Tech Strikes: Former Rover CTO joins transferring startup Dolly; Egencia’s CFO to depart; and extra
Scott Porad. (Dolly photo)
Former Rover CTO Scott Porad joined the peer-to-peer moving company Dolly as chief technology officer. The Seattle startup runs an app that connects individuals and businesses with trucks and equipment with moving companies.
“I really enjoy this time in a startup company when it is on the verge of tremendous growth,” said Porad. The role is a return to the gig economy for Porad, who spent seven years building Rover’s pet care marketplace.
As a longtime technical director at Rover, he left the pet care startup last year and was vice president of engineering at 98point6 virtual healthcare startup for less than a year. Prior to joining Rover in 2013, Porad was the CTO of Cheezburger and held several director positions at Drugstore.com in Bellevue, Washington.
Dolly currently has 40 full-time employees and plans to double the number of employees and sales in the coming year. The moving service is currently available in 36 major subway areas and works with retail partners such as Costco, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Purple and Mattress Warehouse.
Dolly was founded in 2014 and is led by Co-Founder and CEO Mike Howell. Other co-founders like Kelby Hawn, Jason Norris and Chad Wittman are no longer with the company.
Regi Vengalil. (Metromile photo)
– Regi Vengalil, CFO of the business travel division of Expedia Group Egencia, will leave in May to join the pay-per-mile auto insurer Metromile as CFO. Vengalil is also currently on the Porch board of directors in Seattle.
In a statement, Vengalil said he has been a Metromile customer for six years and is eager to expand the mass appeal of the digital insurance platform. San Francisco-based Metromile is a publicly traded company that was founded in 2011. The company not only offers its own auto insurance policies, but also licenses its cloud-based technology to other insurers.
– Fuse Venture Partners added Bay Area investor Brendan Wales as a third founding partner. The Seattle-based venture capital firm spun off from Ignition Partners last year. Read the story.
– The RFID manufacturer Impinj announced Brian Wong as Chief Product Officer in May. Wong is the former CEO of TriLumina, a semiconductor company, and battery maker Enevate. He lives in California.
From left: Tom Staples and Patti Brooke. (Headlight photos)
– Seattle-based startup HeadLight has appointed Personify CEO Norbert Orth to its board of directors and added Patti Brooke and Tom Staples to its management team. HeadLight, formerly known as Pavia Systems, has been spun off from the University of Washington and makes photo-based inspection software for the construction industry.
Brooke is Vice President of Marketing and most recently was Director of Innovation at Premera Blue Cross. Previously, she led marketing and business development for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance’s Proton Therapy Center.
Staples is vice president of sales and joins the company from solar energy startup Omnidian, where he was vice president of strategic alliances. Previously, Staples was Director of Sales and Business Development at Clean Power Research and co-founder of Cooler Planet, both startups in the renewable energy sector.
– Makara, a cryptocurrency robo-advisor that emerged from Strix Leviathan, has hired Nick White as VP of Growth. Most recently, he was Vice President of Marketing at Austin-based startup Osano.
White previously spent five years at Wealthsimple, a Canadian automated investment and savings platform that recently sold its US business.
– The University of Washington has launched a new GeoHazards initiative and appointed Harold Tobin to the Paros Endowed Chair in Seismology and Geohazards. Tobin is also the director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.
The initiative will study earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides and volcanoes to improve methods of detecting and managing these seismic hazards. Hobin will initially focus on land and underwater sensor systems and collaborate with other researchers at the UW, including in oceanography and the applied physics laboratory.
Cybersecurity startup veteran Justin Baker joined Deep Instinct in New York as Vice President of Digital and Demand Marketing. The company applies deep learning, a subset of machine learning, to its cybersecurity technology and recently closed a $ 100 million Series D funding round.
Baker was most recently Global Director of Cloud Marketing at the Cisco subsidiary AppDynamics. Previously, he held senior marketing positions at Versive, Splunk and ExtraHop. He lives in Seattle.
– Longtime Seattle-based journalist and editor Phyllis Fletcher is now Senior Editor, Audio for the New York Times. Most recently, she was Senior Editor at American Public Media Group and previously held executive editorial positions at NPR, Northwest News Network and KUOW Public Radio.
