GeekWire

This week's blockbuster trade of Seattle Seahawks QB Russell Wilson could be the first in a series of moves that leads to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owning the team.

That was the hypothesis offered by veteran Seattle sports columnist Art Thiel in a piece this week at PostAlley.org, blending smart sourcing with informed speculation. Rumors of Bezos' interest in buying the Seahawks have been around for years, but the team's deal with the Denver Broncos makes the possibility worth revisiting.

Thiel, our former Seattle Post-Intelligencer colleague and the founding editor of Sportspress Northwest, joins us on this episode to discuss this theory and what it could mean for Bezos, Amazon and the NFL.

More from Art Thiel:

• A few musings about sports journalism as the unwinding begins
• Blockbuster Deal(s): Russell Wilson to Denver, Seahawks Sale Next

Edited by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell

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What would happen to the divisions in our country if we set aside our phones, and our assumptions, and truly tried to understand people who are different from us?

Mónica Guzmán did this in her own family, and she's convinced that the country could do it, too. The Seattle-based journalist, entrepreneur and self-described liberal starts her new book with the personal story of coming to terms with her own parents, Mexican immigrants who voted twice for Donald Trump for president.

The rest of the book is a guide for the rest of us: I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.

Longtime readers will remember Guzmán as a technology columnist who wrote regularly for GeekWire in the early years of the site. We also worked together previously at the Seattle P-I newspaper, where she started the Big Blog for SeattlePI.com.

She wrote for the Seattle Times and went on to co-found The Evergrey newsletter in Seattle. She's currently digital director of the non-profit Braver Angels, whose mission of bringing together people of different political beliefs matches the premise of her recent work. She's also the host of Crosscut's Northwest Newsmakers.

We talk about her new book, and the role of technology in all of this, on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast. Hosted by GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop.

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“Best Book Club Ever,” read one sign inside Amazon Books at Seattle’s University Village this weekend. On the bookshelves below it were products including an electric 1.5-liter ceramic kettle, a sugar dispenser, and a marble cheese slicer.

Elsewhere in the store, shoppers browsed items as varied as a plush baby shark, a Lite Brite, Funko figurines, a USB mic, game consoles, a smart fitness scale, a WiFi router, and kitchen scissors.

There was not, as far as I could tell, a kitchen sink.

Yes, there were books in this bookstore. But they were surrounded by a cacophony of commerce. Looking around at the seemingly random array of products, it felt like a bookstore subsumed by a variety store — an experiment gone awry, or more likely, an approach influenced by two different executive regimes.

No wonder Amazon is pulling the plug, I thought to myself.

Listen to the full story on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, or read it here, as published on GeekWire on March 7, 2022: Amazon’s bizarre bazaar: Strange final chapter for tech giant’s first bricks-and-mortar bookstore

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Understanding any subject requires knowing the numbers, and that includes looking at the long-term trends. That was one of Steve Ballmer's guiding principles as Microsoft's CEO, and it remains his mantra as founder of USAFacts, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that compiles and reports U.S. government data.

Ballmer, the chairman of the L.A. Clippers and former Microsoft CEO, joins us on the GeekWire Podcast to discuss the USAFacts State of the Union in Numbers report, including the data to watch as the country emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and confronts the global economic impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

We also discuss trends he's watching in tech, the future of the pro sports experience in Seattle and beyond, and his philanthropic initiatives with his wife Connie through the Ballmer Group in areas including homelessness and education.

We last spent time with Ballmer when USAFacts partnered with GeekWire on the podcast Numbers Geek in 2018 and 2019, exploring the data behind many of the key issues facing the country. Of course, many of those issues have been upended in the time since. It was good to catch up with him and revisit some of these topics. 

More: USAFacts founder and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the State of the Union in numbers

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This is a special episode in remembrance of Zain Nadella, the son of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and his wife, Anu Nadella, who died Monday at the age of 26. 

Those who knew him are remembering Zain for his wide-ranging taste in music, his bright smile and for his profound impact on his dad's life. Zain suffered from asphyxia in utero and developed cerebral palsy. Satya Nadella wrote candidly about his experience as Zain's dad in his 2017 book, Hit Refresh, and he spoke with me about Zain's influence in an interview that year on stage at the GeekWire Summit.

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This week brought news of a big fundraising by e-commerce technology startup Fabric, a $140 million Series C round led by Softbank. With the deal, Fabric became the Seattle region’s newest unicorn startup, a privately held company valued at more than $1 billion, or about $1.5 billion in its case. 

Our guest on this week’s GeekWire Podcast is Fabric’s CEO, Faisal Masud a former executive with companies including Amazon, Alphabet, Groupon, Staples and eBay.

We talked about the state of physical and online retail as we emerge from the pandemic, business to business commerce, the Amazon heritage on Fabric’s executive team, competition with Shopify and Salesforce, and why Amazon itself hasn’t been able to get traction in the area Fabric is focusing on.

The 300-person company offers software, APIs, and other behind-the-scenes technology used by retailers and business-to-business brands for many aspects of online commerce, including pricing/promotion, inventory management, digital storefronts, and payments/checkout.

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Zillow Group knows a thing or two about homes, and during the past two years the Seattle-based online real estate company has emerged as a leader enabling its employees to work from theirs — or from anywhere else they want.

As companies including Microsoft and Expedia make the transition back to the office, in some cases expecting employees to spend at least half of their time working in-person, Zillow has already been through its own transition to a completely flexible approach to work. 

So how’s it going? On this episode, we hear from a Zillow executive who is not only overseeing the company’s flexible work experience, but living it first-hand: Meghan Reibstein, Zillow's vice president of project management and flexible work.

Related links and content

Meghan Reibstein on LinkedIn: Flexible Work Improves Employees’ Quality of Life, Zillow Survey Reveals

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Armoire CEO and founder Ambika Singh and her team built a women's clothing subscription service with their "bosslady" members in mind, providing an on-demand wardrobe of apparel primarily for work and events.

Two years ago, the Seattle-based startup was on a roll, posting a record month in February 2020 after growing nearly 400% in 2019. But then came the pandemic. Armoire's members no longer needed to dress up for the office or to go out.

So close the door on Armoire, right? Not so fast.

Ambika Singh talks with GeekWire's John Cook and Todd Bishop about Armoire's survival story, how the startup's underlying business works, competition with Rent the Runway and others, its return to the office, and what's next in its startup journey.

Read more: Startup survival story: Armoire’s remarkable journey from sequins to sweatpants and back again

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What does Microsoft's return to the office mean for everybody else?

That was one of the questions raised by the tech giant's announcement Monday that it will fully reopen its Washington state offices, including its Redmond headquarters, starting on Feb. 28. The company says it will offer flexibility but expects most employees to be back in the office at least 50% of the time.

Microsoft and other big tech companies were among the first in the country to ask employees to work from home at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly two years ago. The rest of the industry followed suit.

But the return could be different, based on fundamental changes in the industry and society in the meantime.

For an overview and status report, we spoke with Michael Schutzler, CEO of the Washington Technology Industry Association, which represents tech companies across Washington state, and has gone fully virtual itself, giving up its downtown Seattle offices for good. WTIA is also redefining its own boundaries in the process.

See excerpts and links on GeekWire: Why Microsoft’s return to the office may not be the norm across the rest of the tech industry
 

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Our guest this week, Ashley Stewart, is a Seattle-based senior tech correspondent for the news site Insider who reports on Microsoft and Amazon.

She and her colleagues reported on Amazon’s executive exodus and its internal deliberations about compensation in advance of the increase in maximum base pay announced by the company this week. After the announcement, they reported on internal documents indicating the types of pay increases employees can expect.

We also discuss her reporting on turmoil inside Microsoft's HoloLens business, and where recent changes leave the company in the race to create the Metaverse.

And in our final segment, we compare notes on what it's like to cover these two companies, and what the differences say about their corporate cultures.

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