Nov 29, 2019

D.A. Davidson

D.A. Davidson & Co. added veteran equity trader Todd Hanneman to its institutional equity trading team. Hanneman has over 20 years of experience in institutional equities, most recently as a managing director with Piper Jaffray. He also worked in sales and trading with RBC Capital Markets and RBC Dain Rauscher. D.A. Davidson is headquartered in Montana, with offices in Denver, Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle.

Zipwhip

Seattle-based Zipwhip moved its headquarters to 75,000 square feet in Elliott Bay Office Park. The company signed a 10-year lease and says the space will allow it to nearly double its headcount to 500 employees. Interior designer Christine Chaney, architect Marvin Yamaguchi and Zipwhip employees designed the new space. Zipwhip is a cloud software company for business texting. Earlier this year, it closed a $51.5 million funding round led by Goldman Sachs Private Capital.

WS Acquisition

Guardian Capital Partners made an undisclosed investment in Eugene, Oregon-based WS Acquisition, which operates Western Shelter Systems and CrewBoss. Western Shelter makes emergency shelters and field support systems while CrewBoss makes fire-resistant personal protective equipment for firefighters. Guardian is based near Philadelphia. It invests in lower-middle-market consumer products, niche manufacturing and specialty service companies.

Nov 27, 2019

Amazon

Haydon

Seattle-based Amazon honored three businesses in its first-ever U.S. Small Business Spotlight Awards. Nutpods of Bellevue won the Small Business of the Year award. The company was founded by Madeline Haydon and sells a plant-based creamer. The other winners were Habit Nest of Los Angeles (Small Business Owner Under 30 of the Year) and 1818 Farms of Mooresville, Alabama (Woman-Owned Small Business of the Year). The awards honor small businesses selling with Amazon. Winners get six months of account services, advertising credits and promotion on Amazon.com. They also will meet with Amazon leaders in Seattle to get tips on how to scale their businesses.

Tideworks Technology

Seattle-based Tideworks Technology will create a dedicated intermodal division at its operations in Jacksonville, Florida. Mark Bromley will lead the new division, which will relocate with the rest of the Jacksonville office to a new location by year end. Bromley is a 20-year veteran of the logistics industry. Tideworks develops operating system software for marine and intermodal terminals.

Madrona Venture Group

Seattle venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group secured $2.85 million in seed funding for MontyCloud, a developer of software for management of cloud infrastructure, applications and services. The funding included investments from Lytical Ventures and Bob Hammer of Hammer Ventures. MontyCloud has offices in Seattle and Bangalore, India.

Yapta

Seattle-based Yapta is partnering with Tokyo-based JTB Business Travel Solutions to expand Yapta's airfare and hotel price tracking services to corporate customers across Asia. JTB Business Travel Solutions is a joint venture between JTB and Carlson Wagonlit Travel that offers business travel management services, such as flight and hotel bookings and tour packages.

ZoomInfo

Vancouver-based ZoomInfo filed an application with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering of common stock. The company has not yet determined the number of shares and price range of the offering. The IPO is dependent upon an SEC review and market conditions. ZoomInfo sells access to its database of business people and companies to sales, marketing and recruiting professionals.

Sea-Tac Airport

The American Heart Association and MultiCare Pulse Heart Institute unveiled a hands-only CPR training kiosk in the Central Terminal at Sea-Tac Airport. The kiosk's touch screen gives an introduction and tutorial to CPR, followed by an interactive practice session with a manikin and a 30-second test to measure efficacy. The entire process takes about five minutes.