Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs
From top left, clockwise: Esterre founder Michael Burns; Tmind AI founder Cindy Nie; Actual AI co-founder John Kennedy; CopyCat co-founder Graham Sabin; Phishgrad co-founder Sidney Rice; and Runner founder Art Litvinau.
We’re back with another spotlight of up-and-coming Seattle tech startups. This edition features five companies building software to support therapists, real estate agents, and more.
Check out past startup radar spotlights here, and email us at [email protected] to flag other companies and startup news.
Actual AI
Actual AI automates the performance review process for engineering managers. It has developed a productivity metric based on work done by developers and also provides summaries for teams and individual engineers. The company has 23 pilot customers and three paying customers, and recently joined the Alchemist Accelerator in San Francisco.
Co-founder John Kennedy, a tech industry vet who worked at Amazon Web Services and Acquia, launched the startup with Ethan Byrd, a former engineer at AWS, Google, Meta, and Microsoft.
CopyCat
CopyCat, part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 cohort, helps businesses automate repetitive browser-based tasks. Users describe workflows in natural language, and CopyCat’s “browser agents” handle the rest. A medical company uses CopyCat, for example, to sync electronic health data to their own product.
Founded by Abhi Balijepalli, Graham Sabin, and Zyad Elgohary, the team previously built Platter, a “Shopify for restaurants” company. “If browser agents scale as rapidly as voice agents have, we envision a future where APIs become obsolete — no more sifting through documentation or writing code, just a simple request to a browser agent to get the job done,” Balijepalli said.
Esterre
Esterre is rethinking the vacation home business with a flexible ownership model that allows people to buy equity in a portfolio of properties across Washington state. The company is working with Windermere Real Estate and uses custom software for reservation and management of properties. Esterre is similar to Pacaso, a real estate startup co-founded by former Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff that reached a billion-dollar valuation in 2021.
Esterre launched in January and is led by Michael Burns, a former exec with Disney Vacation Club. Burns calls Esterre “a new concept tailored to today’s customer.”
Phishgrad
Phishgrad aims to protect consumers from online scams, which are proliferating amid advances in scam technology and organized online markets. The bootstrapped startup recently launched a free browser extension for Google Chrome that flags suspicious emails.
Phishgrad is led by CEO Sidney Rice, a former Seattle Seahawks receiver and serial entrepreneur, and Chief Product Officer Sidney James, a tech industry vet who founded Seattle startup Inyore. “We have a very simple mission: to provide everyone with the same high-quality technology security resources as your favorite large company,” James said.
Runner
Runner automates the manual work of junior commercial real estate brokers, freeing up senior brokers to build relationships and close deals. The software handles tasks such as scheduling and creating surveys.
Runner is led by Art Litvinau, who co-founded supply chain software startup Craft.co. He’s also a co-founder at Foundations, a Seattle startup community that launched last year. “What separates good brokers from great ones? Responsiveness and speed,” Litvinau wrote on LinkedIn. “This is where we come in: we handle all the work that typically slows brokers down.”
Tmind AI
Tmind helps therapists sharpen their counseling skills through interactive AI-powered chat sessions that use real-world scenarios. The company is launching pilot programs at universities this year, with plans to expand to mental health organizations.
Tmind is led by CEO Cindy Nie, who previously founded online therapy platform One Healing Space. She was also an instructor at the University of Toronto and Western University. “By improving accessibility and effectiveness, Tmind AI aims to equip future therapists with better skills, ultimately addressing the global mental health crisis,” Nie said.
