Seattle-based inventors apply AI to music videos, real estate, debugging, and more – GeekWire
From fitness machines to AI voice agents to automated debugging, our latest Startup Radar spotlight reveals Seattle-area innovators who are solving problems in every type of application.
Read on for brief descriptions of each company — and a pitch assessment from “Mean VC,” a GPT-sponsored critic who offers a mix of encouragement and constructive feedback.
Check out the Startup Radar post here, as well as the email [email protected] flagging other companies and startup news.
Carry
Established: 2024
Business: A strength training company starting with a line of stylish weighted vests for women, and broadly targeting the fem-tech longevity sector. It’s shipping pre-orders to customers this spring, priced at $299, and is growing for friends and family.
Leadership: CEO Esther Sedgwick spent ten years at Microsoft in marketing leadership roles and was head of B2B marketing for Seattle startups Statsig and Convoy. Founder Cortney Bigelow was a marketing manager at TUNE and a marketing editor at Nordstrom.
VC said: “Great place, but the $299 vest is easy to copy and ‘longevity’ is too vague to emphasize repeat demand. Pick one clear customer segment, prove results with a simple plan + data, and close trainer/clinic relationships to go beyond Instagram.”
Color42
Established: 2025
Business: AI that automatically turns a song into a shareable video. It’s aimed at artists, content creators, labels, and creative agencies who need quick, repeatable video content for music marketing. The product was launched in November and has over 1,000 users across both free and paid plans.
Leadership: CEO Prince Bajracharya was a product leader at Google and Microsoft. CTO Silviu Andrei spent more than seven years at Amazon working on computer vision.
VC said: “Nice wedge, but ‘shareable video track’ is a crowded feature set. Retarget one buyer (indie artists vs. labels/agencies), prove weekly repeatability, and build a separate template/style engine and distribution hooks (TikTok/IG/YouTube) so it’s not just a one-click trick.”
Logcat.ai
Established: 2025
Business: Log analysis software for Android and Linux systems that automatically troubleshoots problems for device manufacturers and business teams that manage a large number of devices. The company has more than 200 developers using its platform and has many paying customers.
Leadership: Varun Chitre spent more than eight years in various engineering roles at Seattle startup Esper.
VC said: “Automating fleets is a real, expensive problem, but ‘analyzing the logs’ is indefensible unless you’re better than existing visualization stacks and worst-case in-house documentation. Focus on one high-value fleet use case, prove ROI with existing test/expansion playbook and existing playbook. It doesn’t stop at ‘good tool.'”
The Rockhood
Established: 2025
Business: Voice AI software for real estate agents. It helps buyers explore buying and selling and matches you with professionals. The software includes Multiple Listing Services and is located in Washington and Arizona with hundreds of active users; A consumer app for iOS is coming soon.
Leadership: Founder and CEO Monica Li is a real estate agent who has worked at Flyhomes and LinkedIn. CTO Wei Lu was a senior applied scientist at Meta and Amazon.
VC said: “Voice agents for real estate are tempting, but it’s an honest, heavy-handed, sales pitch where ‘matching with an expert’ turns into a loud game of lead-gen with ugly economics.” or sellers), prove that you can drive qualified appointments that close to a small set of seller partners, and rely on MLS+ driven accuracy and compliance as your arbiter instead of another chat app.”
Tambo
Established: 2024
Business: The open source toolkit is positioned for business use cases that allow AI agents to respond with interactive charts, calendars, and forms – beyond just text – directly within the product’s existing interface. It’s used by developers at companies like Zapier, Rocket Money, and Solink. Investors include The General Partnership, Convoy founder Dan Lewis, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, and VSCO CEO Eric Wittman.
Leadership: Co-founders Michael Magán and Michael Milstead met at the AI Tinkerers event in Seattle. Magán previously worked at Indeed, Convoy, and TaxBit. Milstead worked at Microsoft.
VC said: “It’s a strong concept — agents need UI, not just text — but open source alone won’t protect you if this becomes a checkbox feature for big platforms. Focus on the managed business layer (security, auditing, analytics), choose one workflow to manage, and turn it into an automatic ‘agent UI’ integration in a few big ecosystems.”
Tarka
.It was established: 2023
Business: “AI-first GTM engineering” for startups aimed at automating revenue functions such as lead generation, tracking, and data entry. The software also improves CRMs and marketing automation tools. Tarka has been arrested and has seven clients.
Leadership: The founder Dan Moore is a long-time software engineering leader with years of go-to-market experience. He previously helped lead a software development agency called Vaporware and was chief business officer at Mach49.
VC said: “This reads like ‘we’re going to fix your crappy CRM with AI,’ which is generic, hard to measure, and easy to blame if revenue isn’t moving. Pick one repeatable workflow that you can own at the end, deploy it as a plug-in with clear ROI metrics, and price-to-use/results instead of back-and-forth custom projects.”
