they are not invincible.
That's the assessment of F5 CEO François Locoh-Donou. Seattle-based F5 is one of a growing number of tech companies that offer solutions to detect, deter, and defeat bots.
"You beat that automation — that bad automation from bad actors — with better technology, and that better technology does exist today," he says.
Locoh-Donou joins us to discuss the issue on this week's GeekWire Podcast. Plus, his take on the economy, and the future of the physical office.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Produced by Curt Milton.
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Amazon created the initial technical scaffolding for Alexa quickly, jumping out to an early lead in the market for smart speakers and voice assistants in the home. But nearly a decade later, Alexa is still under construction.
That's the perspective from Tigger (Charlie) Kindel, a Seattle tech industry veteran who worked at Amazon from 2013 to 2018, leading Alexa product management before building the Alexa smart-home technology team.
We contacted him this week to get his perspective as Amazon resets its strategy for Alexa and Echo. The company is making widespread layoffs on its Devices & Services team amid reports that the division is losing as much as $10 billion a year.
Plus: New comments about the future of Alexa from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
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It doesn't always come naturally to us, as cynical reporters, but every Thanksgiving week on the GeekWire Podcast, it's our tradition to take a step back and take stock of the positive things in technology, business, and science.
This year's installment offers several reminders of the technologies that we might take for granted, gradual advancements that we incorporate into our lives over time, to the point that we suddenly can't remember what we did without them: automated scoring for sports pools among friends; remote printing over the internet; natural language processing; language translation; mobile ticketing; and drone photography; to name a few.
We hear from several readers and listeners about what they're grateful for right now, including robotic process automation, continued advocacy for diversity in tech, and support networks for startup founders.
In a contrarian twist this year, GeekWire's John Cook also talks about some of the silver linings in these cloudy economic times, including a return to more realistic (and potentially realizable) valuations for tech startups. We're also seeing a silver lining in the job market right now, as layoffs open up the market for hiring by smaller companies.
And in an even more contrarian view, John shares why he's thankful for ... Elon Musk! Be sure to listen to his reasoning before getting out your pitchforks.
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Amazon became the latest tech giant to make layoffs in its corporate workforce this week in the face of the economic downturn, but the manner in which the plan unfolded left some employees scratching their heads, at best.
Foreshadowed in a Nov. 10 Wall Street Journal report foreshadowing cutbacks in Amazon's devices division, the scope became clear with a New York Times report Nov. 14, saying that the company planned to lay off about 10,000 corporate and tech workers. But that number was an approximation, not a precise count or a specific target, because Amazon is leaving the decisions to leaders in its divisions.
It also took couple days for Amazon to officially acknowledge the layoffs, with a memo from Devices and Services chief Dave Limp, and later from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, explaining that the job cuts could extend into next year.
The reaction was a mix of frustration, fear, uncertainty, and also acceptance, as GeekWire reporter Kurt Schlosser discovered when he visited the Amazon campus in Seattle this week. Kurt joins us to share what he saw and heard.
Also this week: the impact of the downturn on high-tech real estate brokerage Redfin, and our thoughts on a potential collaboration between Jeff Bezos and Jay-Z.
Share your perspective for next week's show: What are you thankful for in tech? Is there a technology that has changed your life, your job, or your company for the better this year? Or a trend in the economy or the industry that you're especially grateful to see? Send a message or a voice memo with your thoughts to podcast@geekwire.com for a chance to be included in next week's episode.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop.
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The year was 2011, Facebook was serving a mere 600 million users, and Mark Zuckerberg was making his pitch to a crowd of prospective hires inside the company's office near Pike Place Market — explaining why the social network had chosen Seattle for its first remote engineering hub.
"We were like, alright, at some point, we should probably think about opening up offices in other places," he said. "And we figured that Seattle would be a good starting place, because it's culturally pretty similar to the Bay Area, pretty close by. ... It's the same time zone. So it's easier to schedule time to hang out and talk with folks."
Originally an experiment, it quickly became much more than that.
"We've been totally overwhelmed with awesome folks we've had the opportunity to talk to, from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, different startups here," he said. "And it's just really impressive. It has definitely blown away our expectations for how quickly we were going to be able to find good people."
The trend only continued from there. In the decade that followed, Facebook grew to more than 8,000 people across numerous offices in the Seattle area, as the company grew to reach nearly 3 billion users across the globe, and dramatically expanded its footprint under the Meta umbrella ... until this week.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we discuss Zuckerberg's decision to cut 11,000 jobs, or 13% of Meta's workforce; examine the company's growth in the Seattle region as an emblem of Silicon Valley's global ambitions; and consider the new realities of popular tech business models in the face of the economic downturn.
With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop.
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Amazon has grown dramatically over the past decade, surpassing 1.5 million employees and extending its reach into nearly every corner of commerce and society. But now, the turbulent economy is forcing the tech giant to make a series of difficult decisions, cutting back in many areas while making strategic bets in others.
It’s far from alone in facing these decisions. However, with its reach across e-commerce, physical retail, cloud computing, robotics, AI, transportation, logistics, and many other areas, Amazon is a microcosm of the larger economy. That makes it worth examining not just for its own future but for the broader implications.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we take a closer look at the forces influencing Amazon’s business, and how the company is responding.
See this GeekWire post for more information and related links.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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Fully autonomous vehicles are closer to commonplace than you might expect, as cars and big rigs gain the ability to operate safely on our streets and highways.
As one of the pioneers in the field, Chris Urmson has been there from the beginning, competing in the landmark DARPA Grand Challenge before going on to lead Google’s self-driving car initiative.
Now he’s following through on the vision as the CEO of Aurora, which is developing self-driving technology for use by a variety of car and truck makers.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're playing highlights from our conversation with Urmson at the recent GeekWire Summit.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited by Curt Milton.
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Can the online world move from the digital equivalent of medieval times to a new era of civilization?That was the question on Charlie Bell’s mind when the veteran engineering leader decided to leave Amazon after more than 23 years and join Microsoft to lead its $15 billion cybersecurity business, taking on what he described as “one of the greatest challenges of our time.”
More than a year into that quest, Bell joined us recently at the GeekWire Summit for a status report — sharing insights on the state of digital security, and the potential for progress in the years ahead.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're featuring highlights from Bell's conversation on stage with GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
Special Coverage: GeekWire Summit 2022.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we hear the pitches made by four startup CEOs in the 32 seconds it takes to get to the top of Seattle's historic Smith Tower, on their way to winning their respective episodes on this season of GeekWire's Elevator Pitch series.
It's a preview of the upcoming season finale, in which each of the four will make a final pitch at the GeekWire Summit next week, live on stage.
- Episode 1 winner: Amina Moreau, CEO of Radious, an online marketplace that turns houses, apartments and other residential properties into workspaces, rentable by the day.
- Episode 2 winner: Devin Miller, co-founder and CEO of SecureSave, a purpose built emergency savings solution designed to help people feel and be financially secure.
- Episode 3 winner: Erin Quick, co-founder and CEO of PairTree, a service that provides tools, resources and support to navigate and simplify the process of adoption.
- Episode 4 winner: Katherine Sizov, CEO & co-founder of Strella Biotechnology, creators of sensing technology that predicts the ripeness of produce.
More: GeekWire Elevator Pitch Season 3, and the GeekWire Summit, Oct. 6-7.
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Hybrid work is here to stay, but some big changes are needed to make it work.
That was the message from Microsoft this week as the tech giant presented the results of a new study showing a disconnect in the perceptions of productivity between workers and leaders at companies around the world.
Meanwhile, the number of meetings for many workers has soared since the beginning of the pandemic, in what appears to be the new normal at many companies. But there has also been a significant rise in multi-tasking during those meetings, as distractions threaten to undermine communication and productivity.
That's our first topic on the GeekWire Podcast this week, as we go over some of the takeaways from Microsoft's study and preview the upcoming GeekWire Summit, where the future of work will be a recurring theme.
Then we turn to the next generation of smartphones, and to the next generation of smartphone users. John Cook provides an update on his efforts to ensure that his 12-year-old adopts his first smartphone in a healthy and sustainable way, and offers Todd Bishop some tips for a parallel situation in my own household.
Finally, we talk about John's initial experience with the iPhone 14, his first new smartphone in several years, and spend a little time doing some remedial tech support in the process.
Edited and produced by Curt Milton
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Business, government and environmental leaders from Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia met at the U.S.-Canada border this week to discuss the next steps in the quest to become the world's first sustainable mega-region.
The Cascadia 2050 Vision conference was led by former Washington state governor Chris Gregoire, the CEO of Challenge Seattle and the co-chair of the steering committee for the Cascadia Innovation Corridor, a cross-border initiative that brings together leaders from Washington state, Oregon and British Columbia. Gregoire joins us on this episode to discuss the key innovations and funding initiatives that make her optimistic about the prospects for achieving long-term climate goals.
- Boston Consulting Group report: How the Cascadia Innovation Corridor can serve as a global model for sustainable growth
- Cascadia Daily News: Cascadia 2050 Vision conference brings together international leaders
- Bill Gates encouraged by U.S. climate initiatives as ‘mega-region’ grapples with long-term challenges
- Microsoft’s outgoing environmental chief reflects on bold actions and navigating ‘hiccups’
Hosted by GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop; edited and produced by Curt Milton.
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Our guest this week is Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor who specializes in areas including privacy, artificial intelligence and robots. He's one of the organizers of We Robot, an annual conference where scholars and practitioners discuss legal and policy questions relating to robots and artificial intelligence. It's taking place this year at the University of Washington from Sept. 14-16.
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We are now decades into the digital revolution, so why haven't high-tech audio streams caught up to old-fashioned radio waves?
That was my question on last week's GeekWire Podcast, after conducting an experiment inspired by the tradition of tuning into the play-by-play announcers while watching a baseball game in the stands.
During a Seattle Mariners game at T-Mobile Park, I found that the audio streams from various smartphone apps, were at least 30 seconds behind the action on the field, and sometimes even further behind. That compared to a lag of just a few seconds when listening on a $22, battery-powered AM transistor radio.
I offered my theories about the reasons for this, and heard from a bunch of people who listened to the podcast or read the article last week. One was streaming media veteran Rob Green, who was group manager of Microsoft's Digital Media Division from 1998 to 2006, a pivotal era for the industry. He went on to lead a variety of tech and digital media startups, including a past role as CEO of Seattle-based Abacast, which streamed broadcast radio stations online.
Green is a longtime GeekWire reader who emailed me after last week's post: "Simply put, streaming requires buffers to work correctly, hence the delay you experienced," he wrote. "Broadcast expects a perfect network, and streaming expects an imperfect network, and they are respectively architected accordingly."
I jumped on the line with him to learn more, and you can hear his comments on this week's episode, along with an explanation from Major League Baseball, and a fun story about the early days of live-streaming baseball games from Seattle tech veteran Daryn Nakhuda.
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On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, recorded on location at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, we pit old-fashioned terrestrial radio against a newfangled digital audio stream for play-by-play in the stands. Then, we debate pros and cons of baseball analytics and robot umpires. And finally, we experience the highs and lows of Amazon's latest retail technology at the tech giant's hometown stadium.
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Amazon is one of the most extraordinary business stories of our time. Many people in the tech industry have a general understanding of this story, picking up bits and pieces of its lore and culture over the years.
But what are the real reasons for Amazon's success? What can today's startup entrepreneurs learn from what Jeff Bezos did? And where is the company headed next? Two investors spent the better part of two months researching Amazon in their spare time to answer questions like those, and they just shared what they learned.
Ben Gilbert, managing director at Seattle-based Pioneer Square Labs, and David Rosenthal, a San Francisco-based angel investor, this week released an episode of their podcast, Acquired, that spans nearly 4-and-a-half hours, providing a deeper understanding of Amazon and new insights into how the company works.
Gilbert joins us on this week's episode of the GeekWire Podcast to discuss some of the key takeaways and highlights from their Amazon deep dive.
With Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited and produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Seattle investor and business leader Tom Alberg, who died last week at the age of 82, was a key figure in the e-commerce and wireless industries, and in the Seattle startup community, through his roles as an early Amazon investor and longtime board member, executive at McCaw Cellular, and co-founder of Madrona Venture group.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Todd Bishop and John Cook share their own insights from Alberg's life. See our earlier coverage for more on Alberg’s legacy; read tributes from his friends and colleagues; and see Madrona’s LinkedIn post for more remembrances from those who worked with and knew Alberg during his life and career.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we play highlights and share takeaways from the recent earnings calls of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet, seeking a clearer understanding of what's next for the tech economy. With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook; audio editing and production by Curt Milton.
Related headlines and links:
- Microsoft earnings come up short, hit by global economic trends and cutbacks
- Amazon stock rises 10% as tech giant beats revenue expectations amid ‘inflationary pressures’
- CNBC: Alphabet misses on earnings and revenue for second quarter
- The Verge: Facebook reports drop in revenue for the first time
- Marketwatch: Apple raises $5.5 billion in debt after upbeat earnings, iPhone sales offset fears of a consumer pullback
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Tributes and memories have been pouring in from longtime friends and colleagues pf Cranium creator Richard Tait since the Seattle entrepreneur's death on July 25 the age of 58 from complications due to COVID-19.
A passionate and visionary entrepreneur known for being tough, Tait had a generous spirit, effusive personality, and rare ability to connect with people he encountered.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we're listening back to a conversation that Tait recorded with Fuel Talent CEO and founder Shauna Swerland in 2018 for her podcast, What Fuels You. It's inspiring, insightful, and bittersweet, and we're grateful to Shauna for allowing us to share it with you here.
Read our earlier coverage for more on Tait's life and career, and memories from friends and colleagues.
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Amazon's head of global corporate affairs, Jay Carney, the former White House press secretary under President Obama, made some news of his own this week, announcing that he's leaving the Seattle-based tech giant after more than seven years to join Airbnb. This week on the GeekWire Podcast, in light of the news, we're listening back to highlights from our 2019 interview with Carney at the GeekWire Summit.
RELATED COVERAGE: Jay Carney checks out of Amazon, lands at Airbnb: Inside ex-White House press secretary’s tech career
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Do people on your team multitask in meetings, or focus intently on the person speaking? The answer to that question will help to how much your organization prioritizes attention, which is one of the "7 Forms of Respect" in the framework and book of that name by Julie Pham.
Don't worry, this isn't about setting rules. Pham is not giving advice on having laptops open or closed in meetings, for example. Instead, she's providing a way to establish and communicate the priorities of different people, teams, and companies — defining organizational culture not by abstract concepts but by desired behaviors.
That insight is key to understanding and benefiting from the new book by Pham, a Seattle-based entrepreneur, marketer, consultant, journalist, historian, and former non-profit executive. It's called 7 Forms of Respect: A Guide to Transforming Your Communication and Relationships at Work.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Pham discusses the practical applications and benefits of the "7 Forms of Respect" with GeekWire co-founder John Cook.
Audio editing and production by Curt Milton.
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“Astro is our first consumer robot. It’s not going to be our last.”
Ken Washington, the executive in charge of Amazon’s first home robot, speaks confidently about the future despite mixed reviews and early skepticism about Astro’s usefulness. A nuclear engineer by training, Washington was chief technology officer at Ford Motor Co., overseeing initiatives including autonomous vehicles, before joining Amazon as VP of consumer robotics last year.
He sat down with us at Amazon re:MARS in Las Vegas.
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Microsoft President Brad Smith, like many in tech and the broader world, hoped 2022 might bring a bit of a break in the onslaught of national and global challenges. Halfway through, the reality has been anything but.
"This has been another year where, to use an old phrase, we have to borrow from our sleep in order to get everything done," the Microsoft president said in an interview this week in his office in Redmond. "I don't think any of us thought, when the year began, that we'd find a major war in Europe."
But helping to defend Ukraine in the Russian cyberwar is just one issue on Microsoft's radar.
In the first six months of the year, the company has made a series of moves driven by the turbulent economy, new state and national legislation, growing pressure from employees and investors, a shifting labor market, regulatory challenges, and a pending acquisition that would be the largest in its history. Microsoft boosted employee compensation, significantly reduced its use of non-compete agreements, and announced plans to publicly disclose salary ranges in job posts nationally starting next year. The company commissioned an outside review of its sexual harassment and gender discrimination policies and practices, and announced plans for a civil rights audit, joining a larger industry movement. It also removed confidentiality clauses from agreements involving internal allegations of misconduct. Microsoft pledged a new approach to the prospect of labor unions in its current and future workforce, seeking in part to appease regulators weighing the company's proposed $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard. The company has continued to press ahead on its climate initiatives in the midst of all of this, attempting to navigate the challenge of higher energy prices while focusing on the environmental crisis.
And then there's the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. That's where we started our wide-ranging conversation with Smith this week.
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On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, recorded on location at Amazon re:MARS in Las Vegas, we sit down with Tye Brady, Amazon Robotics chief technologist, to talk about the company's new warehouse robots. Then we jump on the line to reconnect with recent GeekWire Podcast guest Philip Su, a former Microsoft and Facebook software engineering leader who worked the peak season last year inside an Amazon warehouse, to get his take after he watched the keynote. Hear more about Philip Su's experience in his 15-episode podcast series, Peak Salvation, and in our prior GeekWire Podcast conversation, published June 11. Watch Amazon Robotics chief technologist Ty Brady's re:MARS keynote here, and see our earlier coverage of Amazon's new robots, including videos of them in action.
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In many ways, Jeff Bezos would seem to have it all. But when is enough enough?
In the new book, "Career Self-Care: Find Your Happiness, Success, and Fulfillment at Work," Inc. magazine columnist and Seattle-area author Minda Zetlin points to the Amazon founder's push for financial incentives in the company's search for a second headquarters as a prime example of "the dirty little secret about success."
After Amazon's choice of Queens, N.Y., backfired due to objections over financial incentives, a report by Bloomberg News revealed that Bezos and Amazon had originally been motivated in part by envy over the incentives that Elon Musk and Tesla were getting from Nevada for building their gigafactory there, despite much different circumstances.
Zetlin sees in this anecdote a lesson for the rest of us.
"We spend our whole lives pursuing success. But where is that spot, exactly?" she says. "If you're the richest person in the world, which he was at that time, and you're still not satisfied, you're still not happy, you're still jealous of somebody else, it just seems to illustrate that there is no there there."
Zetlin's book draws on her reporting, interviews and experiences to examine self-care with the underlying assumption that, for many of us, work and the rest of our lives are now inevitably intertwined. she joins us on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast to talk about these topics and more from her book.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Audio editing by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Philip Su, a software engineering leader turned non-profit founder, decided to shake up his life last fall — seeking an antidote to his seasonal depression in a job with more structure and less pay than he had experienced in many years.
Su worked the peak season at Amazon's giant flagship warehouse south of Seattle, in Kent, Wash., known by the code name BFI4 inside the company. It was a life-changing and eye-opening experience, as Su documents in his 15-episode podcast series, Peak Salvation.
A former Microsoft software engineer who was the second employee at Facebook's Seattle engineering office, Su led the London engineering office for Facebook (now Meta), then founded and ran the global health software nonprofit Audere before adding Amazon warehouse worker to his LinkedIn profile.
A newcomer to the front lines of global fulfillment, Su readily acknowledges that there could very well be good reasons for some of the quirks that he perceived as dysfunctions. Not only that, but he was a short-term worker, with a tenure of less than two months. He’s no logistics expert.
However, he brought fresh eyes and an engineer’s mind to the e-commerce giant’s operational nerve center. So we asked Su what changes he would make, based on his experience and observations.
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop; Audio editing by Curt Milton.
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What the heck is going on in the economy, and how will the current market gyrations and geopolitical uncertainty impact startups and venture capital?
To help answer these questions we invited Tim Porter to join us this week on the GeekWire Podcast. He's a Madrona Venture Group managing director who has invested in early-stage technology startups at the Seattle-based venture capital firm for the past 15 years, in areas including cloud, AI and enterprise software companies.
Follow along with our extended notes from the discussion.
With GeekWire co-founder John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton; Theme Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Conceding that the rise of labor unions in tech may ultimately reach its own business, Microsoft released a new set of principles Thursday acknowledging the rights of its employees to organize, pledging to work constructively with any who do, and making it clear that it hopes they won't feel the need.
The move follows a union vote last week by the quality assurance team inside Activision-Blizzard subsidiary Raven Software, maker of Call of Duty. Microsoft needs regulatory approval for its $68.7 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard. Its approach contrasts with its fellow Seattle-area corporate giants Amazon and Starbucks, which have opposed the formation of labor unions by their workers.
What's really going on here? On this episode, we talk with Microsoft President Brad Smith — getting his explanation of the principles, the reasons for creating them, and the broader context around them. We also get reaction and analysis from Marcus Courtney, who led an effort to organize Microsoft's temporary workforce starting in the late 1990s as co-founder of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers.
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Addressing the issue of warehouse worker safety in response to a shareholder question this week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy described the company's safety initiatives — most of them related to technology and invention. The focus on innovation is "true to their DNA," says former Amazon general manager and retail category leader Andrea Leigh, who is now founder and CEO of the Allume Group, an e-commerce learning company.
Looking at it from Amazon's perspective, the approach makes sense, she points out: "If you have half a million or more warehouse workers, you are probably thinking about it algorithmically." But labor unions and employees are focused more on the individual human impact. "And I think those two points of view just won't ever marry," Leigh says.
That's one of the takeaways from this discussion with Leigh, recapping and analyzing Amazon's annual meeting this week. Several shareholder proposals at the meeting addressed employee issues including warehouse worker safety and unionization.
Related Coverage In unusually close votes, Amazon shareholders send messages on exec pay, labor, and environment Amazon shareholders approve 20:1 stock split, vote down record 15 proposals at annual meeting Here’s how Amazon plans to rein in costs in quest to restore its consumer business to profitability Has Amazon found its fourth pillar? Revisiting a key question for the company’s future
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Our guest this week is Matt Hulett, a veteran of the Seattle tech community and the author of the new book, Unlock: 5 Questions to Unleash Your Company’s Hidden Power, published by Page Two Books.
A former executive with companies including Expedia, Mpire, Rosetta Stone and RealNetworks, Hulett is now the CEO and president of PetMed Express, a publicly traded, Florida-based online pet pharmacy.
We talk about finding the right market segment to pursue, how startups and investors should approach the potential of an economic downturn, tips for competing with tech giants, the role that private capital can play in turning around struggling businesses, and how to think about competition, among other topics.
Read our notes on the discussion here.
Related Stories Book Excerpt: 5 questions that will help unleash your company’s hidden power Expedia Group unveils new tech platform for travel industry, and scoring system for hotels Facing NASDAQ delisting, RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser makes bid to take company private Startups, superheroes, and the economy at a crossroads: Voices from Seattle’s tech community
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PITTSBURGH — In his 22 years at Amazon, including his role as the first CEO of the company’s Worldwide Consumer business, Jeff Wilke always kept the place he was raised, and the people he grew up with, in the back of his mind.
“I always wanted to lead in a way that if I went back, and people from high school could ask me anything about what I was encountering, the decisions I made, how I made them, that they’d be proud of me,” Wilke said.
Born at Allegheny General Hospital in 1966, Wilke grew up in the community of Green Tree, Pa., just outside of Pittsburgh. He wore flannel shirts to class at the public high school, Keystone Oaks, and played baseball in the shadow of the water tower still visible from the Parkway on the drive into the city.
In addition to shaping his values as a leader, his hometown gave him a first-hand view of the decline of the steel industry that had put Pittsburgh at the center of the industrial revolution. In the decades that followed, Pittsburgh’s role in the rise of robotics and artificial intelligence have made the city an emblem of U.S. resilience and reinvention.
Since leaving Amazon last year, Wilke has returned to his industrial roots as the chairman and co-founder of Re:Build Manufacturing, a Massachusetts-based company seeking to revive the U.S. manufacturing industry. Re:Build has made nine acquisitions, in areas including engineering services and advanced materials, with 600 employees in eight states.
We caught up with Wilke as part of GeekWire’s recent return to Pittsburgh, talking about his upbringing and history in the city, and his outlook for the future of robotics, AI, automation and U.S. manufacturing.
Previous Podcast:After helping Amazon reinvent commerce, Jeff Wilke turns attention to reviving U.S. manufacturing
Related Coverage: GeekWire's return trip to Pittsburgh
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After holding the GeekWire Awards virtually for the past two years, there was a feeling of real catharsis Thursday evening as hundreds of people streamed through the doors of the Showbox Sodo in Seattle for our annual celebration of the Pacific Northwest's top tech startups, leaders, and innovations.
For the finalists in the 2022 GeekWire Awards, recognition at the superhero-themed show came with the added bonus of knowing that their companies made it through a period of unprecedented challenge and change.
But the week also brought a new sense of uncertainty about what's to come.
[Related Post:2022 GeekWire Awards revealed: Community celebrates big winners in Pacific NW tech]
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's widely cited memo on Monday was a flashpoint for the tech industry, adding to existing concerns by warning of a “seismic shift” in the markets, signaling tougher times and tighter belts ahead. Some of the startup CEOs in attendance acknowledged reading his message closely.
So we took our cues from the backdrop, literally and figuratively — inviting tech leaders aside at the event to ask questions such as: What's your take on the possibility of new economic realities? What are your biggest challenges and priorities for the rest of the year? And, of course: which superhero best reflects your company's ethos?
The result was a glimpse into the collective psyche of the tech community in a key U.S. innovation hub, at a pivotal moment for the country and the world.
Guests on this episode, in order of appearance: Xiao Wang, CEO of Boundless Immigration, finalist for CEO of the Year. Maria Karaivanova, co-founder & COO of WhyLabs. Varun Puri, co-founder of Yoodli, winner of Young Entrepreneur of the Year with his co-founder Esha Joshi. Lisa Gurry, COO of Truveta, winner of Health Innovation of the Year Dave Cotter, chief product officer of Leafly, and chair of the Washington Technology Industry Association, sponsor of the Public Policy Champion for Innovation Award. Laura Ruderman, Technology Alliance CEO. David Kirtley, founder and CEO of Helion, finalist for Innovation of the Year. Stephanie Winslow, Teacher, South Kitsap High School, one of three STEM Educators of the Year. Grant Goodale, carrier experience officer, Convoy, past winner of Next Tech Titan. Mo Bhende, co-founder & CEO at Karat, finalist for Next Tech Titan. Faisal Masud, CEO of Fabric, finalist for Next Tech Titan. Kiana Pan, president of CodingDojo, honoree in the Geeks Give Back category. Tushar Garg, CEO of Flyhomes, finalist for Workplace of the Year. Byron Baker, head of design at Blink UX, sponsor and judge in UX Design of the Year.
Thanks to the tech leaders who answered our questions, to our GeekWire Awards attendees, finalists, and sponsors, and to our social media partner Jordan Curtis of Line Leader Media for his help with this episode.
Read about all of the GeekWire Awards finalists and winners in our special coverage.
Related Episodes: Immigration and tech: New realities, old problems, and what’s at stake for the future Key trends in digital commerce, with the former Amazon exec leading Seattle’s newest unicorn Ungrading? Letting kids teach IT? GeekWire Award-winning STEM teachers share innovative strategies
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One of the most memorable lines of the past two decades in video games was delivered not by a character in a game but by an executive on stage.
“My name is Reggie. I’m about kicking ass and taking names — and we’re about making games,” declared Reggie Fils-Aimé, introducing himself during Nintendo’s presentation at the E3 convention in Los Angeles in 2004.
The line represented a new attitude from Nintendo, a statement that the legendary game company hadn’t given up in its battle against the would-be bosses of the industry, Sony and Microsoft. It marked the beginning of a resurgence for the Japanese company and its Redmond, Wash.-based subsidiary, Nintendo of America, which Fils-Aimé would go on to lead as president and chief operating officer.
But it actually wasn’t how that line was originally drafted.
The last-minute change is one of many behind-the-scenes stories told by the retired Nintendo of America executive in his new book, “Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo.”
The book combines Fils-Aimé’s life story with leadership insights and some eye-opening anecdotes for fans of Nintendo and video games, including inside details about his working relationships with legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and late Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata.
Reggie Fils-Aimé joins us on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast to talk about his career, his book, and what’s next in video games. He also shares the story of that pivotal introductory line, how it was originally supposed to be delivered, and the larger significance of the change that was made on the eve of the event.
Read more on GeekWire.
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It's going to be a long time before robots replace sports mascots, but it might be better for one of our GeekWire colleagues when they do.
That's one of the more lighthearted takeaways from our return trip to Pittsburgh, where GeekWire co-founder John Cook somehow managed to make enemies with yet another pro sports mascot, but we also came away with some more fundamental insights into the state of robots, automation and artificial intelligence: Supply chain challenges and labor shortages are changing the national conversation about automation, and accelerating adoption of robotics especially in manufacturing and distribution. Amazon's ambitions for rapid delivery are boosting robotics and automation across the e-commerce industry by prompting competitors to follow suit with their own solutions to increase logistics efficiencies. Robotics startups and autonomous driving companies are finding success in business and enterprise markets, as evidenced by Aurora Innovation's work with Paccar and FedEx on a self-driving truck. Many consumer robotics companies are still trying to do too much in making multi-purpose robots, rather than focusing on doing one thing well, as illustrated by the initial reception to Amazon's Astro home robot.
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We're coming to you from Pittsburgh, where GeekWire is reporting on the future of robotics, AI and automation this week in conjunction with the Cascadia Connect Robotics, Automation & AI conference, organized by Seattle-based Cascadia Capital, which is underwriting our independent coverage of this topic.
This week's podcast is with Matthew Johnson-Roberson, the director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, which has been the source of numerous breakthroughs in robotics and automation since its founding in the late 1970s. Johnson-Roberson spent part of his childhood in Seattle, where he went to Garfield High School. He was a CMU computer science undergrad who went on to get his doctorate in robotics at the University of Sydney and worked at the University of Michigan before returning to CMU as the leader of the Robotics Institute earlier this year.
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Innovation is alive and well in STEM classrooms across Washington state, inspiring students to seek opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math.
At the GeekWire Awards on May 12, we're celebrating the accomplishments of three STEM Educator of the Year honorees who are excelling in their jobs by embracing creative, rule-breaking teaching strategies in their classrooms. These educators are eschewing traditional grading structures, putting students in charge of teaching lessons and empowering them with real-life, project-based learning.
We recently sat down to chat with our honorees along with DreamBox Learning CEO and President Jessie Woolley-Wilson to learn more about their efforts to breakdown traditional barriers. DreamBox is the sponsor of this award, now in its second year.
The STEM Educator of the Year honorees are:
Johanna Brown, a teacher at Pullman High School who brought Advanced Placement chemistry and computer science to her Eastern Washington high school, led their Science Bowl team to championships and embraces a "gradeless" classroom.
Devina Khan, a computer science and information technology instructional designer at the West Valley Innovation Center who partnered with an international program to connect female students with STEM professionals, coached students to earn tech certifications and helped kids share their tech expertise with the broader community in ag-focused Yakima County.
Stephanie Winslow, a teacher at South Kitsap High School who was one of the first STEM-certified career and technical educators in Washington and teaches AP environmental science, astronomy and earth science classes. She is also an advisor for STEM Club.
The GeekWire Awards recognize the top innovators and companies in Pacific Northwest technology. Our STEM educator honorees and other award finalists were selected based on community nominations, along with input from GeekWire Awards judges.
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Does it seem like activity is picking up out there in the tech world? Big fundings may be happening less frequently (with notable exceptions such as Convoy) but the return of events and in-person meetings seems to have created a collective energy that's been missing for the past two years.
In that spirit, we've got a grab bag of topics on this week's show:
New era for Netflix: News that Netflix is exploring a lower-price tier, supported by advertising, has us thinking back to our recent episode with Anthony Skinner, tech chief of advertising measurement and analytics company iSpot, who foreshadowed this move.
We also marvel at the brief lifespan of CNN+, and lament all the streaming subscriptions on our monthly bills.
Amazon's next big business? Amazon's unveiling of a new program called "Buy with Prime" will let Prime members buy items on non-Amazon e-commerce sites, and it's a key step toward a standalone Amazon shipping business, perhaps meeting the qualities of a "dreamy" business that Jeff Bezos outlined in his 2014 letter to shareholders.
Paul Allen's legacy: The reported sale of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Flying Heritage Collection fits a pattern of his estate divesting some of his more fanciful projects, while sticking with his core investments in technology and science. It also hints at what's ahead for Living Computers Museum, the Seattle Seahawks, Cinerama, etc.
More topics: GeekWire's upcoming trip to Pittsburgh; the May 12 GeekWire Awards; our recent episode with Soviet-born Seattle tech CEO Sergei Dreizin; and an upcoming episode with Reggie Fils-Aimé, the former Nintendo of America president, about his new book.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook; Audio editing and production by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Sergei Dreizin is co-founder and CEO of software engineering company Akvelon, based in Bellevue, Wash. Born and raised in Moscow, he moved to the U.S. in 1992, after the Soviet Union's collapse, getting his computer science degree from the University of Minnesota before going to work for Microsoft in the Seattle area.
But he maintained personal connections to Russia, and Akvelon established a large engineering operation in the country — numbering about 800 people, or more than half the company's workforce. Akvelon also has 300 people in Ukraine, with a large office in Kharkiv, a city near the Russian border that has come under heavy attack.
On March 11, Akvelon shut down its operations in Russia following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But that was just the beginning of the story, as Dreizin explains on this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast in conversation with GeekWire co-founder John Cook. See GeekWire.com for written excerpts.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we explore the state of the art in robotics and artificial intelligence with Martial Hebert, dean of the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science in Pittsburgh.
A veteran computer scientist in the field of computer vision, Hebert is the former director of CMU's prestigious Robotics Institute. A native of France, he also had the distinguished honor of being our first in-person podcast guest in two years, visiting the GeekWire offices during his recent trip to the Seattle area.
As you'll hear, our discussion doubled as a preview of a trip that GeekWire's news team will soon be making to Pittsburgh, revisiting the city that hosted our temporary GeekWire HQ2 in 2018, and reporting from Cascadia Connect Robotics, Automation & AI conference, with coverage supported by Cascadia Capital. More details soon.
Hosted by GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited and produced by Curt Milton, with music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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What's the impact of the words we use? Augmented writing platform Textio uses machine learning and natural language processing to take the guesswork out of business communication, offering predictive analytics designed to help companies recruit a diverse workforce and build an inclusive culture.
The 120-person Seattle-based tech company, led by CEO Kieran Snyder, has been going through a transformation of its own during the past two years, expanding its product lineup while taking its own workforce fully remote, and recruiting more people outside the Seattle area.
In the process, the company built its own in-house online tool for participatory time-boxed conversations, for team-building and collaboration among its employees. Dubbed "Umeo," it's not a product ... at least not yet.
Snyder, who was named the CEO of the Year in the 2021 GeekWire Awards, joins us on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast for a conversation about the importance of language, Textio's evolution, the future of workplace technology, regional differences in business language, and her formative experience as a "Scrabble hustler" in college in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square.
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Most online publishers and advertisers are accustomed to real-time analytics, the ability to see how many people are viewing a website or app at any moment, where they're coming from, generally who they are, and what they're doing on the site.
But that concept was a novelty in TV advertising before a startup called iSpot.tv came along in 2012. The company, based in Bellevue, Wash., took the turnaround time for data about television ads from weeks and days to hours and minutes.
A decade later, iSpot is a key partner and resource for major media platforms and advertisers. With more than 300 employees, the company has been growing organically and through acquisitions, it's increasingly becoming an alternative to industry stalwart Nielsen as a standard for audience measurement.
Meanwhile, Nielsen announced this week that it will be acquired by a private equity firm for $16 billion.
In the most recent example of the shift, NBCUniversal announced a multi-year agreement with iSpot to provide real-time audience measurement across platforms, starting with the 2022 Olympic Winter Games and Super Bowl LVI, and most recently for NBCUniversal's "upfront" negotiations with advertisers for the 2022-23 television season.
The upfront news was announced iSpot tech chief Anthony Skinner during an NBCUniversal developers conference on the Saturday Night Live stage in March. He joins us on the GeekWire Podcast to talk about the underlying changes in how we're all watching TV and consuming content, and how analytics have evolved along the way.
The company is a finalist in the category of Next Tech Titan in the 2022 GeekWire Awards, and Skinner was featured in a 2019 GeekWire Geek of the Week profile.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we talk about what could be an enduring era of remote work — for some people, at least — as enabled by new technology and illuminated by new data about migration within the United States. First up, GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop reports on his experience testing the SpaceX Starlink satellite service in my hometown in rural Northern California, including efforts to use the service from multiple locations. Then GeekWire co-founder John Cook assesses a high-profile effort by his home state, Ohio, to attract workers from Seattle and other U.S. tech hubs. And to round things out, we discuss new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau that show the population of King County, Wash., home to the tech hubs of Seattle and Bellevue, declining by more than 20,000 people last year, as other counties in the state saw an influx.
Finally, we give a sneak preview of the five finalists in one of the categories for the upcoming GeekWire Awards.
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Tony Hsieh was a legendary entrepreneur who built Zappos and sold the online shoe retailer to Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009. He was known for unusual experiments in management and business structure, and for pursuing long-term passions over short-term profits, as described in his 2010 book, Delivering Happiness.
A new book, Happy at Any Cost: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, tells the rest of the story of Hsieh's life, leading up to his tragic death from injuries sustained in a fire in New London, Conn., in November 2020. The book also goes behind-the-scenes of the company's relationship with Amazon.
Wall Street Journal reporter Kirsten Grind, who wrote the book with her colleague Katherine Sayre, joins me on the GeekWire Podcast to talk about what they discovered in writing the book, and what we can learn from Hsieh's life.
Kirsten Grind was previously based in the Seattle area as a reporter for the Puget Sound Business Journal. Her reporting on the collapse of Washington Mutual formed the basis for her first book, The Lost Bank.
Resources: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255; Crisis Text Line: 741741
Happy at Any Cost: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, by Kirsten Grind and Katherine Sayre, is published by Simon and Schuster, and available wherever books are sold.
Podcast edited by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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This week's blockbuster trade of Seattle Seahawks QB Russell Wilson could be the first in a series of moves that leads to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owning the team.
That was the hypothesis offered by veteran Seattle sports columnist Art Thiel in a piece this week at PostAlley.org, blending smart sourcing with informed speculation. Rumors of Bezos' interest in buying the Seahawks have been around for years, but the team's deal with the Denver Broncos makes the possibility worth revisiting.
Thiel, our former Seattle Post-Intelligencer colleague and the founding editor of Sportspress Northwest, joins us on this episode to discuss this theory and what it could mean for Bezos, Amazon and the NFL.
More from Art Thiel: A few musings about sports journalism as the unwinding begins Blockbuster Deal(s): Russell Wilson to Denver, Seahawks Sale Next
Edited by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell
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What would happen to the divisions in our country if we set aside our phones, and our assumptions, and truly tried to understand people who are different from us?
Mónica Guzmán did this in her own family, and she's convinced that the country could do it, too. The Seattle-based journalist, entrepreneur and self-described liberal starts her new bookwith the personal story of coming to terms with her own parents, Mexican immigrants who voted twice for Donald Trump for president.
The rest of the book is a guide for the rest of us: I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.
Longtime readers will remember Guzmán as a technology columnist who wrote regularly for GeekWirein the early years of the site. We also worked together previously at the Seattle P-I newspaper, where she started the Big Blog for SeattlePI.com.
She wrote for the Seattle Times and went on to co-found The Evergreynewsletter in Seattle. She's currently digital director of the non-profit Braver Angels, whose mission of bringing together people of different political beliefs matches the premise of her recent work. She's also the host of Crosscut's Northwest Newsmakers.
We talk about her new book, and the role of technology in all of this, on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast. Hosted by GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.
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“Best Book Club Ever,” read one sign inside Amazon Books at Seattle’s University Village this weekend. On the bookshelves below it were products including an electric 1.5-liter ceramic kettle, a sugar dispenser, and a marble cheese slicer.
Elsewhere in the store, shoppers browsed items as varied as a plush baby shark, a Lite Brite, Funko figurines, a USB mic, game consoles, a smart fitness scale, a WiFi router, and kitchen scissors.
There was not, as far as I could tell, a kitchen sink.
Yes, there were books in this bookstore. But they were surrounded by a cacophony of commerce. Looking around at the seemingly random array of products, it felt like a bookstore subsumed by a variety store — an experiment gone awry, or more likely, an approach influenced by two different executive regimes.
No wonder Amazon is pulling the plug, I thought to myself.
Listen to the full story on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, or read it here, as published on GeekWire on March 7, 2022: Amazon’s bizarre bazaar: Strange final chapter for tech giant’s first bricks-and-mortar bookstore
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Understanding any subject requires knowing the numbers, and that includes looking at the long-term trends. That was one of Steve Ballmer's guiding principles as Microsoft's CEO, and it remains his mantra as founder of USAFacts, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that compiles and reports U.S. government data.
Ballmer, the chairman of the L.A. Clippers and former Microsoft CEO, joins us on the GeekWire Podcast to discuss the USAFacts State of the Union in Numbers report, including the data to watch as the country emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and confronts the global economic impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
We also discuss trends he's watching in tech, the future of the pro sports experience in Seattle and beyond, and his philanthropic initiatives with his wife Connie through the Ballmer Group in areas including homelessness and education.
We last spent time with Ballmer when USAFacts partnered with GeekWire on the podcast Numbers Geek in 2018 and 2019, exploring the data behind many of the key issues facing the country. Of course, many of those issues have been upended in the time since. It was good to catch up with him and revisit some of these topics.
More: USAFacts founder and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the State of the Union in numbers
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This is a special episode in remembrance of Zain Nadella, the son of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and his wife, Anu Nadella, who died Monday at the age of 26.
Those who knew him are remembering Zain for his wide-ranging taste in music, his bright smile and for his profound impact on his dad's life. Zain suffered from asphyxia in utero and developed cerebral palsy. Satya Nadella wrote candidly about his experience as Zain's dad in his 2017 book, Hit Refresh, and he spoke with me about Zain's influence in an interview that year on stage at the GeekWire Summit.
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This week brought news of a big fundraising by e-commerce technology startup Fabric, a $140 million Series C round led by Softbank. With the deal, Fabric became the Seattle region’s newest unicorn startup, a privately held company valued at more than $1 billion, or about $1.5 billion in its case.
Our guest on this week’s GeekWire Podcast is Fabric’s CEO, Faisal Masud a former executive with companies including Amazon, Alphabet, Groupon, Staples and eBay.
We talked about the state of physical and online retail as we emerge from the pandemic, business to business commerce, the Amazon heritage on Fabric’s executive team, competition with Shopify and Salesforce, and why Amazon itself hasn’t been able to get traction in the area Fabric is focusing on.
The 300-person company offers software, APIs, and other behind-the-scenes technology used by retailers and business-to-business brands for many aspects of online commerce, including pricing/promotion, inventory management, digital storefronts, and payments/checkout.
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Zillow Group knows a thing or two about homes, and during the past two years the Seattle-based online real estate company has emerged as a leader enabling its employees to work from theirs — or from anywhere else they want.
As companies including Microsoft and Expedia make the transition back to the office, in some cases expecting employees to spend at least half of their time working in-person, Zillow has already been through its own transition to a completely flexible approach to work.
So how’s it going? On this episode, we hear from a Zillow executive who is not only overseeing the company’s flexible work experience, but living it first-hand: Meghan Reibstein, Zillow's vice president of project management and flexible work.
Related links and content
Meghan Reibstein on LinkedIn:Flexible Work Improves Employees’ Quality of Life, Zillow Survey Reveals
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Armoire CEO and founder Ambika Singh and her team built a women's clothing subscription service with their "bosslady" members in mind, providing an on-demand wardrobe of apparel primarily for work and events.
Two years ago, the Seattle-based startup was on a roll, posting a record month in February 2020 after growing nearly 400% in 2019. But then came the pandemic. Armoire's members no longer needed to dress up for the office or to go out.
So close the door on Armoire, right? Not so fast.
Ambika Singh talks with GeekWire's John Cook and Todd Bishop about Armoire's survival story, how the startup's underlying business works, competition with Rent the Runway and others, its return to the office, and what's next in its startup journey.
Read more:Startup survival story: Armoire’s remarkable journey from sequins to sweatpants and back again
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What does Microsoft's return to the office mean for everybody else?
That was one of the questions raised by the tech giant's announcement Monday that it will fully reopen its Washington state offices, including its Redmond headquarters, starting on Feb. 28. The company says it will offer flexibility but expects most employees to be back in the office at least 50% of the time.
Microsoft and other big tech companies were among the first in the country to ask employees to work from home at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly two years ago. The rest of the industry followed suit.
But the return could be different, based on fundamental changes in the industry and society in the meantime.
For an overview and status report, we spoke with Michael Schutzler, CEO of the Washington Technology Industry Association, which represents tech companies across Washington state, and has gone fully virtual itself, giving up its downtown Seattle offices for good. WTIA is also redefining its own boundaries in the process.
See excerpts and links on GeekWire: Why Microsoft’s return to the office may not be the norm across the rest of the tech industry
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Our guest this week, Ashley Stewart, is a Seattle-based senior tech correspondent for the news site Insider who reports on Microsoft and Amazon.
She and her colleagues reported on Amazon’s executive exodus and its internal deliberations about compensation in advance of the increase in maximum base pay announced by the company this week. After the announcement, they reported on internal documents indicating the types of pay increases employees can expect.
We also discuss her reporting on turmoil inside Microsoft's HoloLens business, and where recent changes leave the company in the race to create the Metaverse.
And in our final segment, we compare notes on what it's like to cover these two companies, and what the differences say about their corporate cultures.
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Amazon informed employees about a major change coming to their pay structure Monday morning. The company raised the cap for its base pay to $350,000 as part of its larger package of stock and cash compensation for corporate and tech employees. The maximum base pay has long been $160,000. The move has implications not only for Amazon employees but for the broader tech industry.
Garry Straker, senior compensation consultant at salary.com, spoke with GeekWire's Todd Bishop about the Amazon news, the future of work and the major changes taking place in the world of employee pay.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Amazon's latest results demonstrated its extraordinary flexibility and ability to overcome challenges in the broader economy using the built-in safeguards in its business, most notably the Amazon Web Services cash machine. Amazon spent an extra $4 billion to keep its business running smoothly despite a clogged economy.
Plus, Microsoft hires an Amazon veteran to take on "one of the greatest challenges of our time," and Seattle startup Cloud Paper raises $5 million in new funding for its environmentally friendly, tree-free toilet paper.
With Todd Bishop and John Cook; Edited by Curt Milton; theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell
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The latest jaw-dropping deal in video games is Sony Interactive Entertainment's agreement to buy Bellevue, Wash.-based Bungie, maker of the Destiny series of online multiplayer first-person shooter games, originally known for developing Halo for Microsoft's Xbox.
Bungie was spun out of Microsoft in 2007 and has operated as an independent company in the meantime. It's expected to be an independent Sony Interactive Entertainment subsidiary and continue to operate under its current management. Bungie is promising to expand its 900-person employee base and move into new areas of entertainment as a result of the Sony deal.
Games writer Thomas Wilde joins us on this special episode to explain what the deal means for Sony, Bungie, Microsoft and the world of video games at large.
RELATED: Analysis: Sony buying Bungie is the counter-move we were waiting for
The announcement Monday morning came two weeks after Microsoft struck a $68.7 billion deal for Activision Blizzard, the Call of Duty and Candy Crush maker.
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Data journalist and entrepreneur Sherrell Dorsey is a Seattle native whose story is a powerful testament to the potential of kids in overlooked communities, and to the possibilities that emerge when their paths are cleared. Dorsey is founder and CEO of The Plug, a venture-backed news and insights platform covering Black startups and ecosystems. Her new book is Upper Hand: The Future of Work for the Rest of Us.
Read an excerpt from Dorsey's book on GeekWire: Seattle’s ‘Motown of tech’ changed Sherrell Dorsey’s life — now she’s passing it along
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Hope Cochran, managing director at venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group in Seattle, was previously the chief financial officer of King Digital, the maker of Candy Crush and other hit mobile games. She led King through its initial public offering in 2014, and its $5.9 billion acquisition in early 2016 by Activision Blizzard.
That gives her a unique perspective on Microsoft's deal this week to acquire video-game giant Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.
We also talk about Cochran's career, including her past role as the chief financial officer of Clearwire leading up to its $15 billion acquisition by Sprint; and her current role at Madrona investing in fintech and gaming companies, including Seattle-based VR gaming company Rec Room, where she's a board member.
We also discuss her leadership role in the Onboarding Women group created by Madrona and several other Seattle-area businesses to increase the percentage of women on public company boards. Cochran herself is on the boards of public companies Hasbro MongoDB and NewRelic.
Cochran majored in economics and music at Stanford, and she gave a fun and inspiring answer when asked to name the song that best represents her as an investor. Listen to the end of the show for that.
More: Hope Cochran on The Room podcast and Madrona's Founded and Funded podcast.
Editing and production by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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So much of what happens in the startup world comes from serendipitous moments, random interactions that lead to fresh insights and new collaborations. And so much of that has traditionally happened at events, meetups, coffee meetings, and other in-person gatherings.
Two years into the pandemic and remote work, what are the implications?
That's our first topic on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, with entrepreneur, software engineer and investor Aviel Ginzburg, general partner at Seattle-based seed-stage venture fund Founders Co-op.
The former Techstars Managing Director for Amazon's Alexa Accelerator, Ginzburg was co-founder of social analytics platform Simply Measured, acquired by Sprout Social in 2017. Before that, he was one of the first software engineers at Appature, which was later acquired by IMS Health.
We also dive into NFTs, crypto, Web3, and the Metaverse, getting his take on each as an investor and entrepreneur (and longtime World of Warcraft gamer).
We discuss how he and Chris DeVore, the Founders Co-op managing partner, are looking to differentiate themselves from other VCs and investors at a time when so much funding is sloshing around.
And we take a look at our newly published list of unicorn companies in the Seattle area, which include some of Founders Co-op's portfolio companies, as well as one big one that got away.
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Alexa, open the pod bay doors.
Amazon's voice assistant hasn't quite reached the level of HAL, the iconic AI from 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, we learned this week that Alexa is going to space later this year, and around the moon, for a technology demonstration on the Orion deep-space capsule as part of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission.
Veteran space reporter Alan Boyle, GeekWire contributing editor, joins us on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast to explain what Alexa will be doing during the mission, and what the partners on the demonstration — Lockheed Martin, Amazon and Cisco — hope to prove in the process.
Then we discuss some ofthe key milestones from the past year in space, including Blue Origin taking the first paying passenger on a suborbital commercial flight, plus highlights from SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and others. And we look ahead to upcoming events to keep an eye on, as detailed by Alan in his annual space recap and preview.
And in our final segment, we come back to Earth, as podcast producer Curt Milton and I discuss celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's surprising disclosure about what we thought was a well-known Amazon company.
Also check out Alan's podcast, Fiction Science.
By the way, we usedAlexa Skill Blueprints to get Alexa to impersonate HAL in the opening of this week's show. You'll hear a very different response if you ask Alexa the same question on your own device.
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This year was a bit of a blur — fighting through waves of Delta and Omicron. But there was other important news this year, too. And before we wave goodbye to 2021, we thought it would be fun to test your geek knowledge.
Spoiler alert: we give the answers as we go, so if you want to test your knowledge first, you can take an interactive version of the quiz in the post for this episode at geekwire.com, then come back here and listen.
Edited by Curt Milton; theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Looking at GeekWire’s most-read stories for 2021, this series of headlines stands out as a symbol of the past year, not just for Amazon but for the world at large. March 31, 2021: Amazon updates remote work guidance, plans to ‘return to an office-centric culture as our baseline’ June 10, 2021: Amazon adjusts return-to-office guidance, says employees can work two days a week remotely October 11, 2021: Amazon will leave remote work decisions to individual team leaders in new policy twist
In short, no one knew what was going on, or what to do. In the sports world, they would call it a rebuilding year, setting the stage for something better. GeekWire's John Cook puts it more succinctly in our year-end podcast: “It sucked.”
At least, that’s the cynical view, which is why it was refreshing to have Ed Lazowska join us again for this year-end show. A professor at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, he’s a longtime Seattle tech leader, and an “inveterate optimist,” in his own words.
“Yeah, COVID has thrown us all thrown us all kinds of loops,” he acknowledges, but then offers a few examples of a more upbeat way to look at this year’s list.
Listen to the episode for more, as Lazowska joins us again on the GeekWire Podcast to discuss the year's top stories. We also look ahead to the upcoming year, and talk about a few key stories we'll be watching in 2022.
Related: As reported recently on GeekWire, several prominent tech leaders have been working establish a series of UW professorships in Lazowska's honor. Learn more about the initiative here.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: How the pandemic is changing attitudes toward work, jobs, geography. Plus, the market for IPOs and acquisitions, and the future of downtown Seattle from the perspective of a newly public company.
Our guest, Zig Serafin, has a unique window into all of these topics as the CEO of Qualtrics, the experience management technology company based in Seattle and Provo, Utah. Qualtrics’ technology helps companies survey employees, customers and other stakeholders, and take action on the resulting insights.
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Produced and edited by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Is the world relying too much on Amazon Web Services? We assess the falloutfrom the big AWS outage, which was the subject ofa detailed explanation from the company Friday night.
Plus, what's your AI IQ? We test our own artificial intelligence literacy in a new online quiz from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Seattle. Read more inthis story by our colleague Alan Boyle.
And finally, we try on Amazon's new Halo View, and explain what's different in this new health tracker.
Produced and edited by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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This week: how the pandemic, politics, labor shortages, and the rise of remote work are impacting U.S. immigration in the tech industry and beyond — and how ongoing challenges in the system could be putting the country's future at risk.
Our guest is Xiao Wang, CEO and co-founder of Boundless, a Seattle technology company that streamlines the immigration process.
Related Stories and Links GeekWire: Immigration startup Boundless raises $25M, eyes opportunity with ‘pro-immigrant administration’ Seattle startup Boundless raises $7.5M to acquire rival RapidVisa and grow online immigration tools Axios: Little-noticed spending bill provision could fix green card backlog New York Times: Contending With the Pandemic, Wealthy Nations Wage Global Battle for Migrants Boundless: House Passes Sweeping Social Spending Plan With $100B Earmarked for Immigration Reform
Hosted by GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Produced and edited by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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This was a week when many of us in the U.S. paused to reflect and give thanks. We're keeping the tradition on the GeekWire Podcast. On this special holiday episode, we offer our gratitude for some of the technologies, trends and hopeful developments of the past year, as reflected in news coverage on GeekWire.
Hosted by GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Produced and edited by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Can you believe Xbox has been around for 20 years? Our guest on this week's GeekWire Podcast, Robbie Bach, was there at the beginning, and led Microsoft’s gaming business for many years as Chief Xbox Officer and President of the company's Entertainment & Devices Division.
These days, Bach is board chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank that promotes bipartisanship. He serves on the national board of governors for Boys and Girls Clubs of America and is on the board of the Magic Leap augmented reality company.
And to top it all off, he just published his second book, which is his debut novel, a techno-thriller called The Wilkes Insurrection.
Referenced in the show: Listen In with Raquel Ark podcast: Former #Xbox CEO Robbie Bach on #Listening to #Creativity and Writing His first #Novel Alex Kantrowitz: Why LinkedIn Is the One Good Social Network September 2015 GeekWire Podcast discussion with Robbie Bach
With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook. Produced and edited by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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The downfall of Zillow's iBuying business is a reminder of the downsides of relying too much on automation and machine learning algorithms at this stage in the evolution of technology. A conversation about the pitfalls of real estate valuations leads John Cook and Todd Bishop into a larger discussion about the continued importance of human judgment and attention in the modern world.
Plus, cat vs. coyote: the crazy scene on Todd's Ring camera this week.
And in our final segment, we test a new feature: Tech Crank, in which Todd and John each offer a rant about something irksome in the tech world this week. Why the iBuying algorithms failed Zillow, and what it says about the business world’s love affair with AI Redfin CEO explains how its iBuyer home buying program avoided pitfalls that sunk Zillow Group NYT: Inside Amazon’s Worst Human Resources Problem Bloomberg: Highly Paid Union Workers Give UPS a Surprise Win in Delivery Wars Forget porch pirates, our Ring camera captured video of a cat escaping a coyote in Seattle Amazon-backed electric vehicle maker Rivian races to huge stock market debut after IPO Microsoft serves up a Google Chromebook rival with $250 Surface Laptop SE for students
Podcast produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell
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Jane Park, the CEO of newly public Athena Consumer Acquisition Corp., hadn't imagined herself leading a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, before accepting the job. She decided to consider the pitch from venture capitalist Isabelle Freidheim for one reason.
“It took some convincing, a little bit. I wasn’t sure if I had the right capabilities. I have always sat on the entrepreneur side. So to be on the acquiring/money side is a new perspective and vantage point for me,” she said. “I don’t think I would have taken the call if it wasn’t the fact that it was an all-female SPAC.”
That's how the Seattle entrepreneur ended up with Freidheim and the Athena team at the New York Stock Exchange this week, as they rang the opening bell a week after raising $230 million in an initial public offering. Next on Athena's agenda is the process of identifying and acquiring a consumer-oriented company, leveraging those funds.
Park is believed to be the first Korean-American woman to take a company public as CEO on the NYSE.
A Yale Law School graduate and former Starbucks executive, she went on to found and lead Julep Beauty, a physical retail chain and e-commerce brand that was acquired by private equity giant Warburg Pincus. She went on to found sustainable gift-wrap company Tokki, leading the company through a pivot during the pandemic.
She’s also a board member of the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship, which holds its 2021 OpportunityTalks Breakfastat 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 9.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Park talks about the ambitions of Athena's team, the future of consumer brands in the Amazon era, her family's experience as immigrants, and her own life story.
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop and John Cook; Audio editing by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast ... We dissect Amazon's earnings, offering our take on Andy Jassy's take on the company's latest predicament. We assess a major Microsoft milestone, as the Redmond company surpasses Apple to become the world's most valuable company again. We look forward to the Metaverse, but question whether Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook friends are the right people to take us there. And finally, by popular demand, for one show only, we bring back one of our most beloved segments, the App of the Week.
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop and John Cook. Edited and produced by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Everyone is closely monitoring the implications of remote work as we emerge from the pandemic, so it's no surprise that one of the most widely read stories on GeekWire this week — right behind the Titanic's disappearing bathtub and Facebook's potential name change — was a story on trends in tech salaries.
Two big trends stood out in the report from jobs site Hired: Average tech salaries in Seattle are up 4.6% from last year, to $158,000, second only to the Bay Area, which saw its average dip slightly to $165,000. Nationwide, the average U.S. tech salary fell 1.1% to $152,000. With the shift to remote work, “employers are expanding their addressable candidate pool, filling roles faster and paying lower average salaries,” Hired said.
What's going on here? That's our first topic on this week's GeekWire Podcast.
Guest commentator: We get a real-world perspective on tech hiring, remote work, and pay trends from Bill Richter, president and CEO of Qumulo. The cloud file storage and management company joined the ranks of Seattle's unicorns with a valuation of $1.2 billion in its latest funding round. Richter was previously a venture partner at Madrona Venture Group, and a leader at Isilon Systems and EMC.
"We are far more open to remote locations," he said. "It really doesn't make that much of a difference where they are when they appear on their video conferencing screen. And that opens up a lot of new talent pools."
It also opens up new opportunities for people previously based in Seattle to relocate and continue working for the company. For its remote work policy, Qumulo's executive team has delegated decisions to its functional leaders, with a plan to learn and adjust as it goes, adopting an Amazon-like policy before Amazon did.
"So we're definitely approaching things differently," he added. "That's not a temporary state for us; that will be the future of the way we go as a company."
What does that mean for pay? The Hired survey shows that new employees in far-flung locations might not command as much as those in tech hubs. But unlike some other tech leaders, Richter, whose background is in accounting and finance, doesn't see much merit in attempting to adjust salaries when existing employees relocate.
"It's a global market for talent. And in exchange for the talent and the impact that the individual provides the organization, they shall be compensated," Richter said. "All the micro-tuning of things like location and that sort of thing, that might work in the short run. In the long run, what we'll see is a market clearing for compensation in return for talent."
Other topics this week The boom in unstructured cloud data, which is fueling Qumulo's business. My colleague John Cook makes his best effort to get Richter to disclose Qumulo's financial data and IPO plans. Richter does share some insights into which sectors are seeing the biggest increase in data, and thoughts on how companies are viewing Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform in this environment. The home debut of the new Seattle Kraken NHL franchise Saturday. Our colleagues Kurt Schlosser and Kevin Lisota got to tour Climate Pledge Arena this week. Check out their story and video. We reminisce about John's run-in with the Pittsburgh Penguins mascot, Iceburgh, during GeekWire's 2018 stint in the Steel City, and wonder if he'll have a similar altercation with the Kraken mascot. We'll soon find out. The future of self-driving cars, and the news that Amazon's Zoox will test its technology in Seattle's "different driving culture." John is a skeptic of autonomous vehicles, based on part his terrifying ride in one of Uber's self-driving cars. Richter is an optimist. We can only imagine what will happen when four-self driving cars arrive simultaneously at a four-way stop in Seattle.
Produced and edited by Curt Milton; Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: a new Microsoft leader finally gets to work, Amazon makes a surprising change in its remote work policy, and the promise of space for the tech industry.
Our guest commentator is Charlie Kindel, who worked for many years as a Microsoft general manager in areas including its server and mobile businesses, before jumping into the world of startups and then ending up at Amazon, where he led mobile payments and built the Alexa Smart Home organization.
After working as chief product and technology officer at home automation company SnapOne, previously known as Control4, he’s now an independent advisor and consultant to companies including space and satellite startups.
Stories covered on this week's show: ‘The most profound experience’: Blue Origin sends Star Trek’s William Shatner to the final frontier Microsoft and Amazon reach truce allowing former AWS executive Charlie Bell to start in new role Amazon will leave remote work decisions to individual team leaders in new policy twist
With GeekWire's Todd Bishop and John Cook. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell. See geekwire.com/podcast for more episodes and links to subscribe.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we’re sharing a few highlights from the GeekWire Summit, our annual business and technology conference, which we held this week for an audience in Seattle and online.
For online access to the full video of every GeekWire Summit 2021 session, purchase a ticket at geekwire.com/summit to watch at your convenience.
On this week's show:
Computer scientist and entrepreneur Yoky Matsuoka talks about her journey from academia to Silicon Valley, and compares and contrasts her experiences at Apple and Google. Matsuoka is leading an independent Panasonic subsidiary called Yohana that recently launched a personal assistant subscription service.
Related: Robotics pioneer Yoky Matsuoka on the human touch in her new personal assistant venture Yohana
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy addresses questions about the company’s impact on the world and responsibilities beyond serving customers. The GeekWire Summit appearance was Jassy's first live on-stage interview since succeeding founder Jeff Bezos as Amazon CEO — leading one of the world's most influential companies at a pivotal moment in its history.
Related: Amazon CEO: Relationship with Seattle City Council has become ‘rougher,’ but hope remains
Grammy-award winning entertainer and entrepreneur Ciara discusses creativity and independence in music and business. She talks about the moment of insight that accompanied her hit song "Level Up," which became an ethos that translates into her work in music, business, fashion, and more.
Related: GeekWire Summit 2021 recap: Leaders and luminaries share insights at our annual conference
Audio editing and production by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella this week called the company's unsuccessful efforts to acquire TikTok's U.S. operations last year "the strangest thing" he's ever worked on.
Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and newly named vice chair, laughed when he read that — agreeing with the sentiment, even if he has seen stranger things in his two decades representing the tech giant in its dealings with companies and governments around the world.
In the new paperback edition of his book, Tools & Weapons, Smith writes that the situation showed it's "possible to run a foreign technology service in a domestic data center with strict security, privacy, and digital safety controls in a manner that provides appropriate transparency to local government officials."
"In effect, this creates the opportunity to consider a new technology regulatory model for those instances where the US government wants technology trade to continue across the Pacific, but in a more controlled manner," he writes.
Smith elaborates on the issue in this GeekWire Podcast conversation about the paperback update to Tools & Weapons, written with co-author Carol Ann Browne.
They made extensive updates in the new paperback version of Tools & Weapons, including new chapters on the challenges created by unprecedented cyberattacks and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Smith also talks about Microsoft's new cybersecurity initiatives, his concerns about a lack of transparency and communication about cyberattacks among U.S. agencies and companies, and the future of work after the pandemic.
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Come on, how much has really changed in Windows 11 vs. Windows 10? To paraphrase a certain Spinal Tap guitarist, is it really worthy of taking it up to eleven?
Kevin Stratvert hears that question all the time, and based on his experience so far, his answer is yes. Stratvert is a former Microsoft program manager who left the company to focus full-time on his work as a YouTube creator, producing how-to videos about software and services from Microsoft and others.
Stratvert joins us this week on the GeekWire Podcast to look ahead to the launch of Windows 11 on Oct. 5, providing a sense for what to expect.
We talk about the new Windows 11 user interface, overall performance improvements, the centered Start menu, Windows 11 Widgets, upgrades to the multiple virtual desktops feature in Windows, the integration of Microsoft Teams Chat, the updated Your Phone app, Windows 11 hardware requirements, and Microsoft's plan for a gradual rollout of the operating system.
Stratvert has been focusing on Windows 11 in many of his recent videos: Windows 11 Requirements: Can your PC run it? 5 Awesome Windows 11 Features you should use First Look at Windows 11 - impressions from an ex-Microsoft PM Windows 11 Event: Biggest announcements & my thoughts In-depth Look at Windows 11 Insider Preview
In the second segment, we discuss some highlights from this week's Microsoft Surface event, including the Surface Laptop Studio and the new Surface Duo 2.
And in the final segment, we talk about Stratvert's own journey from Microsoft program manager to full-time YouTube creator, which was documented in this CNBC story.
Subscribe to Kevin Stratvert's YouTube channel, or see his site, kevinstratvert.com.
Audio editing and production by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Fred Moody is a retired journalist in the Seattle area, the former managing editor of Seattle Weekly, and the author of a series on Kindle Vella, Amazon’s new episodic storytelling platform for mobile devices. It's called Barfly on the Wall: A meteoric misadventure into Seattle bartending.
GeekWire's Todd Bishop has been looking into Kindle Vella and other story platforms as a reflection of broader changes in how people publish and read stories. Moody is one of the authors featured in a GeekWire story on the subject.
Moody has followed Amazon since its early days as an online bookseller, interviewing Jeff Bezos for an article when the company was based in a modest office south of downtown Seattle. The company was so small at the time that Bezos personally followed up with Moody to explain how the journalist's out-of-print book about the Seattle Seahawks ended up in Amazon's online catalog.
"He was talking about why he was located in Seattle, and what his plans were, to be the world's biggest bookstore and all that, but there was no sense that they were headed where they were headed, at least not to my benighted eyes," Moody recalled this week. "You could tell he was really onto something, but nobody could have imagined what that something was."
In 2004, as the tech economy was taking off in the city, Moody wrote about Seattle's "struggle for its soul" in his book, Seattle and the Demons of Ambition. That book was inspired in part by his experience encountering protesters during the World Trade Organization riots, which opened his eyes to Seattle's evolution into a "massive establishment symbol with all this corporate power," as he puts it.
More than a decade later, in 2015, his eyes were opened to yet another side of the city when he came out of retirement to work as a day-shift bartender at the Shanghai Room in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood, which his daughter Caitlin and son-in-law Tony took over when they opened the adjacent North Star Diner. (They stepped down as owner/operators earlier this year.)
Moody started taking notes about the characters at the bar, the people he worked with, and his experiences with the late Anthony Bourdain and his crew when the famed chef and television host visited Seattle for his final show here.
When the pandemic hit, Moody found himself with the time to write.
"I wanted to experiment with a different kind of narrative, where I'm telling these short little pieces, sometimes anecdotes, sometimes conversations, or little pieces from people's lives, then just kind of jumping from one to the other," he explained, describing it as "a mosaic" that builds into a larger narrative.
Then he heard about Vella.
"It was almost like a perfect format for what I'd been doing," he said. "I could just take these bite-sized, little things, and make these episodes."
Vella also matched the trends he had witnessed from behind the bar.
"I was really taken with the idea that it would be so phone-friendly, because the audience I was thinking about for this book were people that read exclusively on their phones, which I noticed in my bartending was the case with almost everybody under 40 years old," he said.
Read the full story on GeekWire.
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Jason Stofferwas still early in his career at venture capital firm Maveron in 2012 when he declined an opportunity to invest in Remitly, then a fledgling Seattle startup with ambitions to challenge Western Union by bringing a tech mindset to the business of international money transfers.
He was impressed by Remitly co-founders Matt Oppenheimer and Josh Hug but knew they faced a huge challenge in getting the state-by-state regulatory approval required to make monetary remittances to what was then their initial international market, the Philippines.
"It felt like the end vision was powerful — if they can get there," Stoffer recalled. "But two guys in a room in Seattle saying they were going to navigate an incredibly complex regulatory environment and figure out how to market in a country a continent away, it felt like too big a hill to climb. And they proved me wrong."
Ten years later, Remitly is poised to go public in an initial public offering that values the company at $6.5 billion, as we reported this week.
Stoffer, whose successful exits as an investor include Flywire, Course Hero, General Assembly and Zulily, analyzed Remitly's financialsrecently on his new blog, Ringing the Bell, displaying an admirable humility in his assessment of a company that could have been part of the Maveron portfolio.
He joins my colleague John Cook and me on the GeekWire Podcast to talk more about Remitly, lessons learned, the current market for tech investing, and his approach to reading S-1 regulatory filings.
In the final segment, we discuss Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's first television appearance since assuming the top role from founder Jeff Bezos. Stoffer is an investor in Cap Hill Brands, an aggregator of third-party Amazon sellers.
Audio editing and production by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Remote work is putting productivity and innovation at risk. That was one of the conclusions of a peer-reviewed study of more than 61,000 Microsoft employees, published this week, and it’s our first topic this week.
We talk about the workplace dynamics that are creating the situation, and explain why the implications go far beyond Microsoft’s workforce as the COVID-19 Delta variant pushes back the return to the office.
Plus, how predictive analytics and machine learning could change the NFL and other sports, and a preview of the GeekWire Summit, featuring Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, pop superstar Ciara, and a lineup of top leaders in tech, business and science.
For the audiophiles in the audience, our listener feedback section offers another important clarification in our seemingly never-ending discussion of the Blue Yeti microphone.
A special request for loyal listeners: Help us get to 100 reviews on Apple Podcasts!
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GeekWire's Mike Lewis talks with U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat who represents the 7th Congressional District in Washington state, including Amazon’s hometown of Seattle. Rep. Jayapal is also the Vice Chair of the House Antitrust Subcommittee, and the author of a bill that aims to prevent what it calls monopolistic practices by big tech companies including Amazon. In addition to antitrust issues, they discuss online privacy, vaccine mandates and infrastructure spending.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Jeff Wilke did something unusual when he left his role as Amazon's Worldwide Consumer CEO in March, after more than two decades with the company: he learned to code in the Python programming language.
"I had lots of computer scientists that were working for me and the organization, and I was heavily involved in a bunch of architectural decisions, but I hadn't written code in years," he explained. "I didn't understand exactly what it took to turn the ideas that we had into actual code. ... So I just thought it'd be useful to update my skills after a couple of decades."
He was "blown away" by the experience.
"The coolest thing about coding ... is that you get to stand on the shoulders of all the other people who have written code and uploaded it to libraries before you and so you don't have to go back and reinvent everything. And that just means innovation and invention and goodness can accelerate," he said. "So I actually left those two weeks totally optimistic."
Wilke is translating that optimism into a variety of investments and projects, across a range of interests and industries, from biotech to honeybees. But the venture getting most of his time and attention is Re:Build Manufacturing, a Massachusetts-based company on a quest to reinvigorate the U.S. manufacturing industry.
Re:Build has raised more than $400 million and made six acquisitions in engineering services and advanced materials, with six facilities in five states.
Wilke is the company's chairman and co-founder, and it's a return to his roots. He grew up in Pittsburgh and worked early on in pharmaceuticals, chemicals and electronics.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we talk about the future of U.S. manufacturing with Wilke and Re:Build Manufacturing CEO Miles Arnone, a longtime industrial business leader, inventor and investor who co-founded the company with Wilke.
Later in the show, during a momentous week for Amazon, we also get Wilke's thoughts about his former employer, as Andy Jassy succeeds founder Jeff Bezos as CEO. Wilke was considered a potential and even likely successor to Bezos prior to the announcement of his departure. He addressed that in a prior interview with our partners at the tech news site dot.la.
Audio editing by Curt Milton; theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Boone Langston is an accomplished LEGO builder from the Portland, Ore., area who shares his creations with the world at BooneBuilds.com and on his Boone Builds YouTube channel. He also runs a virtual Boone's Build Camp for kids and adults.
After working as an IT support specialist and videographer early in his career, he became a fan favorite in 2020 as one half of the team Mark and Boone, a.k.a. the "Bearded Builders," on the first season of the FOX TV show LEGO Masters, in which teams of two compete by building spectacular LEGO creations.
He was also known for his impromptu singing, belting out his signature refrain, "Here We Go, We're Building With Bricks Now!" in true rock-star style, to the delight of LEGO Masters host Will Arnett.
Much to the dismay of their shocked fans, Mark and Boone did not win their season of the show, as judges Amy Corbett and Jamie Berard gave the nod to newlyweds Tyler and Amy, who had announced earlier in the season that they were expecting a child.
My colleague Kurt Schlosser captured the ensuing controversy perfectly in his headline at the time: Oh, baby, ‘LEGO Masters’ finale lands like a brick on outraged fans who dispute choice of winner.
My family was among those surprised and disappointed by the outcome. As fellow Pacific Northwesterners, we cheered for Mark and Boone throughout the season, and everyone in our living room considered their “Artopia” project in the finale objectively superior.
That sentiment was not shared by Tim Ellis, an electrical engineer by training, Redfin employee by day, and host of the podcast Dispatches from the Multiverse, who writes occasionally for GeekWire about games and other topics. After Kurt and I talked about the outcome on the GeekWire Podcast at the time, Tim started a lively debate with the two of us over text.
“Tyler & Amy totally deserved the win, and if anything Mark & Boone should have been in third place behind Sam & Jessica’s peacock!” Tim texted us at the time, referring to the third-place finishers. “You should only do a recap podcast of Season 2 if you let me join for some much-needed balance. 🤣🤣”
This spring, before Season 2 of LEGO Masters began, Tim resurfaced his proposal of recording an entire podcast episode about the show. I took him up on the idea — with my own surprise twist.
Without telling Tim, I contacted Boone via his website. He graciously agreed join us as a guest on the podcast, and I scheduled him to join us as a surprise midway through the session — after Tim and I rehashed our debate over the outcome of Season 1. For some added fun, we had two LEGO fans join us for the recording: Tim’s daughter, Maezie, 9 years old; and my daughter, Maggie, 10 years old.
Listen to the episode to hear what happened.
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Another day, another deal.
Keeping up with the flurry of acquisitions, IPOs, SPACs and venture capital these days is no easy task. In fact, IPO dollar volume for 2021 has already reached $171 billion, surpassing the record totals of last year. Same goes for mergers and acquisitions, with record levels of deal activity tracked for 2021.
The money is certainly flowing.
Washington state now boasts 11 "unicorns" — privately held companies boasting valuations of $1 billion or more. Many of them — such as Highspot, Zenoti and Outreach — have raised venture capital rounds of $150 million or more in the past six months. And each day here at GeekWire we're updating our funding list — not blinking an eye when a company announces $30 million, $40 million or $50 million in new funding.
Even more, we've tracked 32 IPOs, SPACs and acquisitions involving Pacific Northwest companies so far this year, including blockbusters like Okta's $6.5 billion purchase of authentication ID startup Auth0 and Twilio's $850 million acquisition of business texting startup Zipwhip. (See full list of deals here).
To help put the wild market in perspective, we're joined this week on the GeekWire podcast by Ben Gilbert, a co-founder at Seattle venture capital firm Pioneer Square Labs and the co-host of the Acquired podcast, an in-depth show that discusses the ins and outs of acquisitions and recently ranked as the number one tech show on Apple Podcasts.
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This week we're presenting a special episode of our Day 2 podcast about everything Amazon, going behind-the-scenes of the New York Times investigation into the company's warehouse HR practices. Subscribe to Day 2 in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Amazon’s direct workforce rose by 500,000 people in 2020 — that’s half a million people — to nearly 1.3 million employees. The extraordinary hiring, supporting the rapid expansion of Amazon’s warehouse and delivery operations, raised the natural question: what would be the consequences of all that growth?
An eight-month New York Times investigation, published this week, provides much of the answer, telling the stories of warehouse workers caught up in an unforgiving, error-prone system that struggled to keep pace with Amazon’s growth, the unique challenges of the pandemic, and unprecedented customer demand.
The piece reveals the limitations of Amazon’s automated HR technology, but it also demonstrates the impact of policy decisions by Amazon executives, including founder Jeff Bezos and operations-leader-turned-consumer chief Dave Clark.
Among them, according to the story: a conscious decision to encourage turnover and limit upward mobility among hourly warehouse workers.
Karen Weise, the Seattle-based New York Times tech reporter who reported the story with her colleagues, Jodi Kantor and Grace Ashford, shares the backstory and talks about their key findings in this podcast discussion.s
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Our guest on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast is Mark Nelson, who was named Tableau Software president and CEO in March.
He filled a vacancy created when his predecessor, Adam Selipsky, was named CEO of Amazon Web Services, taking over for Andy Jassy, who is succeeding Jeff Bezos as Amazon CEO. We get to know Nelson on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, talking about his background and leadership approach, life inside Salesforce, his goals as the new leader of Tableau, and the company's future in the Seattle region.
Salesforce bought Tableau for more than $15 billion in 2019, its largest acquisition at the time. Now, with Salesforce close to completing its acquisition of workplace collaboration company Slack for $27.7 billion, investors are looking to Tableau's performance inside Salesforce for clues about Slack's fate.
We talk about Tableau's results, ask Nelson what advice he'd give Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield about working with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
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The pandemic had a seismic impact on in-person meetings and events, requiring organizers and attendees to adjust to a whole new reality.
The aftermath could prove even trickier, creating a hybrid audience, with some people attending virtually and others in the flesh.
That's one takeaway from our conversation with Allie Magyar, the CEO of Hubb, a Vancouver, Wash.-based company that makes technology for virtual and in-person events. A veteran of the events industry, Magyar has run some of the world's biggest tech conferences, including Microsoft's Ignite, for which she was the lead planner.
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Amazon's agreement to acquire MGM for $8.45 billion has all the makings of a great script, combining a Hollywood icon with an Internet powerhouse.
But will this unlikely pairing be a giant blockbuster or a massive flop?
Joining us to assess the situation on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast is Sam Blake, a reporter who covers entertainment and media for dot.LA, the technology news site for Southern California.
Here's how he put the news in perspective in his coverage this week: "Ninety-six years after Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures merged to form MGM Studios, the Hollywood mainstay best known for its roaring lion mascot is set to join a trillion-dollar business empire best known for selling household items over the internet."
MGM would provide Amazon with more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows that have collectively won more than 180 Academy Awards and 100 Emmys. The film library includes the James Bond and Rocky franchises, as well as television shows such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Fargo,” and reality shows such as “Shark Tank” and “Survivor.”
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The 2021 virtual GeekWire Awards were held this week, recognizing the top companies, innovators, entrepreneurs and technologies in the Pacific Northwest, as nominated and chosen by the GeekWire community — along with celebrity cameos.
On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we’re featuring highlights from a behind-the-scenes conversation with former Docker and Concur CEO Steve Singh, managing director of Madrona Venture Group, which was hosted for finalists in advance of the awards by GeekWire co-founder John Cook.
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The pandemic upended education in extraordinary ways, and shed new light on the social, economic and racial disparities in schools and communities across the country. But how can teachers, students, parents, schools and the system as a whole apply lessons learned from the past 18 months to ultimately end up in a better place?
On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we look ahead with a group of remarkable educators who focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) from different perspectives. They are our STEM Educators of the Year for 2021, presented by DreamBox Learning, as part of our upcoming 2021 GeekWire Awards celebration: Lauren Bricker, a former Lakeside School teacher now on the faculty of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington. Cathi Rodgveller, CEO and founder of IGNITE Worldwide, which works with school districts to promote STEM education and career advancement for girls and non-binary youth. Kim Williams, science department head, science club faculty advisor at Cougar Mountain Middle School.
Joining GeekWire's John Cook to guide the discussion is Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO of DreamBox Learning and a former GeekWire Awards CEO of the Year honoree.
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Reports of the death of coastal cities are greatly overblown.
At least that’s the view of renowned urbanist and author Richard Florida who spoke earlier this week with GeekWire contributing editor Monica Nickelsburg about the future of cities as part of the annual Crosscut Festival.
“I am just amazed at the amount of gloom and doom pessimism,” said Florida, adding that any out-of-city migration appears to be temporary and is really only happening with small subsets of people. “Net-net, it doesn’t look like we’ve had a great urban exodus.”
That’s just one of the fascinating observations from Florida, author of the Rise of the Creative Class and a professor at University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management. In the interview, Florida talks about the impact of falling birth rates on cities; why Miami appears ready to emerge as a significant tech hub; and how central business districts will need to change to embrace a post-pandemic world.
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This week's show is a special presentation of GeekWire's newest podcast, Day 2, about everything Amazon, analyzing the company's record quarterly results and looking ahead to what's next. To hear more episodes, subscribe to Day 2 in any podcast app.
Year-over-year quarterly growth of 44% would be significant for any company, but when the numbers were already this big, it starts to qualify as astonishing.
Amazon's sales of $108.5 billion in the first quarter compared with $75.5 billion a year earlier, setting a new record for the Seattle-based e-commerce giant and providing a glimpse of its strong position as the world emerges from the pandemic. Amazon is easing its spending on COVID-19 initiatives, but consumers' online purchasing habits appear to have permanently changed.
The result: its profits more than tripled, to $8.1 billion, from $2.5 billion a year earlier.
The impact of that structural shift on Amazon's bottom line is the big takeaway from its first-quarter results, released Thursday afternoon.
We break down the quarter on this episode of Day 2, GeekWire's podcast about everything Amazon, with GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook, and former third-party seller Jason Boyce, co-author of "The Amazon Jungle" and founder and CEO of e-commerce agency Avenue7Media.
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Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week: Washington state is poised to make a significant change in how its citizens gain access to the internet. Gov. Jay Inslee has indicated he’ll sign two pieces of legislation that, for the first time, will allow municipalities to set up their own direct-to-consumer broadband services. We discuss why this is a big deal and how it might work in one county. Washington state legislators appear to be on track to pass a new capital gains tax for the state that would be collected on large sales of stocks, among other holdings. But tech industry leaders warn it might harm the startup scene. What's behind the move and who might it help ... and who might it hurt? Amazon weighed in on a proposed European super league of soccer and said it didn’t like the idea. Did Amazon’s opposition help scuttle the plan?
With GeekWire’s John Cook and Mike Lewis. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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It's one of the hottest topics in tech, but despite broad agreement about the importance of online privacy, the United States has yet to pass comprehensive, modern, federal legislation that addresses the issue. U.S. Rep Suzan DelBene, a Democrat from Washington state, wants to change that.
"Technology has created incredible new opportunities, but our laws have not kept up," she says. "So it is incumbent on Congress to make sure that our laws keep up, that we protect people's rights in our changing world, and privacy is a important place to start."
DelBene is seeking to address the issue with a new attempt to pass federal privacy legislation, the Information Transparency and Personal Data Control Act. It comes as more states propose and pass their own privacy laws. DelBene warns that this emerging "patchwork" of state laws threatens to deepen the country’s privacy predicament, creating confusing for consumers and businesses, and diminishing the influence of the country on the issue by presenting a divided front on the international stage.
A former Microsoft executive and startup leader, DelBene joins us to discuss the issue on on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast.
Read one-page summary of the bill here.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we're presenting a special episode of Day 2, our new podcast about Amazon. Subscribe to Day 2 in any podcast app and see geekwire.com/day2 for show notes and more episodes.
In a public defeat for organized labor, a sizable majority of Amazon warehouse employees voted against unionization in Bessemer, Ala. in an election overseen by federal authorities Friday. But the process put a harsh spotlight on labor practices in the tech giant's fulfillment centers, and the company's anti-union tactics. In the larger scheme of things, was this really a win for Amazon?
On this episode GeekWire reporter Mike Lewis and e-commerce consultant Jason Boyce talk with Margaret O’Mara, a historian, author and University of Washington professor who specializes in the history of tech and politics.
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Veteran tech executive Scott Moore, CEO of Seattle startup AdLightning, joins GeekWire's John Cook and Mike Lewis to discuss the challenges facing downtown Seattle after the pandemic. AdLightning left its headquarters in the Gibraltar building last March and exited the lease in August. The company is currently working remote, and Moore says he’s committed to getting another office at some point. But when he does, Moore says, the office won’t be in downtown Seattle.
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The Seattle area was already experiencing a massive homelessness, mental health and economic disparity crisis prior to COVID-19 hitting.
The pandemic simply exacerbated the issues. But even though the region has been knocked to its knees, several Washington state leaders hold out hope that lessons learned from the pandemic and racial justice reckoning of the past 12 months can lead to a more connected, vibrant and inclusive community.
It's going to take every ounce of strength and will to drive the change, but it can happen, they say. Listen to why they are hopeful in this special episode of the GeekWire podcast, drawn from GeekWire's new Civic Conversations event which took place Thursday afternoon.
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Check out the premiere episode of Day 2, GeekWire's new podcast about Amazon. To hear future episodes, be sure sure to subscribe to Day 2 from GeekWire wherever you listen.
What happens when Amazon makes its own, cheaper version of a product another company painstakingly developed? On the debut episode of Day 2, "Amazon Jungle" author Jason Boyce and GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop speak Peter Dering of Peak Design, whose company issued a savagely funny video mocking Amazon for knocking off its popular camera bag. As you'll hear, Dering's take on the issue is much more evolved and pragmatic than a sound bite on a news segment might suggest. Read more.
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When we reached out to entrepreneur and angel investor Spencer Rascoff on Tuesday with notes about appearing on the GeekWire podcast — an appearance that was scheduled several weeks ago — we mentioned possible discussion topics around SPACs, real estate trends and any other big tech news events of the week. And then we made the age-old journalistic error, pointing out that it had been a "pretty slow news week so far, but I am sure something will pop in the next day or two that might make life interesting."
Indeed it did. But we had no idea that this week's big news would actually involve the former Zillow CEO.
On Thursday, Rascoff — operating through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) known as Supernova — announced the acquisition of Offerpad, a 6-year-old real estate company that, like Zillow, is moving fast to transform the way people buy and sell homes. The deal, which values Offerpad at $3 billion, is fascinating on so many levels with interesting subplots.
Obviously, we had a lot to talk about with Rascoff when he joined the show Thursday afternoon, discussing the inner workings of the Offerpad deal, dissecting SPAC mania and learning why the longtime entrepreneur took issue with parts of our original story.
We also heard about a number of Rascoff's side hustle entrepreneurial projects, including a stealthy new social network he's building with his 15-year-old daughter and a fast-growing startup called Pacaso that's bringing a fractional ownership model to vacation homes.
Known for an intense working pace, Rascoff also provides hacks on how to better manage your day-to-day work life — hint, he swears by 15-minute meetings and heavy use of Slack. And he offers a few tips for home buyers in this red-hot real estate market. The Los Angeles resident even shares why he calls his venture capital groups 75 & Sunny — yes it harkens back to the many dark and rainy days he spent in Seattle.
Ex-Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff leads SPAC deal to acquire Offerpad, a rival to his former employer
Ex-Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff jumps back into real estate, launches startup with former colleagues to help people buy second homes
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This week we're presenting a new episode of the GeekWire podcast 2025: Tomorrow, Today featuring a discussion with Julie Sandler of Pioneer Square Labs. It's one in a series of conversations with technology investors on the 2025 podcast. Find more episodes at geekwire.com/2025podcast. We'll be back next week with our regular weekly show.
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We're sharing this special episode of the GeekWire Health Tech podcast featuring our interview with Walter Isaacson about his new book, "The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing and the Future of the Human Race." Hear more episodes of GeekWire's Health Tech Podcast at geekwire.com/healthtech. Read more: ‘The Code Breaker’ author Walter Isaacson on the genetic revolution, regional hubs and ethical lines
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This Sunday, March 7, will mark 10 years since GeekWire’s launch. Looking back, we couldn’t have picked a better decade as GeekWire’s first, given our focus on Seattle and Pacific Northwest innovation.
This was the moment that Seattle tech came into its own. We’ve covered the rise of the cloud, Amazon’s boom, Microsoft’s rebirth, the arrival of Silicon Valley engineering centers, disputes, mergers, IPOs, and the emergence of thousands of startups. And in the past year, we’ve covered Seattle as a center of the scientific and philanthropic response to a world-changing pandemic. What happens here matters everywhere. This has become our mantra.
We’ve worked hard, with a great team, and we’ve survived our share of challenges and struggles. But the reason GeekWire is still standing as a profitable media venture is this community, and all of you as readers, sources, listeners, members, sponsors, and supporters. Thank you. GeekWire has been fortunate to get to tell the world about this place for the past 10 years, and we're still at it. We can’t wait to see (and report!) what happens next.
Read more in this post.
GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook.
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What happens when Amazon becomes an integral part of a community? And what does the outcome say about the tech giant's larger impact on the world?
This week we explore the double-edged sword of the company's rapidly expanding fulfillment and distribution network, through the lens of its large footprint in Southern California's Inland Empire. We also consider the future of its workforce in the buildup to a pivotal union vote in Alabama, and growing wave of robotics and automation.
Our guest is journalist Erika Hayasaki, whose piece, “Amazon’s Great Labor Awakening", in the Feb. 21 issue of the New York Times Magazine, explores the impact of the pandemic and Amazon’s unprecedented growth on its workforce through the lens of the place where she lives, Hayasaki is a freelance writer based in Southern California who teaches in the Literary Journalism Program at the University of California, Irvine
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This week on the show: Amazon vs. Shopify, and what the Seattle tech giant's acquisition of e-commerce startup Selz says about its larger ambitions in retail. Our guest commentator is Jason Boyce, founder & CEO, Avenue7Media, and the co-author of The Amazon Jungle: The Seller’s Survival Guide for Thriving on the World’s Most Perilous E-Commerce Marketplace. Hosted by Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton; theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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More than 25 years after Bill Gates’ first book, The Road Ahead, foretold the impact of personal computers and digital technology on our lives, the Microsoft co-founder is back with his third book, this time with a warning and a call to action for the world.
In “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster," due out Tuesday, Gates presents an ambitious but achievable plan for saving the planet, including scientific and technological breakthroughs, and unprecedented efforts on a global scale.
On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Gates speaks with GeekWire reporter Lisa Stiffler about the book, his reasons for focusing on the climate, and even the potential for collaborating with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on the issue.
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The Jan. 6 breach and riot at the U.S. Capitol, and the larger effort to overturn the results of the election, have brought new attention to the larger need for political reform -- fixing the bugs in the system of democracy, to use a metaphor offered by Jon DeVaan, the former Microsoft engineering leader.
DeVaan has become deeply involved in the political reform movement since retiring from Microsoft in 2013after 36 years at the company. He's on the board of Represent Us, a bipartisan organization seeking to end corruption in politics.
In recent weeks, he has served as an informal ombudsman, of sorts, to Microsoft as the company navigated a controversy over its political donations before announcing last week that it would not donate during the 2022 election cycle to members of Congress and other political leaders who who supported efforts to overturn the election.
DeVaan joins GeekWire's John Cook and Todd Bishop as the guest on this week's GeekWire Podcast, discussing the events of the past month, the path forward for political reform, and the role that tech companies and other businesses can play in the movement. Below, he shares recommended books, articles and other resources that have informed his understanding of the issues.
Jon DeVaan: It was my pleasure to speak with Todd and John about democracy reform in the podcast. I mentioned many references that are interesting to anyone who wants to learn more and get involved in the movement. I list those along with others I think are great primers on democracy reform.
Important Articles The first is a study done at Princeton about how citizens have nearly zero impact on public policy. The second is a Harvard Business School analysis of the “Political Industry” and its bad effect on economic competitiveness: The Economist’s ranking of democracy (the USA’s democracy rating has been falling for over a decade): Democracy Index 2020 - Economist Intelligence Unit (eiu.com)
Important Books Dark Money by Jane Mayer – This book outlines the political dynamics that birthed the modern conservative movement and the money strategy that bankrolled it. How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt: Why everyone should be afraid of where the USA is right now. Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy by Daniel Ziblatt: Why reform of the GOP is urgently needed (or a new center right party)
Also article: Why Conservative Parties Are Central to Democracy - The Atlantic Also podcast: Opinion | An Appalled Republican Considers the Future of the G.O.P. - The New York Times (nytimes.com) On Democracyby Robert A Dahl – This is an academic book but is the best explanation of what democracy is (really self-government in various forms) and why it is the best form of government known so far. This is my philosophical bible on what makes good democracy reform.
Movies – Not all of us have time to read books! Dark Money (not related to the book): A deep dive into money’s corrupting influence Slay the Dragon: Why gerrymandering is bad and how to fight it. Eastpointe: How ranked choice voting helps create better representation.
National groups: RepresentUs: Champions local and state laws that make the political system work for regular people Unite America: Champions local and state laws emphasizing independent and reform minded political leaders FairVote: Champions ranked choice voting nationwide IssueOne: Champions democracy reforms in Congress ProtectDemocracy: Champions accountability and prevention of presidential power Leadership Now Project: Building a coalition of businesses to champion reform
Groups in WA: Fair Vote WA: Championing ranked choice voting in WA Fix Democracy First: Champions a host of reforms The Sightline Institute: An excellent research group working on democracy reforms and other social issues
Twitter – Follow these people and groups to gain perspective Charlotte Hill Lee Drutman Trevor Potter Marc E. Elias Heather Cox Richardson Teri Kanefield Brennan Center Evan McMullin Vote At Home Institute
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How will Amazon maintain its culture as it approaches 1.3 million employees and prepares for its founder Jeff Bezos to step down as CEO? One answer is the set of processes and principles that the company has put into place, the "Invention Machine," created by Bezos and his leadership team inside the company.
That's the assessment of Bill Carr, a former Amazon executive and the co-author of the new book, Working Backwards, with fellow Amazon veteran Colin Bryar.
Beyond providing a blueprint for others, he predicts that Amazon's processes and principles will "enable the company to continue to thrive and innovate for decades after Jeff’s departure" as CEO. Bezos will remain involved with the company as executive chairman. On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Carr discusses the new book, describes Amazon's unique approaches, and shares inside stories including the offhand remark by the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs that contributed to the creation of some of Amazon’s most important products and services.
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What does Andy Jassy's track record at Amazon Web Services say about how he'll lead Amazon as the company's next CEO? What will be Jeff Bezos' ongoing influence as the company's executive chairman? Who will succeed Jassy as the head of AWS? And what should be the tech giant's 15th leadership principle?
Those are a few of the questions we ask — and in some cases even answer! — on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast with guest commentator Corey Quinn, the chief cloud economist at The Duckbill Group, the host of the AWS Morning Brief and Screaming in the Cloud Podcasts, and the curator of Last Week in AWS, a weekly newsletter.
Continue reading for links to related coverage. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to step down this year, replaced by AWS chief Andy Jassy in stunning turn for tech giant Amazon’s next CEO, Andy Jassy, is a music-loving, wing-eating, hard-charging disciple of Jeff Bezos Amazon blows past estimates for holiday quarter, sets record with $125.6B in revenue Amazon Web Services posts record $13.5B in profits for 2020 in Andy Jassy’s AWS swan song Here’s the biggest challenge facing Amazon’s Andy Jassy — at least in the words of one partner Amazon arrives in rural America: Tech giant delivers hope and concern to California town
Edited by Curt Milton; Theme Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Mike Lewis of KIRO Radio in Seattle speaks with GeekWire's Todd Bishop about a story Todd wrote this week about Amazon in his hometown of Orland, Calif. Read the story: Amazon arrives in rural America: Tech giant delivers hope and concern to California town
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Microsoft's profits rose 33% in the December quarter as CEO Satya Nadella touted a “second wave of digital transformation."
But what does the future really hold for the tech giant? What will be the next big opportunity for Microsoft? And what are the biggest threats it faces?
We discuss all of that and more this week with veteran technology journalist and Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley, who writes the All About Microsoft blog for ZDNet. She is the author of “Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft Plans to Stay Relevant in the Post-Gates Era,” and is also the cohost of the “Windows Weekly” podcast with Paul Thurrott on the TWiT network.
Nadella's tenure at Microsoft has brought a new approach, doubling down on the company's traditional strength in enterprise software, pulling of successful acquisitions, and moving the Office productivity platform into a new era with products such as the Microsoft Teams collaboration software.
Discussing Microsoft opportunities and potential areas for future acquisitions, Mary Jo points to security and artificial intelligence as two key sectors for the company. She sees Microsoft Teams as another big area of opportunity. The company’s goal is to make Teams into even more of a platform -- an operating system for work, essentially.
One open question: How can Microsoft leverage its momentum with the Xbox game platform to create a stronger benefit for the rest of the company? Microsoft's Project xCloud could be one way, giving the company more of a presence on other platforms. GeekWire's John Cook, citing his son as an example, sees Microsoft's presence in gaming as a long-term benefit to the brand, as the next generation of consumers and IT decision-makers become adults.
On the subject of the biggest threats to Microsoft, Mary Jo points out that Google remains a formidable (and perhaps underestimated) rival to Microsoft in cloud productivity software.
And then there’s Windows. What’s up with Microsoft’s flagship operating system? Is it truly “back,” as Microsoft would have you believe? Mary Jo has some thoughts … and some doubts.
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As Joe Biden settles into the Oval Office, tech companies in the Seattle region and elsewhere are watching with a sense of optimism to see what the new administration will mean for them and the industry. From the pandemic response to jobs to the climate, there's no shortage of critical issues for the new administration to address. And that has some experts believing that antitrust, content moderation and other regulatory crackdowns pursued by the prior administration might not be a priority in the initial phase of the new one. GeekWire contributing editor Monica Nickelsburg joins co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop to assess the issues ahead.
Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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It was one of the most tumultuous years the country and the world have ever seen. And yet, as we reported on GeekWire last week, venture capital investments in the United States broke another record in 2020, topping $150 billion for the first time, according to Pitchbook and the National Venture Capital Association. In Seattle and across the Pacific Northwest, funding totals came in at $4.4 billion, up 15% year-over-year, according to GeekWire’s tally, derived from our running list of startup investments.
What in the heck is going on? My colleague, GeekWire co-founder John Cook, put that question to Mike Davidson, a Seattle-based tech and media veteran who was Twitter’s vice president of design from 2012 to 2016, during the recording of our most recent GeekWire podcast episode. This portion of the conversation didn't make the final cut, but we found the analysis illuminating, so we're presenting it here as a bonus episode.
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Twitter didn't set out to ban Donald Trump. The president gave it no choice.
That's the assessment from Mike Davidson, a Seattle-based tech and media veteran who was Twitter's vice president of design from 2012 to 2016, sharing his perspective as the guest commentator on this week's show.
"This was something that many employees have wanted the company to do for a long time; I wanted the company to do this for a long time," Davidson said. "But the company itself is not out to get Donald Trump. If anything, they let him stick around on their platform for too long."
The breaking point was Trump's incitement of the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters.
"If you run one of these private companies, you have to ask yourself, 'Am I OK being complicit in an insurrection of the United States government? Am I OK with that?' ... The answer to that question has to be no," Davidson said. "There is no concept of of owning a platform and being able to stay neutral about something like that."
So what went wrong with social media? And where do we go from here? Those are some of the topics on this podcast discussion between Davidson and GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop.
Podcast produced and edited by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Twitter's decision Friday to join Facebook in permanently suspending President Trump's account underscored the fundamental role of social media in one of the most tumultuous periods in American history. If it feels strange and unusual, that's because there's no historical precedent, neither in media nor the presidency.
"This has not happened before," says Margaret O’Mara, a historian, author and University of Washington professor, our guest commentator on this week's show.
"Particularly in the modern period, what the president says and does has always been covered, because it's always been newsworthy," said O'Mara, who specializes in the history of tech and politics. "Particularly as the presidency grew into becoming the most important job on the planet, and the U.S. was becoming a military and economic superpower, what the president said mattered -- it had credibility."
We also discuss the future of Seattle, Silicon Valley and other established tech hubs in the aftermath of the pandemic, a topic of O'Mara's recent New York Times opinion column, "California May Lose Some of Its Stars. But Silicon Valley Is Forever."
And we wrap the show with highlights from O'Mara's bookshelf: "Uncanny Valley," by Anna Wiener;"Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership," by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor; and "The Cigarette: A Political History," by Sarah Milov.
Produced and edited by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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When (and how) will we all return to the office? How can startups position themselves to succeed in 2021? Which innovations will define the coming year? And which technologies will be overhyped? Last week, we recapped the top stories of 2020. This week, we look ahead to anticipate the coming year in technology and innovation. Our guest commentator is computer scientist Peter Lee, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for research and incubations, one of several tech and business leaders based in the Seattle region who responded to a GeekWire survey about what to expect in the year ahead.
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It has been quite a year. But were you paying attention? Before we wave goodbye to 2020, we thought it would be fun to test your GeekWire news knowledge. Play along on this special episode as GeekWire co-founder John Cook quizzes editor Todd Bishop and managing editor Taylor Soper. It's a fun one, but before we start, a spoiler alert: we reveal the answers on this episode as we go, so if you want to challenge yourself first, go to geekwire.com/2020quiz before listening.
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To say that 2020 unfolded in unexpected ways would be an epic understatement. The changes caused by the pandemic promise to impact tech, business and everything else for years to come. And that's just the start.
The influence of Seattle's tech and scientific communities rippled throughout the world. The region's life sciences institutions played a key role in uncovering and battling COVID-19, and Bill Gates emerged as a leading voice for science and equity in the pandemic. Enterprise tech companies provided the bedrock for a massive global acceleration of digital technologies.
A national reckoning over race, sparked by the killing of George Floyd, brought renewed attention to the tech industry's diversity and inclusion problems, and fueled what will hopefully become lasting momentum to address them.
MacKenzie Scott’s bold approach to philanthropy set an example for her fellow billionaires, as she took extraordinary steps to distribute her Amazon wealth.
As if 2020 wasn't eventful enough, the tech industry and U.S. government grappled with an unprecedented cyberattack in the final weeks of the year in the form of the SolarWinds hack, threatening to undermine key institutions and organizations, and prompting an extraordinary response from Microsoft.
We reflect on this unprecedented year on a new episode of the GeekWire Podcast, as viewed through our focus on technology, business and innovation in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. Joining GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop for the discussion is guest commentator Ed Lazowska, computer science professor at the University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.
To inform our discussion, we each reviewed lists of top stories on GeekWire for the full year and each month, as determined by overall readership, then offered our own perspectives on the trends, stories and issues that mattered most.
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Rob Glaser is best known as the founder and CEO of RealNetworks, the Seattle-based company that specializes in digital media, games and computer vision technology. But for about two decades, he was also part of the ownership group for the Professional Bowlers Association, along with his former Microsoft colleagues Chris Peters and Mike Slade.
That's how Glaser landed in the PBA Hall of Fame earlier this year, despite never having been a pro bowler himself.
It also makes Glaser the answer to what turned out to be a real stumper of a trivia question on the latest episode of the GeekWire Podcast. As part of our regular tech trivia contest for listeners, we asked, "Which current CEO of a Seattle tech company has been inducted into the hall of fame of a professional sport?" We received lots of guesses, but only one right answer.
So we decided to call Glaser up and get his bowling backstory for this special bonus episode of the podcast. We also talked about RealNetworks' new MaskCheck app, which uses computer vision to detect whether people are wearing masks properly in compliance with public health guidelines.
Congrats to our contest winner Isaac Alexander, who will receive a GeekWire mask and mug as his prize. We'll be back this weekend, Saturday, Dec. 26, with a special year-in-review episode of the GeekWire Podcast with guest commentator Ed Lazowska, University of Washington computer science professor.
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On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we present an essay written and read by Frances McCue a Seattle-based poet, writer, co-founder of nonprofit community writing center Hugo House, and a teaching professor at the University of Washington. She is also the writer and producer of Where the House Was, a feature documentary about gentrification and poetry in the city. Find her online at francesmccue.com, and read this essay at geekwire.com.
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Seattle's tech community just reached a new milestone: 10 unicorns, privately held companies valued at more than $1 billion. Their characteristics say a lot about the direction and state of the tech industry in the region, both positive and negative.
Read more:Seattle area boasts 10 fast-growing unicorns: Can you name the billion-dollar startups?
Joining us as a guest commentator this week: Heather Redman, co-founder and managing partner of Flying Fish Partners, a Seattle-based venture capital firm that focuses its investments on machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Also up for discussion: the challenges of running a big tech hub like Seattle. Mayor Jenny Durkan recently announced that she wouldn't be running for a second term. She faced numerous challenges during her tenure as mayor, but one of the biggest was bridging the divide between the tech industry, particularly Amazon, and the rest of the Seattle community.
Read more: Balancing act: What Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s short tenure says about running a tech hub, by Monica Nickelsburg.
And in our final segment, it's the return of the GeekWire Trivia challenge, with a chance to win your choice of a GeekWire mask or socks. Our question: Which current CEO of a Seattle tech company has been inducted into the hall of fame of a professional sport? Listen to the third segment for clues, and send your answer (or guess!) to contest@geekwire.com. From the pool of correct answers, we'll pick one person at random to win their choice of swag.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: How the antitrust case against Facebook could impact the rest of the tech industry; the state of Seattle as "Cloud City"; and first impressions of SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband service from a user of the company's "Better Than Nothing Beta."
Our guest commentator this week is Seattle-area angel investor Charles Fitzgerald, co-organizer of the Cloud City Meetup and a tech industry veteran who worked in product management and platform strategy with companies including Microsoft, Mozy and VMware. He blogs at platformonomics.com.
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Did you get sick with flu-like symptoms in the first few months of this year, or know someone who did? Do you suspect it might have been COVID-19? On the Season 5 premiere of the GeekWire Health Tech Podcast, we revisit the early days of the pandemic in a quest to figure out a mysterious illness, and share what we learned along the way from experts at University of Washington Department of Medicine, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research and ZOOM+Care.
We're sharing the episode here as a bonus but to get future Health Tech episodes, be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast app, or go to geekwire.com/healthtech.
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Amazon is often described as innovative, creative, experimental and ruthless. It's also very, very big — and getting bigger.
With a market value of $1.6 trillion — nearly the equivalent of Russia's gross domestic product — Amazon now dwarfs many of its retail rivals who've struggled to compete with a fast-moving organization whose expansive appetite seems endless.
But some retailers are finding ways to exist, even thrive, in a world increasingly dominated by Amazon.
In today's special episode of the GeekWire podcast, we take a close look at Amazon and hear from former Amazon executives, leading third-party sellers and competitors who are trying to survive in the shadows of the world's most powerful retailer. We also hear from critics who feel Amazon's power has grown so immense that the only way to curb the company's power is through government intervention.
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This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Salesforce strikes a deal to acquire Slack for $27.7 billion; Amazon Web Services makes some surprising news at its annual re:Invent cloud conference; and a new tech giant arrives in our backyard.
Joining us on this episode is Matt McIlwain, managing director at Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group, offering his commentary on the implications of these developments in the world of cloud and enterprise technology.
Special bonus: Listen to the end of the show for a new installment of our GeekWire Podcast trivia contest, with a chance to win a GeekWire mask or socks.
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Amazon's big move into the pharmacy business last week wasn't a surprise at all, and it's just part of a larger plan to reinvent a trillion-dollar industry. Coming soon from Amazon: health insurance, predicts serial entrepreneur and NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway in his new book, "Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity."
"Amazon knows a great deal about its best customers: what do they eat, do they buy exercise equipment or video games, do they have children, and are they in a relationship," Galloway writes in the book. "Between Amazon and Whole Foods purchases, the Amazon card, and all the 'pay with Amazon' merchants, the company has vastly more individualized data than any insurance actuary."
That might sound like the makings of an Orwellian future, but it's just one of the ways that the crisis of the past year has rapidly accelerated the inevitable in the economy and society, as Galloway sees it. After going through years of change in a matter a months, he writes, the result will be a very different landscape on the other side. The book looks ahead to the day when we put this pandemic behind us and find that some of the most powerful companies in the world have only become more powerful, for better or worse for the rest of us.
So where does that leave us? Scott Galloway joins us for a conversation about the "Post Corona" world on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast
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A group of architects released their concept for a Seattle skyscraper suited to life in the post-pandemic world, where you might live and work all in the same place. Seattle 2030 would stand 1,030 feet tall and have a cloud walk observatory and drone ports at the top. But will it ever be built?
Wheels, the latest electric scooter share service to launch in Seattle, has a unique feature: a seat. We took one for a ride over bumpy streets and railroad tracks on a wet and miserable day earlier this week. In other words, a typical Seattle commute. Listen to see if we liked it.
And we have a winner of last week's Trivia Contest! The question focused on satellite broadband venture from the 1990s, and the two Seattle tech billionaires who funded it. Listen to the third segment for the answer and the winner.
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We’re excited to introduce you to our new podcast, 2025: Tomorrow, Today, produced by GeekWire Studios, and co-hosted by someone who will be a familiar voice to GeekWire Podcast listeners, GeekWire’s John Cook, along with Jordon Voss of Northern Trust, our partner on this new show.
They will be exploring the future of retail, work and more on this new podcast with help from leading experts in each field. Coming up, you’ll hear the first episode of 2025 Tomorrow Today, digging into the question of whether the shopping mall will survive. Be sure to subscribe to 2025: Tomorrow, Today in any podcast app. Go to geekwire.com/2025podcast for links to subscribe.
Here’s a special first look at the premiere episode of 2025: Tomorrow Today.
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Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week:
OthersideAI thinks it can help you be more productive by using artificial intelligence to write your emails for you. But is that really a good idea? The months-old firm announced a $2.6 million seed round this week. It's one of several startups creating email products based on OpenAI's GPT3 language processing technology. We talk about the long-term implications for the industry and for humanity.
Tom Alberg was an internet financial pioneer when he became one of the first investors in Amazon in 1995. He didn't stop there. He was also one of the founders of Madrona Venture Group, a venture capital firm that has backed some of the Northwest's biggest tech companies. But what's especially notable about Alberg, at age 80, is his continued focus on what's next. We share highlights and takeaways from this new GeekWire profile of Alberg by journalist Lisa Stiffler.
And the GeekWire Trivia Challenge is back! Listen to the third segment of the show for the question, and details on how to enter the contest. From the pool of correct answers, we'll pick one person at random to win a rare and special GeekWire face mask.
With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and John Cook. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week:
Just before the election, Joe Biden's campaign released a list of its top "bundlers," people who raise big donations to the campaign. Several well-known Seattle tech names were on the list. We look at who they are and why they were raising money for Biden.
Amazon released a Smart Shelf that can keep track of things like your toilet paper and then automatically reorder them when you start to run out. Another Seattle firm, Bottomless, has a similar gadget to keep you in fresh coffee beans. Cool concepts but ... do we really need these gizmos?
- Robo-commerce: Amazon’s auto-reordering Dash Smart Shelf goes on sale for $19.99
- Built to scale: Seattle startup weighs its own success as Amazon releases similar smart shelf
Valve's Gabe Newell announced this week that he has arranged to launch a garden gnome into space. The interesting part of the story is why he's doing it and, even more interesting, is where Newell has been since last March.
With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and John Cook. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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The past year has brought a pandemic, a national reckoning over race, plus antitrust investigations and charges against major tech companies, with massive swaths of the tech workforce working from their bedrooms. But also record profits, a booming IPO market, and trillion-dollar valuations at the same time. Does this suggest a disconnect, or point to a “correction” in the future?
That's the first question we posed this week on our GeekWire Summit panel, "View from the Press Box: Tech in 2020 and Beyond," with Ina Fried, chief technology correspondent for Axios and editor of its daily tech newsletter, Login; and Karen Weise, Seattle tech correspondent for The New York Times.
This week's episode of the GeekWire Podcast features highlights from the discussion, including thoughts on the direction of the tech economy, the future of Amazon and Microsoft, the antitrust cases against US tech giants and the potential implications of the upcoming election.
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“I don't know when it's going to be announced. But the day there's a vaccine announced that people really believe in will be our highest booking day in history.”
That was Peter Kern, the CEO of Expedia Group, the Seattle-based online travel giant, speaking this week at the GeekWire Summit.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we’re featuring highlights from our conversation with Kern about the future of travel. Expedia Group includes major travel brands such as vrbo, Orbitz, Hotwire, Trivago, Hotels.com, and Egencia in addition to the flagship Expedia.com.
But we started with the big news of the day, the U.S. government’s antitrust complaint against Google. The case spotlights the difficult position Expedia and many other companies find themselves, competing with Google while simultaneously relying on and paying the search giant to direct customers to their services.
Our full conversation and other GeekWire Summit sessions are available on-demand exclusively to attendees of the virtual event, which runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays through Oct. 29. Register here.
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This week's GeekWire Podcast features highlights from the first week of the virtual GeekWire Summit, including what's next in the quest for a COVID-19 vaccine, a conversation with Panos Panay, Microsoft's chief product officer, and Bill Gates' comments on what's keeping him optimistic in these tumultuous times.
Full GeekWire Summit sessions are available on-demand exclusively to attendees of the virtual event, which runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays through Oct. 29. Learn more and register here.
Race to a COVID-19 Vaccine: We spoke with Dr. Deborah Fuller, professor of microbiology at the University of Washington; Dr. Lynda Stuart, deputy director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Dr. Melanie Ivarsson, chief development officer at Moderna, one of the major biopharmaceutical companies with a COVID-19 vaccine candidate in Phase 3 tests.
Panos Panay rose to prominence in the tech industry as the leader of Microsoft’s Surface hardware business. Now, in his expanded role as the company’s chief product officer, he’s leading the unified Windows software and hardware teams just as the pandemic renews the relevance of desktop and laptop computers in our lives. One of our topics this week at the GeekWire Summit was Microsoft’s dual-screen Surface Duo device. Where do dual-screen devices fit in the evolution of computing?
And finally, we were fortunate to talk with Bill Gates about the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and his thoughts on the tech industry's current antitrust challenges. Toward the end of our conversation, we asked him for some big-picture takeaways, including what keeps him optimistic in these tumultuous times. Listen to the final segment for his answer.
Produced by Curt Milton. Music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week:
A long-awaited report from a U.S. House antitrust subcommittee landed this week, and it slammed Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple for their alleged monopolistic practices in the online marketplaces they operate. Amazon responded with a scathing blog post that said the report featured “flawed thinking.”
- House antitrust probe says Amazon has ‘monopoly power’ over sellers, company slams ‘fringe’ findings
- 20 years after Microsoft’s antitrust fight, Steve Ballmer betting that Big Tech won’t be broken up
- Amazon says internal investigation into WSJ report on third-party sales data finds no policy violations
- Read the complete U.S. House subcommittee report
Lots of tech people are working from home due to the pandemic, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has some tips on how to do it and maintain your health and well-being. Schedule some short meetings, he says, and don't forget your transition times.
Some related, late-breaking news: Microsoft’s new ‘hybrid workplace’ policy will make working from home a permanent part of the mix
A new story from the Medium business publication Marker paints an extraordinary portrait of the life of one of the richest women in the world, MacKenzie Scott, which is all the more remarkable because she hasn’t given any interviews about her split from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos or her philanthropic pursuits since their divorce.
And the GeekWire Summit is going virtual this year, with sessions from Oct. 13-29, and special guests, including Bill Gates. Most sessions will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Check out the event site to register and get a sneak peek at who will be appearing.
With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Our signature technology conference, the GeekWire Summit, kicks off next week. Now in its ninth year, this annual event is known for offering a glimpse of the future through the eyes of leaders in technology, science and business, and in these challenging and uncertain times, this annual tradition has never been more important.
You may have seen the news that Bill Gates has joined the lineup for an hour-long interview on Oct. 15. But the Microsoft co-founder and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair is just one part of a larger lineup. In this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, GeekWire's John Cook and Todd Bishop offer a sneak preview of what’s in store.
The GeekWire Summit will be held virtually over three weeks, from Oct. 13 to 29, with sessions taking place twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from late morning to early afternoon. The full content can be accessed live and on-demand, exclusive to event attendees. Our event platform will offer attendees a chance to connect, network, and engage in the conversation.
See the full lineup and register here.
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Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week:
The results are in from the first-ever GeekWire 200 CEO Insights survey and they may surprise you. Startup CEOs in Seattle are generally optimistic about the state of the economy for the next 18 months. And they have some thoughts on who should be president.
Amazon's latest offering is virtual tourism through its new Amazon Explore service. GeekWire's Todd Bishop went for a walk around Quebec City with a local guide and took a cooking lesson in Buenos Aires, all without leaving the office.
Ex-Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff jumps back into real estate, but this time with a new service called Pacaso that helps people buy shares in a second home. We look at how it pencils out.
And the GeekWire Summit is going virtual this year, with events — and special guests — from Oct. 13-29. Most events will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Check out our link to register and get a sneak peek at who will be appearing.
With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop, John Cook and Taylor Soper. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Mike Angiulo worked at Microsoft for 25 years as an engineering manager and vice president for products including Windows PCs, Microsoft Outlook, Xbox, Surface, and cloud and artificial intelligence technologies. But it was actually not the work Angiulo originally envisioned doing. He had planned to be a lawyer, delaying those plans after he started at Microsoft in his early 20s.
Now, at age 47, nearly three decades later, he’s circling back to his original plan -- going back to school and preparing for a second career, as a lawyer focused on some of the most interesting and difficult questions facing the same types of technologies that he helped to create for so many years.
"I am a big believer that just the prevalence of big data, the speed of the cloud platforms, the modernity of the algorithms, combine to the point where every single business is going to be relying on deep data insights, probably to some automated extent," he says. "And increasingly, people won't be able to explain how they work."
And that raises all sorts of interesting questions about the future of technology and the law, as we learn on this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast.
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Ring, the Amazon-owned smart doorbell and security company, unveiled a flying indoor camera on Thursday morning. Sure, it's cool technology that may make your home safer, but what about the privacy implications?
There was big news in the gaming industry from Amazon and Microsoft this week. Amazon will try again to make its mark in games, this time with a new cloud-based gaming service called Luna. And Microsoft is spending $7.5 billion to buy the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, maker of popular games such as The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Wolfenstein, and DOOM.
- Analysis: Amazon makes another bid for relevance in the games industry with Luna streaming service
- Analysis: Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda is a massive disruption for the video game industry
And Microsoft's Teams collaboration software will add a much-desired capability next month: the ability to create ad hoc breakout rooms. Plus, they're adding something we didn't know we were missing, a "virtual commute" feature, in partnership with meditation app Headspace.
With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week:
Snowflake, the data warehousing company, came out with a bang this week in its public debut, raising $3.4 billion in the largest software IPO ever. It reignited a debate over the the IPO process and inequality in the allocation of shares when a company goes public.
Snowflake's IPO was also a successful outcome for Seattle's Madrona Venture Group, resulting from a departure from its normal investing strategy. We'll explain what happened, and what it could mean for the future.
When Bill Gates Sr. died this week at age 94, he was mourned in Seattle and around the globe, not just because he was the dad of the Microsoft co-founder, but because of his profound impact on his community. Microsoft, the Gates Foundation and many other institutions wouldn't be what they are without him. He always said the three most important things in his life were family, friends and public service ... in that order.
- Bill Gates Sr., 1925-2020: Microsoft co-founder’s father made his own mark on Seattle and the world
- Bill Gates Sr. at 90: A giant impact on technology, philanthropy and the Seattle region [2015 GeekWire profile]
- How Bill Gates Sr., late father of the Microsoft co-founder, helped Howard Schultz buy Starbucks
The new Apple Watch Series 6 will be able to check your blood oxygen level while you wear it. Apple and University of Washington researchers plan to launch a study later this year to determine if the device can detect early signs of acute respiratory infection such as the flu or COVID-19.
With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and John Cook. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week:
The new Microsoft dual-screen Surface Duo device has arrived and we have our first impressions. We're intrigued, but it's pricey (starting at $1,399) and it needs more work. And do we really need yet another device?
Microsoft is becoming the de-facto virtual fan experience enabler for sports leagues. First they deployed Teams to the NBA and now they're sending it to help the NFL. But the experience between the two sports isn't the same, and we tell you which one is best.
The West Coast is being choked in a blanket of wildfire smoke and Seattle is getting hit hard. Why are wildfires becoming so bad, and how can you stay safe from the smoke?
With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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When Athira Pharma filed with the Nasdaq for a possible initial public offering, led by CEO Leen Kawas, it got us thinking: How many other women have headed Northwest companies that went for an IPO? Sadly, the answer wasn't surprising and it highlights a glaring shortcoming in the Seattle tech scene.
- This 35-year-old female CEO is about to crack the glass ceiling, shattering a dismal IPO track record
- Commentary: Why are there so few women-led IPOs? The numbers are stacked against us
Jeff Wilke, the flannel-wearing CEO of Amazon's consumer business who recently announced that he plans to retire, was widely assumed to be heir-apparent to Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of the company. Now that Wilke is effectively out of the running, who is likely to succeed Bezos?
President Trump reiterated this week that the U.S. Treasury needs to get a cut out of any potential deal to buy TikTok, the hit social video app. Microsoft, Walmart and Oracle are all angling for the company. What will happen before the Sept. 15 deadline?
With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and John Cook. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week.
Amazon surprised everyone by unveiling a new health band, the Halo, this week. The device will not only track your steps but also measure your body fat and even analyze your voice to assess your degree of “energy and positivity." But will it protect your private health info from prying eyes?
Seattle startup Volt has taken the pandemic-inspired work-from-home plan to a new level by going to a four-day work week. Are Volt employees as productive as they were when they worked five days a week? And what do they think about the change?
Mark Okerstrom, the former Expedia Group CEO, is joining Convoy, a ride-sharing-for-freight Seattle startup, as the fast-growing company’s new president and chief operating officer. He brings a lot of talent to Convoy ... including some pretty wild dance moves.
With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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GeekWire's Taylor Soper was in the virtual stands -- and on the live national broadcast -- for Thursday's Blazers vs. Lakers playoff game, watching the action with Microsoft's Teams application alongside other fans doing the same. What was it like, and what does it mean for the future of live sports? We jumped online for this GeekWire Podcast discussion right as the game was ending to discuss the experience, and the implications for Microsoft, the NBA and sports fans.
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We finally got the price and date for Surface Duo, Microsoft's new dual-screen Android device (don't call it a phone!). It launches on Sept. 10 and at a price — $1,399 — that may put it out of the reach of many. Todd has ordered one but ... who else will be buying? And what is Microsoft up to with this device?
Amazon announced they'll begin hosting third party podcasts on their Amazon Music and Audible services, but the way they did it, and a non-disparagement clause they later retracted, raised some eyebrows.
And Seattle-based outdoor retailer REI was getting ready to move its corporate headquarters to fancy new digs in Bellevue, but they called it off this week in the face of changing working conditions brought on by the pandemic. They became the latest company to decide to work mostly out-of-the-office for the time being.
With GeekWire’s Todd Bishop and Taylor Soper. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week.
Who would have thought that Microsoft could be the likely white knight to save social video app TikTok from threats by President Trump to ban it in the U.S.? Trump set a hard deadline this week for Microsoft or another entity to buy the company before he'll block all transactions with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. We discuss what might be behind Microsoft's interest in entering the social media sphere.
- In latest TikTok twist, Microsoft reportedly looking at buying entire social media giant
- Trump issues executive order banning transactions with TikTok parent ByteDance in 45 days
- Gates interview tackles TikTok, his preferred COVID meds, and the gentler antitrust hearings of today
We take a walk through eerily quiet downtown Seattle to see how the shift to remote work by tech giants is impacting local businesses — and it's not looking good.
What are micro-schools and how might they help frazzled parents trying to deal with remote learning during the pandemic?
A Seattle sock-making startup pivoted to making masks for the pandemic, but then a misstep in a promotion caused massive grief. We'll talk about what happened and how they dealt with it.
Listen above, and subscribe in any podcast app.
With GeekWire’s John Cook and Kurt Schlosser. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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Big Tech spent back-to-back days in the national spotlight this week between a long-anticipated Congressional hearing and second-quarter earnings reports.
The juxtaposed events paint a revealing picture of the risks and opportunities companies like Amazon face as they field accusations that they’ve grown too powerful while raking in record profits from customers who rely on their services more than ever.
We discuss this inflection point for Big Tech, Amazon's blockbuster profits, plus the NBA's partnership with Microsoft Teams, on this week's GeekWire podcast:
The House antitrust subcommittee interviewed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, along with Apple's Tim Cook, Google's Sundar Pichai, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg during a wide-ranging virtual hearing on the power of Big Tech.
Lawmakers grilled Bezos on Amazon’s treatment of third-party sellers, how it prioritized “essential items” during the coronavirus crisis, policing counterfeit goods, and more. They didn’t manage to get Bezos to admit anything particularly incriminating, but his inability to confidently deny their claims about Amazon using its might to compete with third parties spoke volumes. And while members of Congress don’t have the ability to enforce existing antitrust law, they can rewrite those laws if they find them inadequate for the digital age.
Meanwhile, customers are relying on Amazon more than ever — and it is showing up on the company’s bottom line. The Seattle tech giant blew past Wall Street expectations for its second quarter, reporting $88.9 billion in revenue and $5.2 billion in profits, despite spending $4 billion on COVID-19 initiatives. Amazon also confirmed it has grown to more than 1 million employees and seasonal workers around the world for the first time during Thursday's earnings call.
During the hearing, Bezos claimed that Amazon has become a lifeline to customers during the pandemic because of its scale, which also allows the company to hire thousands while others are laying off workers across the country.
But critics want Amazon to invest more of its profits into wages and benefits for employees on the frontlines of the coronavirus crisis. Amazon declined to say if it will reinstate its previous hazard pay for its logistics workers or issue additional bonuses.
Appearing this week are GeekWire's Todd Bishop, Monica Nickelsburg and John Cook. Podcast produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.
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