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The sun sets on Spokane Falls, as viewed from the Monroe Street Bridge. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
SPOKANE, Wash. — Treasury4 is tapped into the power and history of this place.
The headquarters of the financial and treasury data analytics startup, in the Wonder Building, runs on electricity from the nearby hydroelectric dam on Spokane Falls. Co-founder and CEO Steve Helmbrecht likes to point out that Treasury4 makes its technology with help from the region’s abundant renewable energy.
Another of Treasury4’s co-founders, Chief Product Officer Ed Barrie, has been spending time in the building since he was a kid. His late father, Richard Barrie, worked there for 22 years as controller for the former Wonder Bread plant.
Barrie remembers crawling around under the ovens with his brothers to pick up promotional trading cards that hadn’t made it into the plastic Wonder Bread sleeves.
Inside Treasury4, with the Spokane Falls power plant in the background. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Working in the building now, there’s “just a bit of nostalgia,” Barrie says.
It’s one of those “only in Spokane” stories that have made the Inland Northwest such a fun and fascinating place to cover in this “GeekWire on the Road” series.
On my most recent visit, I stayed in Spokane’s historic downtown, strolled through the Kendall Yards Night Market, explored the Expo ’74 50th Anniversary exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, enjoyed some great restaurants and coffee shops, did a little thrifting, and talked with tech and business leaders about what’s next for the region’s innovation economy.
Here are my takeaways as we wrap up this special series, including some emerging stories and themes that we’ll continue to track as part of our regular coverage.
Efforts to unite the broader region are gaining momentum.
A large crowd turned out for an event held by LaunchPad Inland Northwest at MØDE in Liberty Lake, where entrepreneur Luke Kjar is turning a former HP/Agilent campus into a regional destination with co-working spaces, exercise facilities, education, healthcare, and other services.
A full house in Liberty Lake for a LaunchPad Inland Northwest event. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
The site is along Interstate 90 between Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Kjar sees it as the right location to bring people from across the region together. His plan is to offer a comprehensive subscription for on-site services, programs, and amenities.
This regional vision dovetails with the goals of LaunchPad, which runs mentorship programs and community events and is partnering with MØDE, as well.
LaunchPad is led by Bill Kalivas, a Google Cloud sales executive who has revived the community organization as part of the tech giant’s 20% initiative.
As one of its upcoming projects, LaunchPad plans to revisit and update a 2003 report by a consulting group that outlined a strategic plan for developing the innovation economy in Spokane and the Inland Northwest.
The report focused on regional collaboration, enhancing research capacities, fostering an entrepreneurial culture, and increasing investment capital to drive technological innovation and high-wage job creation. It emphasized the need for strong leadership, education, and cooperation among key stakeholders.
Bill Kalivas of LaunchPad Inland Northwest, left, with Luke Kjar of MØDE. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
The 2003 report happens to have been written by another Treasury4 co-founder, Nathan Brown, earlier in his career. The goal in updating the report is to be purposeful about leveraging the region’s strengths, Kalivas said.
“A lot of the assets are here,” Kalivas said. Refreshing the report will “give us more clear sight of what we’re working towards, and tactical things we need to do.”
In the meantime, as part of its startup and entrepreneur mentorship, LaunchPad plans to put a greater emphasis on helping fledgling companies in the region build their sales pipelines and attract customers.
‘Boomerangs’ and newcomers are making an impact.
Julian Guthrie, founder and CEO of AI communication company Alphy, is a former journalist who grew up in Spokane and has returned to the region after 20 years in the Bay Area. She’s part of a trend of Spokane natives coming back to the area, helping to fuel the startup ecosystem.
Speaking on the panel at the LaunchPad event, Guthrie said she has been struck by how much has stayed the same in the area, including the natural beauty, which she described as inspiring to her as an entrepreneur and founder.
Julian Guthrie, founder and CEO of AI communication company Alphy, at the LaunchPad Inland Northwest event. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
But the tech community has grown noticeably, Guthrie said, describing the opportunities she has found to collaborate and connect with other entrepreneurs.
“It’s not just nascent anymore,” she said. “It’s pretty established.”
Further illustrating the influx, Guthrie appeared on the panel with two newcomers to the region: Susan Newman, CEO of Washington State University spinoff Integrated Lipid Biofuels; and Jim Morrisroe, CEO at 15Five, a performance management tech platform for HR leaders and workplace managers.
Moderating with Kalivas was Jessica Simpkins, founder of the nonprofit Let’s Build a Community, who moved to Spokane two years ago.
So what can be done to further strengthen the region’s tech ecosystem? Answering that question from Kalivas at the event, Guthrie pointed to the example of Silicon Valley, which combines great educational institutions and a “think different” spirit, plus a strong community of venture capital and angel investors to fund great ideas.
Many of those elements exist in Spokane, and just need to be further developed in the months and years ahead, as we reported in our opening story in this series.
Leaders have identified a gap in computer science education.
Despite the presence of top academic institutions in the Spokane area, one challenge has been ensuring that computer science students graduate not just with theoretical knowledge but practical skills for the jobs in the region.
Mark Michaelis, the CEO and chief software architect of IntelliTect. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Mark Michaelis, CEO and chief software architect of IntelliTect, a Spokane-area software architecture and development consulting firm, said his eyes were opened to the gap when he interviewed top computer science graduates from the region in the past and realized they weren’t qualified for the positions he was trying to fill.
He and his colleagues decided to help solve the problem, and they now teach a year-long series of three classes at Eastern Washington University for juniors and seniors majoring in computer science.
Areas of focus include problem-solving skills, modern development approaches like DevOps, best practices for product ownership and product definition inside organizations, and other practical aspects of tech jobs.
Separately, Eastern has received a $1 million grant from Google to establish a cybersecurity clinic.
A longtime Spokane investor is exploring a “startup studio” concept.
In comparing the Spokane tech community to our home turf in Seattle, one of my takeaways was that the Inland Northwest lacks something similar to Pioneer Square Labs or Madrona Venture Labs. At these startup studios, investors, tech veterans and others generate, vet, and test ideas, and build startups around the best of them.
Tom Simpson has noticed this missing from Spokane, too.
Tom Simpson at the Ignite Loft in downtown Spokane. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Simpson, the entrepreneur and investor who leads the Spokane Angel Alliance, met with members of the Pioneer Square Labs team on a visit to Seattle to learn more about their approach. Simpson said he’s now exploring this as a future direction for Ignite Northwest, the tech and startup community organization that he also leads.
“It’s a work in process,” he said. “We are going to be identifying people with ideas, or founders who have a skill set, to begin vetting and starting our own companies versus reacting to somebody who comes to us with a plan.”
Further cementing this Seattle-Spokane connection, T.A. McCann, a managing director at Pioneer Square Labs, will be the keynote speaker at this year’s Sparks Weekend startup event, which is taking place Nov. 15-17 in Spokane.
(Note: Simpson assembled the group of organizations that provided underwriting support for this “GeekWire on the Road” series about Spokane, which GeekWire’s editorial team reported and produced independently.)
The small-town charm persists.
As documented in the second story in the series, Spokane has seen its population grow due in part to the rise of remote work, starting to chip away at the much-touted affordability that helped to make the region attractive.
But even with the influx, the tech scene feels like a tight-knit community.
Personifying this trait is June Swatzell, co-founder of the startup OrganicNearby, which offers a marketplace where people can find locally grown produce and buy directly from farmers, without fees for consumers or vendors.
June Swatzell, co-founder of the startup OrganicNearby. (Photo courtesy June Swatzell.)
Swatzell, who likes to say that “entrepreneurs are everywhere,” is one of numerous people who patiently helped this reporter from Seattle get up to speed on the Spokane region’s startup community as part of this series.
She found me at the LaunchPad event in Liberty Lake to hand me a gift bag of homemade candied pecans and locally grown peppermint tea. Safe to say I’ve never experienced that at a tech event in Seattle!
Spokane’s aerospace ambitions may take more time to develop.
Larger tech markets tend to benefit from their clear depth in specific verticals, such as enterprise, cloud and artificial intelligence in the Seattle region. Spokane’s sectors of strength aren’t as well-formed at this stage.
The leaders of Spokane’s American Aerospace Materials Manufacturing Center Tech Hub have selected a 386,000-square-foot facility as its HQ. (ATC Manufacturing Photo)
Aerospace technology is one potential area of growth for the region. However, ambitions to develop an advanced aerospace materials tech hub in the region experienced a setback this month when Spokane’s initiative wasn’t among the recipients in a funding round announced by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Leaders of the Inland Northwest Tech Hub have vowed to press on with their plans, saying no region is better positioned to meet the upcoming demand for lightweight, environmentally friendly aerospace parts.
But healthcare technology stands out as a signature of Spokane tech.
The region benefits, for example, from the presence of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies Selkirk Pharma and Jubilant HollisterStier. There are also major educational institutions — the University of Washington School of Medicine, and Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine in Spokane.
One widely cited example in this realm is Gestalt, a healthcare company that offers a solution for pathologists to analyze tissue samples digitally rather than using a traditional microscope. The approach allows for real-time collaboration and faster diagnosis, integrating AI and machine learning for improved cancer detection.
Dan Roark, the company’s CEO, grew up in Spokane, graduating with degrees in biochemistry and bioengineering from Whitworth University and Washington State University before leaving to build his career in life sciences in North Carolina and California. He was able to return to Spokane in 2002.
Back then, 22 years ago, there was very little startup activity in Spokane, but that has changed dramatically in recent years, said Roark, who is also an investor through the Spokane Angel Alliance and its Kickstart program.
Dan Roark, CEO of Gestalt, at the company’s Spokane HQ in February. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
At the same time, the region’s workforce is benefitting from students coming out of Gonzaga University, Whitworth University, Eastern Washington University, and branches of the UW and WSU. Gestalt employs people across the country and internationally, but its core team is in Spokane.
Especially with the talent coming out of the universities, Spokane has “a great culture of up-and-comers that we can pull in and put into our dev teams,” Roark said.
One of the initiatives established to support bioscience development in the region is a matching grant program run by the Health Sciences and Services Authority (HSSA) of Spokane County, funded by sales tax revenue. Gestalt received a $250,000 grant through that program in April.
It’s not hard to find pockets of tech and startup activity.
In Seattle, it’s common to overhear tech people discussing cloud services or AI foundation models. Tech culture hasn’t infiltrated Spokane to that extent. But there are places where startups are the hot topic of conversation.
Examples include the Indaba coffee shop downtown. It benefits in part from its position below the Ignite Loft, home of Ignite Northwest. I ran into several entrepreneurs and investors when meeting for coffee at Indaba with Skye Henderson, who leads Cowles Co.’s investment fund, Cowles Ventures.
Skye Henderson of Cowles Ventures at the Indaba coffee shop. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Asked to assess the Spokane startup community, and where it’s headed, Henderson said there are tons of ideas bouncing around, and plenty of budding entrepreneurs who want to be part of the community. At the same time, several organizations are working hard to incubate, fund, and support founders and startups.
“Launchpad and Ignite are just on the cusp of really pulling that all together,” he said. “In three to five years, I’d like it to be humming so efficiently that an entrepreneur doesn’t have any question about where to go.”
On the engineering side of things, there’s also talk of bringing the region’s broader technical community together in a more cohesive way.
Software engineer Joe Riddle, organizer of the Spokane Python User Group, has been exploring this concept, and we chatted about it when we met at the LaunchPad event (which had great networking in addition to a solid program).
Spokane startups often defy convention when it comes to innovation.
That theme came through strongly earlier this year on a tour of Spiceology, the Spokane-based spice company — almost as strongly as the smell of chili in the air that made this visitor from Seattle sneeze.
Spiceology CEO Darby McLean inside the company’s plant and warehouse in Spokane. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Darby McLean, the Spiceology CEO, showed innovations including single-serve sachets, customizable and configurable automated production lines, and commercial brewing equipment that nitrogen-doses cans of specialized spice blends, giving them a satisfying and familiar pressure release when popped open.
The company, founded in 2013 by chef Pete Taylor and food blogger Heather Scholten, is known for its “Periodic Table of Flavor” and packaging design that organizes spices by color and a two-letter code.
The company sells its products directly to chefs and consumers online, and through major retailers such as Costco and Walmart. It also supplies hospitality businesses including vacation rentals and timeshares.
“There’s tech everywhere here,” McLean said of Spiceology’s operations. “Mechanical, electrical engineering, all throughout our facility, it’s part of our day-to-day life. And then when you talk about how you sell products and how products get to consumers, there’s an enormous amount of technology.”
Spokane has some great resources for startups and entrepreneurs.
One of my favorite stops on my latest trip was the Spokane Public Library.
Studio spaces available for public use at the Spokane Public Library. (Click to enlarge.)
First, I was blown away by the studios and equipment available for the public to reserve and use for free at the library downtown. I can imagine startups benefitting from these spaces and equipment on all sorts of projects.
More to the point, the Spokane Public Library is the home of Startup Spokane, which offers a free co-working space at the downtown library that also provides access to business tools and databases that would normally require costly subscriptions, including the Bloomberg Terminal, PitchBook, and other business resources.
Mark Pond, a business research librarian at the Spokane Public Library, oversees the Startup Spokane initiative. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Startup Spokane is overseen by Mark Pond, a business research librarian, who gave me a tour of the library and outlined his current projects when we sat down in his office on my recent visit.
Further building out Startup Spokane’s community calendar for business events and networking opportunities.
Exploring the feasibility of creating a local investment platform that would allow Spokane-area investors to more easily fund and support local companies, especially Main Street businesses that may not attract venture capital.
Seeking to establish an endowment to fund the library’s access to business research tools and databases.
Expanding the reach of Startup Spokane by partnering with the Spokane County Library District.
Startup Spokane has been through various incarnations over the years, before coming under the purview of the Spokane Public Library last year.
Pond has been in his role as business research librarian since 2006. He likens Spokane’s startup community to a living organism, still coming into its own.
“We’ve got the connective tissue, and we’ve got the muscle,” he said. “It’s just that the whole being hasn’t quite popped into existence yet.”
