seattle-startups
(4)
Robert Frederick
Robert Frederick is the founder, CEO and President of Sirqul, Inc., a Seattle IoT company built around an Engagement-as-a-Service platform of hundreds of APIs and patented edge devices. An MIT Media Lab alum and TR35 honoree with 41 issued patents, he helped launch Amazon Anywhere and co-founded Amazon Web Services and the AWS Marketplace before scaling the voice startup Snapvine past 5 million users. He is also an author and music producer.
Ford Davidson
Ford Davidson is the co-founder and CEO of Enzzo, a Seattle AI company spun out of Pioneer Square Labs that helps hardware teams move from idea to investment-ready in half the time. A 20-plus-year product veteran, he built new-category devices and services at Microsoft, HTC, Amazon (Alexa), and Meta, sold his phone-backup startup Dashwire to HTC in 2011, and now wants to do for physical products what generative AI did for words and images.
Daniel Li
Daniel Li is the cofounder and CEO of Plus AI, the Seattle startup whose AI slide generator lives inside Google Slides and PowerPoint and turns prompts into finished presentations. A summa cum laude Wharton/Huntsman grad, he spent years at Boston Consulting Group formatting slides he hated, then went into venture capital at Madrona Venture Group, where he backed Snowflake, Rec Room and Common Room before leaving partner-track to build the tool he wished he had as a consultant. He writes the Pacific Northwest tech newsletter 'the DL' and tinkers on side projects through DSCO Labs.
Sung Rhee
Sung Rhee is the founder and CEO of Optimal, a Kirkland, Washington company behind data-driven college ranking and review sites like OnlineU and GradReports. A former Microsoft general manager who helped build Outlook Express and MSN Mobile, he started the business in 2004 as SR Education Group, then pivoted it away from for-profit-college lead generation toward putting students first - even when that cost the company accounts. He calls himself a reluctant entrepreneur, plays point guard, and collects Gundam figurines.