Author: Taylor Soper

Team “Stimma” pitches at Pioneer Square Labs on Wednesday in front of Seattle venture capitalists. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper) Best class ever? That was my thought after watching eight teams pitch their startup ideas on Wednesday in Seattle, the culmination of an entrepreneurship class at the University of Washington teaching students the ins and outs of building a tech company. The 10-week program is a crash course in starting, growing, managing, leading, and exiting a new venture. Required background reading includes Zero to One, The Art of Pitching, and Amazon’s leadership principles — to help prepare for Amazon CEO Andy…

Kathi Lentzsch. (Rad Photo) Seattle-based e-bike maker Rad Power Bikes named Kathi Lentzsch as its new CEO. Lentzsch previously ran Bartell Drugs as CEO before the company sold to Rite-Aid in 2020. She also led companies including Gump’s and Elephant Pharmacy, and held exec roles at Enesco, Pottery Barn and World Market. Lentzsch replaces Phil Molyneux, the former Sony president who stepped down after leading Rad for more than two years. Rad has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs over the past several years while dealing with several lawsuits and recalls. Last week GeekWire reported on a round of layoffs that the company…

Venice CTO Jesse Proudman. (Venice Photo) Seattle tech entrepreneur Jesse Proudman is taking another startup leap with Venice.ai, a new AI app focused on privacy and uncensored interactions that is positioning itself as an alternative to mainstream generative AI services from giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Founded last year, Venice feels similar to ChatGPT, Claude, and other popular AI applications. But unlike its competitors, Venice does not store prompts or responses on its servers by using a unique privacy architecture. “Think about it as private ChatGPT,” Proudman told GeekWire. “The thesis is that nothing that goes in or comes…