Despite this past year having been mostly unkind to individuals and companies alike, Seattle tech is grinding and racking up wins while the odds seemingly stack up against it.
Governor Jay Inslee announced on Nov. 3 that his office plans to send $24 million in relief funds to provide students across Washington state with about 64,000 tablets and computers while they continue to work remotely.
Plus, thanks to MeowTalk, an app created by local techie Javier Sanchez, we’ll soon be able to understand what cats are thinking.
And last month, Seattle tech raised more than $220 million — up by about $150 million from September. October’s collective fundings are second only to July’s $362 million, signalling a potential upswing in the local scene.
Meanwhile, the following four companies are making waves within their own industries, which include media and entertainment, renewable energy and cryptocurrency.
Check out Built In Seattle’s featured companies of November and catch a glimpse into what it’s like to work there through their engineering and leadership practices.
What they do: An internal startup within Discovery, Discovery Digital creates immersive experiences for brands across Discovery’s portfolio. Its TV Everywhere products include the GO apps HGTV, Food Network and Discovery Kids Play. Discovery also offers direct-to-consumer streaming services like Eurosport Player as well as social content from Group Nine Media, which includes The Dodo, Now This and Thrillist.
Location: Bellevue
Engineering philosophies: Avi Saxena, the former VP of technology at Amazon Marketplace, joined Discovery Digital about two years ago and brought with him several engineering methodologies that he learned at his previous company.
“I use a technique that I learned at Amazon called ‘working backwards from the customer,’” Saxena told Built In in June. “So, before you build anything, you write a forward-looking press release, thinking about the benefits for the customer and how they and the wider industry will react to the news.”
What they do: Founded in 2010, vcita supports more than 100,000 small and medium business owners with a customer management platform that can be used for appointment scheduling, marketing, client payment portals and more. The company also recently released a new affiliate reseller program for business consultants and marketing agencies.
Location: Bellevue
Women in leadership: April Ayers joined vcita in August 2019 as manager of the customer success team after leaving her role as director of client success at Kelley Imagine Systems. The tech leader had a tip for other women in leadership roles and those interested in moving up:
“As women in management, I think we take on the world, which leaves us with no room for creative thinking and promotable tasks,” Ayers told Built In. “We are always patching holes in the ship, as it were. We need to be able to trust our teams to do their part and hold them accountable when they do not.”
What they do: LevelTen Energy’s marketplace hosts renewable energy procurements for commercial and industrial buyers of all sizes. In September, the company was recognized for its efforts in making renewable energy more accessible when the Center for Resource Solutions and Environmental Protection Agency named LevelTen a 2020 Green Power Leadership Award recipient. The Climate Change Business Journal also honored LevelTen with a business achievement Award.
Location: Wallingford
An Agile shop: Gone are the days when LevelTen engineers followed a Kanban flow with minimal structure. Since the team has grown, so have its processes. Today, the team has shifted to an Agile approach that includes following two-week sprints, backlog planning and organizing the team into multiple scrum squads made up of engineers, energy analysts, UI/UX designers and a product manager.
“Our platform is a two-sided marketplace centered around detailed energy and financial analysis, so there is no shortage of complex problems to solve,” CTO Eric Snyder told Built In. “Following a scrum process allows us to develop more thoughtful requirements while giving us flexibility to more easily adjust our plan to meet the needs of our business.”
What they do: Launched in 2018, Transparent Systems provides on-demand settlement solutions using cryptographic networks to eliminate the lag between making and receiving payments. In November, Transparent’s CEO Alex Fowler and CTO Jeff Kramer presented the first public demo of their B2B payment solution, Xand, at DC Fintech Week.
Location: Downtown Seattle
Where your voice is heard: Early in her career as a software engineer, Katie Cleary was silent when she came across flawed projects, fearing how her colleagues might perceive her if she spoke up. However, once she began voicing her concerns, Cleary noticed a correlation between speaking up and improved quality of projects. She has since carried that lesson with her to her team at Transparent.
“Diverse perspectives result in a better product for more people,” Cleary told Built In in an article titled ‘How to Be an Effective Self-Advocate.’ “If I wanted to spend my time building the right things, I needed to make myself a part of that design process. The only way to do that was by making sure I was heard.”
