— Neal Singh is hopping from one Seattle-area unicorn to another.
Singh was recently named president and COO of Zenoti, a Bellevue, Wash.-based provider of technology services to spas, fitness centers and other beauty and wellness businesses. He recently spent five years as COO of Bellevue-based Icertis, a contract management startup that was reportedly valued at $5 billion in 2021.
“With Neal, we have someone with the leadership ability and passion to ensure that all Zenoti customers continue to outpace the industry in revenue and profit growth,” said Zenoti CEO Sudheer Koneru.
Zenoti, with more than 25,000 customers, was valued at more than $1 billion after raising a $160 million funding round in 2020. At the time, it had 12,000 customers. (See earlier GeekWire story: No new unicorns in Seattle: The billion-dollar startup milestone is harder to reach these days).
Singh said he was attracted to Zenoti’s innovative culture and rapid growth, noting that the company is expanding its core software solutions into areas like payments, supply chain and fintech.
Singh previously served as president and CEO of Caradigm, a healthcare joint venture created by Microsoft and GE Healthcare. Before that, Singh worked at Microsoft for more than a decade, including stints in the Dynamics Enterprise ERP group.
— Speaking of executive changes at Icertis, Seth Nesbitt recently stepped down from his executive role at the company. Nesbitt spent seven years at Icertis, most recently serving as head of purpose, values and culture. Before that, he held the position of chief marketing officer. He previously worked in marketing roles at Parallels and Amdocs.
— Seattle biotech company Nautilus Biotechnology hired Martin Huber as vice president of biochemistry and flow cell development. Huber previously was CEO of Quantapore and was a senior scientist at Nanosphere.
— Karandeep Anand was promoted to president at Brex, the San Francisco-based enterprise finance software startup. Anand, who is based in Seattle, was previously chief product officer. He joined Brex last year after engineering leadership stints at Microsoft and Meta. Brex has more than 200 employees in the Pacific Northwest, and more than 60 in the Seattle area.
“As we look toward the future, we’re opportunistically hiring AI talent as we see a large concentration of them in
Seattle,” Anand tells GeekWire.
— Seattle blockchain veteran Arry Yu was named executive director for the U.S. Blockchain Coalition, a spinout of the Washington Technology Industry Association that just merged with the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC). Yu is also now head of strategy in the U.S. for the GBBC.
— Dhileep Sivam and Volha Hrechka are joining the University of Washington’s Washington Clean Energy Testbeds as entrepreneurs-in-residence. The testbeds are an open-access facility for developing clean energy technologies.
Sivam worked at Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy where he helped develop a model for carbon emissions reductions, and was a director at Intellectual Ventures. Hrechka joins from the Creative Destruction Lab, a global startup program at the University of Toronto.
— Seattle public relations executive Roger Nyhus was confirmed by the U.S. Senate this week as U.S. Ambassador to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, 14 months after receiving the nomination from President Joe Biden.
“I will be a strong and unwavering advocate for all Americans, American business and innovation, and our important diplomatic relationships,” Nyhus wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Nyhus founded Nyhus Communications in 1994, representing a number of non-profit organizations, political candidates and technology companies such as Teledesic and Nextel. The firm was acquired last year by Spokane, Wash. communications firm DH.
In the LinkedIn post, Nyhus said his official title is: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Barbados, the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
