Dec 09, 2021

ecoSpears

Florida-based ecoSpears has selected Tacoma as its West Coast headquarters. Serial tech entrepreneurs Ian Doromal and Sergie “Serg” Albino co-founded ecoSpears to remove harmful PCBs from waterways forever using a technology developed by NASA and licensed to Doromal and Albino in 2017, which acts like a “sponge” in contaminated sediment, drawing out PCBs and other toxins, then neutralizing them. The ecoSpears team partners with industry and government entities to lead environmental remediation projects across the U.S. and as far as Guam and Sweden. Now, the Florida-based company is focused on cleaning up Washington's waterways. As newcomers to the Pacific Northwest startup scene, the ecoSpears team leveraged collaborations with local incubators and the city of Tacoma to grow their Washington network and secure key contracts with companies like Kaiser Aluminum.

Vido Vodka

Vido Vodka, wine grape-based vodka handcrafted in Washington, announced a new partnership with Climate Pledge Arena and the Seattle Kraken as the team and arena's official premium vodka. To celebrate its status, Vido Vodka is introducing a limited-edition label featuring the signature Seattle Kraken “S” and blue colorways. The Vido Vodka Seattle Kraken label will be available early next year. Behind Vido Vodka is The Monson family, a multi-generational Washington farming family. Vido Vodka was founded as a tribute to their family patriarch Arvid “Vido” Monson. Vido Vodka is premium handcrafted vodka from wine grapes grown at Goose Ridge Estate Vineyard in the Columbia Valley. Climate Pledge Arena, located at Seattle Center is the complete redevelopment of a historic landmark, originally built for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. Home to the NHL's Seattle Kraken, WNBA's Seattle Storm, and performers of live music and events, Climate Pledge Arena opened in October 2021.

Magnify

Magnify, a startup that transforms the customer experience through post-sales orchestration, announced that Sajo Jacob has joined Magnify as CTO and co-founder. This announcement comes on the heels of a recent announcement of a $6 million Seed Series raise led by Madrona Venture Group, Decibel Partners and other PNW SaaS executives. Most recently, Jacob was at Amazon where he was a GM and head of engineering, leading large global engineering and product teams that worked on digital commerce platforms and new products in Devices & Services. Before Amazon, Jacob spent his professional career in the enterprise world, which included being one of the early members on the Microsoft Azure team. Magnify is actively hiring across product and engineering teams, including product managers, senior developers, engineers, and technical leaders. Magnify has a remote-first culture, with a physical presence for engineering in Seattle, along with their Bend, Oregon, offices.

Dec 08, 2021

PotlatchDeltic

PotlatchDeltic announced the election of Anne L. Alonzo to its board of directors. Alonzo most recently served as senior vice president, external affairs and chief sustainability officer for Corteva Agriscience, a publicly traded global agricultural chemical and seed company, where she was responsible for leading the external affairs function, which included corporate communications, global corporate responsibility, government and industry affairs, and product advocacy. From January 2016 to April 2020, Alonzo was president and chief executive officer of the American Egg Board, where she also served on the Executive Committee. Previously, Alonzo served in various leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kraft Foods and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Alonzo holds an Executive M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, a J.D. from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law, and a B.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Spokane-based PotlatchDeltic is a Real Estate Investment Trust that owns approximately 1.8 million acres of timberlands in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Minnesota and Mississippi. Through its taxable REIT subsidiary, the company also operates six sawmills, an industrial-grade plywood mill, a residential and commercial real estate development business and a rural timberland sales program.

Lyceus Group

Seattle-based Lyceus Group announced its inclusion on Fund Intelligence's Operations and Services Awards 2021 shortlist for the ‘Best Communications and PR Firm'. Founded in 2016, Lyceus Group is a financial communications agency and represents a variety of clients in the financial services and technology space, including mutual funds, ETF's, private equity firms, hedge funds, startups, cryptocurrency funds, private credit funds and fund service providers. The Fund Intelligence Operations and Services Awards will celebrate the top-performing operators and service providers of 2021. The awards recognize and reward excellence and outstanding contributions made by businesses, operations & technology leaders at asset management and service provider firms on the past year.

Cyrus Biotechnology

Cyrus Biotechnology, a Seattle-based biotechnology firm with a proprietary software platform for biologics discovery, announced the closing of a $18M Series B financing and acquisition of Orthogonal Biologics, a deep mutational scanning protein engineering spin-out from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. The financing includes investments from OrbiMed Advisors, Trinity Ventures, Agent Capital, Yard Ventures, Washington Research Foundation, iSelect Fund, a leading Asian private equity firm, W Fund, family offices, and individual investors. Selecta Bioscience joined the financing as a strategic investor. Cyrus is focusing the combined software-and-screening platform on the re-design of natural proteins to produce biologics of unique efficacy and safety, meeting unmet medical needs for a range of indications. The firm has initiated a variety of in-house and partnered programs during the past 12 months, and the Orthogonal acquisition now adds a broad-spectrum protein-based COVID-19 therapeutic and another biologic to the pipeline. Programs in autoimmunity are being carried out in partnership with Selecta Biosciences, announced earlier this year. Cyrus also previously announced its collaboration with The Broad Institute in next-generation CRISPR engineering for reduced immunogenicity. Cyrus is based on core software from the lab of David Baker at the University of Washington, and is financed by leading US and Asian biotech and tech investors.

Dec 07, 2021

Skagit Tourism Bureau

Buganski

The Skagit Tourism Bureau, created to promote the area worldwide as a travel destination, has hired Jake Buganski as the organization's first CEO. Buganski joins the organization after most recently serving as vice president of strategy at Tempest, a Philadelphia-based digital marketing and customer relationship management company for the travel and tourism industry. Prior to that, he held several public sector and government positions in the tourism industry, serving as executive director at Visit South Jersey, president and CEO of Corning and the Southern Finger Lakes, and as executive director of the New Jersey Division of Travel and Tourism. The Skagit Tourism Bureau was formed to meet the tourism marketing needs of Skagit County, and is a collaborative effort among the lodging businesses, municipalities, chambers of commerce and the Economic Development Alliance of Skagit County (EDASC) to create a strategic destination marketing organization to promote tourism to Skagit County. The EDASC will be fostering the Skagit Tourism Bureau, serving as its fiscal agent and performing other organizational duties.

Ballard FC

Ballard is set to get a new minor-league soccer team - Ballard FC. The club is founded by former Sounders FC player Lamar Neagle and former Ballard High soccer captains, Chris Kaimmer and Sam Zisette. Ballard FC plays its debut match in May 2022 and will be part of the United Soccer League (USL) League Two's Northwest Division. The team's home pitch will be Interbay Soccer Field.

Fortive

Fortive announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Clearlake Capital Group to acquire Provation Software, a provider of clinical workflow software solutions used in hospitals and Ambulatory Surgical Centers, for $1.43 billion. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals and is expected to close by the end of the year. Founded in 1994, Provation delivers solutions to enhance clinical productivity, care coordination, and reporting and billing accuracy in order to deliver high-quality patient care. Provation currently serves more than 5,000 customers and is expected to have 2021 revenues of approximately $110 million. Fortive expects to finance the acquisition with short-term debt and available cash, and estimates the acquisition will be accretive to adjusted diluted net earnings per share by greater than $0.08 in fiscal 2022. Evercore served as financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis served as legal counsel to Fortive. Credit Suisse and William Blair served as financial advisor and Sidley Austin served as legal counsel to Provation. Fortive is headquartered in Everett, and employs a team of more than 18,000 research and development, manufacturing, sales, distribution, service and administrative employees in more than 50 countries around the world.