This morning, Portland-based Chirpify (www.chirpify.com) announced its first funding round, for its platform which enables e-commerce transactions directly over Twitter. We talked with CEO and Founder Chris Teso, who explained how the company's service really makes it easier to sell and purchase items directly from Twitter, and how the company came about.

Can you explain how Chirpify works?


Chris Teso: What we do, at our core, is enable transactions in your stream on Twitter.

Sometimes, it's difficult for people to find good financial advice, and you end up turning to your more knowledgeable friends for help. For Bo Lu and Jon Xu, they ended up being the more knowledgeable friends, and were constantly being asked for investment help. Tired of having everyone they know ask them that help, Bo and Jon, the founders of FutureAdvisor (www.futureadvisor.

Enterprise IT managers don't have it easy nowadays. It used to be a world of a few servers, storage, and a fixed network, and occasional firefighting of network issues, databases, and applications. Now, you've got virtual servers popping up everywhere, cloud based storage and compute resources, migrating resources across and enterprise, mobile devices, dynamic web applications, and much more. How do you get a handle on all of that? Seattle-based ExtraHop (www.extrahop.

Limeade (www.limeade.com) is a Bellevue-based startup which is tackling the employee health and wellness market. The firm is headed by Henry Albrecht, who previously worked at Intuit, and the firm's board includes John Keister of Marchex, Chris Ackerley of Ackerley Partners. We thought it would be interesting to catch up with Henry to hear about how the company is doing.


Describe what Limeade does?

Henry Albrecht: Limeade is a corporate wellness business.

Earlier this week, Seattle-based Dynotag (www.dynotag.com) announced the launch of its service, which uses the now ubiquitous QR codes, and puts a consumer spin on them. We talked with Murat Divringi, CEO of the company, to learn more about what exactly the company hopes its QR code tag products can do for consumers, and why the firm thinks QR codes are ready to gain the attention of consumers for their own use.

The online, daily deals and offers market is a very competitive one, with major companies like Groupon and LivingSocial--plus countless others--looking to occupy the space. Portland-based Forkfly (www.forkfly.com) is looking to take a different angle on the market, helping to enable local publishers to create their own, deal sites. We spoke with founder Paul Wagner about the company.

Yesterday, Seattle-based Verdiem (www.verdiem.com) announced new support for the Mac for its power management software. We thought it might be interesting to catch up with the company and where it is nowadays, so we spoke with John Scumniotales, the firm's CEO.

Today, Seattle-based Mpire announced it renamed itself AdXpose (www.adxpose.com), and gained a new funding round. To hear more about the company name change and funding, we spoke with Kirby Winfield, CEO of AdXpose:

First, for those not familiar with what you're doing now with AdXpose, what does your company do?

Kirby Winfield: We're an advertising analytics solution. What that means is our mission is to collect, structure, and make actionable digital advertising data.

Last week, Seattle-based Skytap (www.skytap.com) announced another round of funding, $10M in a Series C funding, for the firm's cloud automation software efforts. To hear more about the company, we spoke with Scott Roza, CEO of the firm, along with Sundar Raghavan, Chief Product and Marketing Officer.

How does Skytap fit into the cloud automation software market?

Sundar Raghavan: The cloud computing market is a broad term, and there are lots of companies playing different roles.

Yesterday, Portland-based Urban Airship (www.urbanairship.com) announced it just closed a new $5.4M Series B round of funding. We caught up with Urban Airship's CEO, Scott Kveton, to hear more about the company as well as the funding round.

What is Urban Airship all about?

Scott Kveton: Urban Airship today powers some of the world's most successful mobile apps.

For this morning's interview and profile, we thought we'd chat with Matt Compton, CEO of Portland-based ShopIgniter (www.shopigniter.com), a developer of social e-commerce software. We spoke with Matt about what the firm is all about.

What is ShopIgniter?

Matt Compton: We're a social commerce software company, at a very high level. We believe that the social web is helping to transform e-commerce, and our software helps brand retailers to take advantage of that.

This morning, Bellevue-based Apptio (www.apptio.com) announced it had raised $16.5M in a Series C funding round for the firm, as it looks to expand and grow--despite still sitting on funding from its last rounds. To gain more insight into why the firm is raising funding, as well as to hear about how the firm has already been seeing great growth in the past year, we talked with Sunny Gupta, the firm's CEO.

Sunny, thanks for the time today.

This morning, Cheezburger Network, the Internet content publishing firm behind I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL blog, and a network of other similar Internet meme sites, just announced it had hired a new CFO. To catch up to what the firm's up to, we chatted with founder Ben Huh. (Photo courtesy Eugene Hsu)

Before we talk about the business, did you ever get an apology from Meg Whitman about stealing the use of FAIL blog?

Ben Huh: No, none so far.

Last month, Seattle-based MicroGREEN Polymers, a developer of plastics technology, announced that it had raised $6.9M in a funding round from Waste Management, WRF Capital, Northwest Energy Angels, and other investors. We recently caught up with Tom Malone, the firm's CEO, to learn more about the company's technology.
What is MicroGREEN all about?
Tom Malone: The basic vision is the idea of taking recycled plastic - P.E.T.

In our interview today, we chatted with Brian Goffman and Erez Barak, co-founders of Optify (www.optify.net), which is venture backed by Madrona Ventures, to learn more about the company and where it fits into the SEO and Internet Marketing area. Optify's local customers include AdReady, SchemaLogic, and Ubermind, along with a number of other firms.

This morning, Seattle-based Doxo (www.doxo.com) announced the launch of its firm, which is focused on solving that gap between all those people who pay their bills electronically, but still are getting paper statements. We spoke with Steve Shivers, CEO the firm, to learn more about the company, its team, and what it's hoping to do for the market.

Steve, thanks for sitting down with us. What's the story behind the company?

Steve Shivers: We started Doxo in late 2008.

As part of our news coverage, we are regularly profiling local high tech firms to hear what they are working on. For our profile today, we spoke with Nathan Rothman, founder and CEO of Seattle-based Optimum Energy (www.optimumenergyhvac.com), a firm which develops software to help manage energy usage in commercial buildings.

What is the idea behind Optimum Energy?

Nathan Rothman: We are in the HVAC -- heating, ventilation, air conditioning -- sector.

We recently ran into Kelsie Greear, the founder of Seattle-based Cheese9 (www.cheese9.com), an online community site focused on community. We caught up with Kelsie to hear more about his startup, as part of our ongoing interviews with local startups and companies.

This morning, Seattle-based Zulily (www.zulily.com) announced it had received a Series A funding from Maveron, for a new startup focused on private-sales of products for kids, babies, and busy moms. The firm's co-founders--Darrell Cavens and Mark Vadon-- are both previously from Blue Nile. We spoke with Cavens, the firm's CEO, about the new company and its funding.

Thanks for the time. What is Zulily all about?

Darrell Cavens: We're really excited to be announcing our new site Zulily.

Today, Portland-based JanRain (www.janrain.com) announced it has raised $3.25M in a Series A funding round from DFJ Frontier, RPM Ventures, and Anthem Venture Partners. We caught up with the firm's CEO, Brian Kissel, to hear more about the firm and the funding.

As part of our coverage, we regularly run interview with local companies and entrepreneurs. Today's interview is with Aaron Finn, CEO of AdReady (www.adready.com), who tells us a bit about AdReady and how it fits into the online advertising market.
Tell us a bit about AdReady?
Aaron Finn: We're really trying, at a very high level, to make display advertising as accessible as search advertising. We're really opening up the demand for display advertising.

This morning, Seattle-based AppBank (www.appbank.com) announced that it has created a new service which allows people to easily create their own applications in Facebook, and share in ad revenues from those applications. The firm is the latest startup of Fred Hsu, a serial entrepreneur who recently moved up here to Seattle, and previously had success as co-founder of Los Angeles-based Oversee.net. Fred is CEO and President of the firm, and talked with us last week about today's launch.

Redmond-based MobUI (www.mobui.com) develops mobile applications, and just announced that it has scored a round of funding, and acquired Action Engine. We sat down with John Burry, the firm's CEO and co-founder, last week ahead of its news today to get some insight into the company.

What does MobUI do?

John Burry: Myself and my co-founder came from Action Engine.

A few weeks ago, MOD Systems (www.modsystems.com) announced a big venture capital raise--the firm's first--for the company's retail systems for selling music and videos. To get some insight into the firm, we spoke with Anthony Bay, the firm's Vice-Chairman and co-founder, to learn more.

Today's interview is with T.A. McCann, CEO and founder of Seattle-based Gist (www.gist.com). Gist is a startup which is connecting email with information about the people sending those emails, and is funded by Vulcan Capital. McCann spoke with us about what the firm is about, how the firm came about, and what it is hoping to do.

Can you describe what Gist is, and how it works?

T.A. McCann: Gist is where your inbox meets the web.

Today's interview is with Derek Johnson, founder of an angel-funded startup, Tatango (www.tatango.com), the latest incarnation of Derek's firm networkText. Tatango is an instant messaging service focused on connecting groups together, which recently launched a public beta of its services. The firm has scored funding from the Bellingham Angels. Tatango is based in Bellingham, Washington, which is about an hour outside of Seattle.

Yesterday, Seattle-based Adapx (www.adapx.com) announced it had raised a strategic funding round from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm, for the firm's pen input software and products. To get a better idea on what the company's products do, and to learn more about why In-Q-Tel invested in the firm, we spoke with Ken Schneider, the firm's CEO and President, yesterday.

Seattle-based Wishpot Inc. (www.wishpot.com) operates a free social shopping Web service that helps consumers create, share and compare shopping lists. As users navigate the Internet, they can utilize Wishpot’s browser plug-in to bookmark and organize the merchandise they find most appealing, thereby creating virtual wishlists that they can keep to themselves or discuss with others.

Seattle-based Delve Networks (www.delvenetworks.com), formerly Pluggd, announced its name change and a shift from podcast tools to software for publishing videos online yesterday, so we thought it would be interesting to talk with Alex Castro, the firm's CEO, about the reasons behind the change in direction, his opinion on the podcast market, and what the firm is now focused on.