Bezos Academy, funded by Jeff Bezos’ $2B ‘Day One Fund,’ launches first free school in Seattle area

The Day 1 Academies Fund is gearing up to open the inaugural school in its new network of full scholarship Montessori-inspired preschools in underserved communities.

The nonprofit, backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ $2 billion Day One Fund, will open a new school on Oct. 19 in Des Moines, Wash., just south of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters.

Bezos first unveiled the Day One Fund two years ago, setting aside $2 billion for the “Day 1 Academies Fund” and the “Day 1 Families Fund,” which addresses homelessness.

The Academies Fund will directly operate the schools for children 3-5 years old using “the same set of principles that have driven Amazon,” according to its website.

“Most important among those will be genuine, intense customer obsession,” the website reads. “The child will be the customer. ‘Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.’ And lighting that fire early is a giant leg up for any child.”

Here’s more about how the fund picks communities to open up its schools:

In selecting communities for our preschools, we consider a wide range of data, including income levels, participation in free and reduced-cost meal programs, and gaps in access to licensed childcare providers. We also look for local organizations and businesses that understand the needs of their community members and are excited about the prospect of hosting a tuition-free, high-quality preschool in their neighborhood.

Mike George, an ex-Amazon vice president who oversaw some of the company’s most successful products, is leading the Academies Fund. George retired from Amazon in July 2017 after nearly 20 years at the tech giant, where he held multiple leadership positions spanning hardware to HR. He was most recently vice president of Echo, Alexa, and the Appstore.

Wesley Homes, a retirement community and facility provider, partnered with the Academies Fund to help open the Des Moines location.

The Day One Fund last year announced initial grants from the Families Fund for organizations that aim to prevent and reduce homelessness.

“Day One” is a reference to Bezos’ mantra at Amazon, that it’s essential to approach every day with the enthusiasm and energy of a new venture because it’s “always Day One.”

Bezos, himself a product of Montessori education, last year announced a separate $10 billion fund to fight climate change.

With Amazon’s market value soaring past $1.5 trillion, Bezos has become the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of more than $175 billion, positioning him to make a major impact on the world impact with his new philanthropic pursuits.

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Airbnb launches ‘City Portal’ in Seattle and beyond to help cities gain insight into listings, enforce laws

(Airbnb Image)

Airbnb is finally answering the call from cities, including Seattle, that want an easier way to interact with the hospitality company and find support and data related to listings. The company has launched City Portal as a resource for governments and tourism organizations, it said Wednesday.

The solution is intended to help cities gain more information about listings and connect with Airbnb support in the event that hosts are not complying with local laws. Tourism partners can also gain more insight into where guests are coming from.

City Portal will provide:

A dashboard, including local and global Airbnb data insights into short-term rental market characteristics and remitted tourist tax revenue in places where tax agreements have been established.Compliance tools to help governments develop and manage fair short-term rental policies and regulations.A central location for resources such as the Airbnb Neighborhood Support hotline and Law Enforcement portal.Direct access to an Airbnb team member, providing one-to-one support with City Portal for issues that arise locally.

In addition to Seattle, City Portal is launching with pilot cities including San Francisco, New Orleans, Vancouver, B.C., and Buffalo, N.Y., and tourism organization partners such as Visit Tampa Bay, the City of Krakow, and Visit Scotland.

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Amazon launches sustainable product search tool to help shoppers make greener choices

A sampling of products that qualify for the Climate Pledge Friendly Label. (Amazon Image)

Amazon is launching a new tool to help shoppers select items that are deemed more environmentally friendly. Products will earn the “Climate Pledge Friendly” label if they have been approved by one of 19 certification programs, including Amazon’s own Compact by Design designation.

Some 25,000 grocery, household, fashion, beauty, electronics and other categories currently carry the label.

The effort supports Amazon’s commitment made a year ago to become carbon neutral by 2040. The online shopping and cloud giant also created the Climate Pledge — an initiative that calls on other corporations to join it in slashing their greenhouse gas emissions and supporting measures to capture carbon.

But the cuts won’t be easy, particularly for the shopping side of Amazon’s business. The company this summer released its 2019 sustainability report, revealing that its greenhouse gas emissions rose 15% over the previous year. More than three-quarters of its footprint came from what is called “indirect sources” or scope 3 that include production, use and disposal of Amazon-branded products; capital goods such as building construction, hardware and vehicles; corporate travel; and packaging.

The eco-labeled products can have smaller climate impacts thanks to their ingredients, production, packaging and other factors. Certifications include better-known programs such as Energy Star and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as well as some less familiar, including the Responsible Wool Standard. Amazon’s Compact by Design label applies to goods that use some combination of smaller packaging, more efficiently shaped containers and concentrated versions of products like soaps to reduce the liquid volume.

“Climate Pledge Friendly is a simple way for customers to discover more sustainable products that help preserve the natural world,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, in a statement. “With 18 external certification programs and our own Compact by Design certification, we’re incentivizing selling partners to create sustainable products that help protect the planet for future generations.”

One of these products carries the Climate Pledge Friendly label — if you can spot it.

The initiative, however, leaves plenty of room for improvement, said University of Washington political science professor Aseem Prakash. The labels on the site are small and there’s no information about the climate impact of one product compared to another, let alone how it affects Amazon’s overall climate footprint. Prakash has noted in the past that Amazon appears not to include the impact of non-Amazon products in its climate calculations.

“This announcement says nothing about how many emissions will be reduced,” Prakash said. “It’s a welcome step, but it’s a very, very small step.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include information from the University of Washington.

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Nevada Dept. of Health launches COVID Trace app developed by Seattle tech veterans

Three Seattle software engineers who set out to build a COVID-19 tracing app back in March are finally seeing the results of their hard work as the state of Nevada on Monday released COVID Trace.

Nevada’s Department of Health and Human Services launched the app for iOS and Android after customizing an open-source version of the app and working with Apple and Google and the team in Seattle.

COVID Trace was originally developed by Dudley Carr, Wes Carr and Josh Gummersall, three tech veterans with experience at Moz, Google, Uber, and elsewhere. The Carr brothers both do consulting work and Gummersall recently took a new job at Microsoft.

In the early days of the pandemic in the United States, the team set out to work on its digital tracing solution, but ran into a roadblock with Apple. The tech giant limited COVID-19 apps primarily to federal and state agencies or established health organizations.

Apple and Google have since teamed up on an Exposure Notifications System to help public health authorities develop apps to trace the virus while preserving the privacy of those who download the technology.

“The process of getting this app out there and trying to partner with health departments was a real challenge in the beginning,” Dudley Carr told GeekWire ahead of the launch of Nevada’s app. “What we found, for example, in Washington state, it was just really unclear who would even make the decision to evaluate these types of solutions.”

Virginia was the first state to roll out an app using the Apple-Google tech. Vox reported that adoption of the apps is tough for a couple reasons: users may not want to give up any type of their private health information and the federal government’s failure to create a national app has left the decision and execution up to the states.

Carr’s app ended up two states away because of interest shown by Andrew Pascal, an entrepreneur who runs a gaming company called Playstudios. He reached out to Carr after reading about COVID Trace in GeekWire in April while looking for a solution to help his state. Pascal, who has covered some of the development costs, connected the team with Jim Murren, chair of the Nevada COVID-19 Response, Relief and Recovery Task Force.

“Our resort industry has always been open to addressing complex challenges with innovative solutions,” Murren said in a news release Monday. “The adoption of COVID Trace is no different, and I’m proud of the way our business community has stepped up to participate in this important effort. The broad adoption of COVID Trace would be a game changer for Nevada, in terms of both public health and economic stability.”

Screen shots of the COVID Trace app. (App Store Images)

To use the free, Bluetooth-based app, users must opt-in to the Exposure Notifications System. That system will generate a random ID for each user’s device. To help ensure those IDs can’t be used to identify a person or location, they change every 10-20 minutes. The user’s phone and surrounding phones will work in the background to exchange these random IDs via Bluetooth, a passive process which begins once the user opts-in, and functions without the app open.

The user’s phone periodically checks all the random IDs associated with positive COVID-19 cases against its own list. If there is a match, the app will notify the user with further instructions from DHHS on what to do next to stay safe and keep others safe.

Dudley Carr. LnkedIn Photo)

“It’s pretty much like all of the other exposure notification apps,” Carr said. “It is incredibly straightforward. It doesn’t do any symptom checking. Its sole focus is to get someone onboarded with exposure notification and point them at resources if necessary. They can put it in their pocket and never worry about it again until they get an exposure.”

Nevada employers have agreed to encourage their employees to use COVID Trace and the state’s resort industry has embraced the tool as a way to keep employees and guests safe.

“Andrew and Jim realized that it is critical that the rollout has to be an incredibly successful one,” Carr said. “So they contacted all of the resorts and unions and other organizations to participate and endorse and get behind it. So I think Nevada is actually in a really unique position to make sure that the launch goes successfully.”

Carr said he and his team are not currently working on customizing the app for any other states. It’s been a time-consuming process, especially over the past few weeks.

“It is certainly far more work than we thought,” Carr said. “I do kid with my brother. It’s like, ‘I’m not sure we would have done this had we known how much work it would have been.’”

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Tom Skerritt’s new Seattle digital media startup launches PNW lifestyle streaming channel

(EVRGRN Photo)

Tom Skerritt wants to help storytellers from the Pacific Northwest share their work with the world.

Tom Skerritt. (Triple Squirrels Photo)

The “Top Gun” star and Emmy Award-winning actor recently launched a new digital media startup called Triple Squirrels, which this month revealed the EVRGRN Channel, a new free streaming channel airing on STIRR.

Skerritt told GeekWire he realized how difficult it is for independent filmmakers to find distribution after spending the past three decades teaching and mentoring creators. So he launched his own platform to help them find audiences and share their work.

“The EVRGRN Channel is my tribute to the Pacific Northwest region’s creative community, as well as a statement about the cultural impact the region has had and continues to have on the arts,” he said. “The EVRGRN Channel, as a result, reflects the authentic PNW persona: resilient, independent, artistic, and adventurous.”

Some of the initial content includes Leslie and Dale Chihuly’s documentary, “Chihuly Outside,” and selections from the Seattle International Film Festival.

Leslie Grandy. (Triple Squirrels Photo)

STIRR is a Sinclair-owned streaming service that launched last year and offers free ad-supported live and on-demand content.

“We chose STIRR as the initial streaming platform as it offered us two ways to deliver EVRGRN content to interested and relevant audiences nationwide — as a linear streaming channel and on demand,” said Leslie Grandy, CEO of Triple Squirrels. “STIRR also provides local, live news programming, which pairs well with our regionally curated catalog.”

Grandy is a Seattle tech industry veteran, having worked in leadership roles for RealNetworks, Apple, T-Mobile, Discovery, and Best Buy.

Triple Squirrels plans to launch EVRGRN on other streaming platforms later this year. It makes money with revenue from ads and sponsorships. The company has two employees and raised cash from a private investor in Los Angeles.

Skerritt previously founded and led another Seattle-based digital media company called Heyou Media, but shut the firm down at the end of 2019.

Skerritt has appeared in dozens of films and series, including “Alien” and “Steel Magnolias.” He studied English at Wayne State University and UCLA. Skerritt has lived in the Northwest since the 1980s.

More people are streaming media due to the pandemic and social distancing mandates. A recent study from Deloitte found demand increasing for cheaper, ad-supported streaming video options such as STIRR, Variety reported.

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SpaceX launches 57 stealth satellites for Starlink network, plus a pair for BlackSky

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from its Florida launch pad. (SpaceX via YouTube)

After weeks of delay, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sent up 57 more satellites for its Starlink broadband internet constellation, with two BlackSky planet-watching satellites hitching a ride.

The launch was originally scheduled for June, but had to be put off several times due to technical concerns, weather delays and range schedule conflicts. This time around, the countdown proceeded smoothly to liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 1:12 a.m. ET Aug. 7 (10:12 p.m..PT Aug. 6).

Minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s second stage separated from the first-stage booster and headed onward to orbit. The booster flew itself back to a touchdown on a drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean — a rocket recovery procedure that has now become routine. The satellites were successfully deployed from the second stage over the course of an hour and a half.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellites were manufactured at the company’s facility in Redmond, Wash. They represent the first full batch of spacecraft outfitted with sunshades to reduce the glare from their antennas. The “Visor Sat” design was developed to respond to concerns about past satellites’ interference with astronomical observations.

Nearly 600 Starlink spacecraft are now in orbit, thanks to this 10th launch in a series. That brings SpaceX ever closer to the start of limited commercial service, which was promised as early as this year. Eventually, Starlink aims to provide global broadband internet access, and there are military applications as well.

BlackSky, which has offices in Seattle as well as Virginia, arranged to have two of its 110-pound Earth observation satellites flown on this mission with Seattle-based Spaceflight Inc.’s assistance, under the terms of SpaceX’s Smallsat Rideshare Program. These are the fifth and sixth satellites in what’s expected to amount to a 16-satellite Global constellation by early next year.

They’re the first satellites to be built for BlackSky at LeoStella’s factory in Tukwila, Wash. BlackSky is a subsidiary of Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries, while LeoStella is a 50-50 joint venture involving Spaceflight Industries and Europe’s Thales Alenia Space.

BlackSky’s Global satellites are already providing rapid-response pictures of Earth, as demonstrated by this week’s release of imagery showing the devastation in Beirut within 24 hours of the deadly blast. The venture is one of the recipients of study contracts from the National Reconnaissance Office, which is assessing the use of commercial Earth imagery for national security purposes.

GeekWire’s coverage this week is underwritten by BCRA

As you plan for the future, consider what spaces will cultivate employee engagement, reflect your brand, and advance your goals. Digital work will continue, but it can’t recreate the energy that physical proximity offers. Think of it this way, you can listen to an album or go to a concert. You’re hearing the same music, but each experience is unique. The same is true for a workplace, and we can help you reimagine your office to maximize your investment.

Hear more about how to rethink your future workspace here

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Inspired by son’s health issues, Seattle entrepreneur launches at-home ear-nose-throat monitor

Jane Zhang. (Remmie Health Photos)

Jane Zhang knew there had to be a better way.

Despite extra attention on hygiene and eating healthy, Zhang’s 2-year-old son was constantly getting ear infections and catching the common cold after starting childcare. He was forced to go through multiple rounds of antibiotics, several misdiagnoses, and many hours inside various doctor’s offices.

With a background in biomedical engineering and healthcare product R&D, Zhang began tinkering away in her garage. She wanted access to an ear-nose-throat (ENT) tool, similar to a otoscope used in doctor’s offices for decades, but one that could be used by parents inside their own home.

Fast forward to today and Zhang is now heading up a new Seattle startup called Remmie Health. The company is gearing up to launch its ENT monitor for families to assess symptoms such as an earache and communicate with health professionals via telemedicine.

The device can take images and videos of ENT-related issues, with that info sent to Remmie’s digital platform that can be accessed by doctors and nurses during a virtual visit. The idea is to get professional advice without needing to leave the home.

“We intend to become the go-to household brand for ENT ailment self-care,” Zhang said.

Zhang said ear infections are the most common reason for sick child visits, and said 30% of children between ages 0-6 have at least three or more infections per year, according to the National Institute of Health.

Remmie plans to make money by selling the device and sharing profit with telemedicine partners for recurring revenue.

The Seattle startup has landed more than $100,000 in initial funding, including capital from Silicon Valley firm Plug and Play Ventures.

Remmie is one of many telemedicine startups aiming to ride the trend of virtual healthcare that has accelerated amid the pandemic, as it enables treatment without forcing patients to come inside a physical office and risk exposure to COVID-19.

Zhang was previously a senior manager at Amgen and a healthcare consultant at ZS. She earned an MBA from UCLA and a PhD in biomedical engineering from Boston University. Zhang is currently an affiliate assistant professor at the University of Washington.

Other employees at Remmie Health include Zhan Wang, a Groupon and Concur veteran, and Zaris Shen, a former designer with Seattle startup AdaptiLab.

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