New year, new Startup Radar.

We’re back with our regular spotlight on early stage startups sprouting up in the Seattle region. For this edition, we’re featuring Axel AI, DrunR, Eluum, and profileAPI.

Read on for brief descriptions of each company — along with pitch assessments from “Mean VC,” a GPT-powered critic offering a mix of encouragement and constructive criticism.

Check out past Startup Radar posts here, and email me at taylor@geekwire.com to flag other companies and startup news.

Axel AI

Founded: 2025

The business: A self-described “reasoning layer” for retail media sales teams that aims to translate messy data into commercial narratives and proposals. The idea is to help sales teams spend less time on manual analysis and preparation. The bootstrapped company officially launched its MVP at CES and NRF 2026 earlier this month.

Leadership: CEO and co-founder Bobby Figueroa previously founded Gradient, another Seattle-based commerce insights company that was acquired by Criteo. He was also an exec at Amazon. Axel’s leadership and advisory team includes former sales and advertising leaders at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

Mean VC: “You’re targeting a real friction point — sales teams juggling fragmented data with limited time to craft a compelling narrative. The pedigree helps, but long-term success will hinge on whether your product drives actual revenue lift, not just cleaner decks. I’d focus on embedding directly into the sales team’s existing workflow — don’t make users open another tool, make yours the one that quietly does the heavy lifting behind the scenes.”

DrunR

Founded: 2024

The business: A nutrition app that provides personalized guidance based on users’ goals and preferences, particularly while dining out or ordering food online. DrunR is running a closed beta in Seattle with restaurants and users, including people using GLP-1 medication. The startup is part of the WTIA Founder Cohort 13 program.

Leadership: Founder and CEO Yaya Ali is a financial analyst at Perkins Coie and previously worked for King County and Amazon. He also has food operations experience. David Greene, the company’s CTO, is a software engineer at Capital One and previously worked at Moody’s.

Mean VC: “The intersection of nutrition, personalization, and GLP-1s is timely — especially as eating habits shift alongside new weight-loss drugs. The challenge will be making the app feel essential day-to-day, not just ‘nice to have’ after a restaurant meal or clinic visit. I’d zero in on a high-frequency use case — something that keeps users opening the app daily, not just when they’re thinking about dinner.”

Eluum

Founded: 2024

The business: A new take on social media with a product that helps people organize their personal memories, stories, and digital artifacts into one user-controlled system. Built on community-driven moderation and works across different platforms. The bootstrapped company is onboarding early users and plans to launch a MVP later this year.

Leadership: CEO and co-founder Bilkay Rose was a VP at tax software company Avalara and a director at Clearwire. Other co-founders include CTO Dale Rector, who spent three decades at Microsoft, and Jennifer Gianola, also a former exec at Avalara.

Mean VC: “The concept taps into a real emotional need — people are overwhelmed by digital clutter and increasingly skeptical of algorithm-driven feeds. The key will be showing how your platform earns daily use without relying on dopamine loops. I’d push to define a sharp use case first — memory curation is broad, so lead with one thing people urgently want to preserve, then expand once you’ve earned their trust.”

profileAPI

Founded: 2024

The business: A business data layer for developers building AI-native chat, copilot, and agentic tools for go-to-market. Its platform tracks more than 10,000 signals across more than 10 million companies and 500 million professionals. The company, which was previously a sales AI agent product called Truebase, has raised $2 million in funding.

Leadership: Founder and CEO Wissam Tabbara has sold two startups and spent more than six years at Microsoft in the 2000s.

Mean VC: “The shift from product to platform is smart — selling infrastructure to power GTM copilots has stronger upside than building another agent. But you’ll need to show that your data isn’t just broad, but relevant and timely enough to drive meaningful in-app decisions. I’d focus on becoming the plug-and-play GTM brain — make integration dead simple, and let other tools build magic on top of your stack.”

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Founders in the Seattle area are busy building software for health insurance, AI model tuning, construction processes, and hospital operations.

Our latest Startup Radar spotlights four early stage tech startups in the region: Amera, Clara, Oiyko, and Specbook AI.

Read on for brief descriptions of each company — along with pitch assessments from “Mean VC,” a GPT-powered critic offering a mix of encouragement and constructive criticism.

Check out past Startup Radar posts here, and email me at taylor@geekwire.com to flag other companies and startup news.

Amera

Founded: 2025

The business: Targeting health insurance payers with software that automates the claims processing workflow. Its product converts medical claim documents into structured data, replacing manual entry and supporting newer payment models. Amera is generating revenue, working with multiple plan administrators, and participating in the Fall 2025 cohort at Y Combinator.

Leadership: CEO Deep Kapur previously worked at Microsoft, Protocol Labs, and most recently Rupa Health. Co-founder Louise Tanski was also at Rupa Health and co-founded QueryStax (acquired by Moonshot Brands).

Mean VC: “You’re solving a real pain point in healthcare admin, and early revenue plus YC traction suggest you’re on the right track. The key will be proving your structured data actually drives measurable cost or accuracy improvements — not just faster paperwork.”

Clara

Founded: 2022

The business: A self-described “AI-powered operating room orchestration” platform for hospitals. Clara aims to be like Apple’s “Find My” app, but for patient care, helping hospital staff quickly locate equipment and people. The company has raised around $375,000 and is working with a lab at the University of Washington on a non-clinical pilot. 

Leadership: CEO Melinda Yormick has more than a decade of operating room experience as a registered nurse and nurse manager. She was named a 2025 “Up and Comer” at the PSBJ Healthcare Leadership Awards. Co-founder Aaron Cooke was previously a senior software engineer at Viome and Julep.

Mean VC: “The problem is clear to anyone who’s worked in a hospital, and your background gives you credibility where it counts. But unless you can tie this to patient outcomes or hard ROI, hospital budgets may treat it as a luxury.”

Oikyo

Founded: 2025

The business: Helps companies fine-tune AI models using their own data, enabling employees to add business-specific context. The company is participating in WTIA’s startup accelerator. 

Leadership: Co-founders Saptak Sen and Suchi Mohan first met at Microsoft in India in 2001. Sen, the CEO at Oiyko, was most recently a vice president at Tetrate and head of container integrations at AWS. Mohan was a senior technical program manager at Microsoft for more than four years.

Mean VC: “Fine-tuning with business context is a sharp idea, especially as enterprises grow wary of generic AI outputs. Still, you’ll need to show how you differ from the wave of enterprise LLM tooling coming from giants and better-funded peers.”

Specbook AI

Founded: 2025

The business: Builds AI agents for industrial and civic projects that can quickly analyze data and perform tasks such as design reviews and reviewing construction submittals. Specbook AI is working with large construction companies and municipalities. Contracted revenue is in the six figures. 

Leadership: Co-founders Gordon Hempton and Wes Hather co-founded Outreach, the Seattle-based sales software company. More recently they launched two startups: B2B sales software company FullContext and virtual work platform Spot.

Mean VC: “Digitizing construction reviews and civic workflows is overdue, and six-figure contracts suggest you’re solving a real pain. To scale, you’ll need to prove your product can handle diverse requirements without slipping into custom consulting.”

Welcome back to another Startup Radar, where we highlight up-and-coming early stage startups across the Seattle region.

This time we’re spotlighting founders working on digitizing golf scorecards, automating port operations, developing protein sequencing hardware, and tackling e-commerce returns.

Read on for brief descriptions of each company — and a pitch assessment from GPT-powered “Mean VC,” which we prompt to offer both positive and critical feedback.

Check out past Startup Radar posts here, and email me at taylor@geekwire.com to flag other companies and startup news.

Barkie

Founded: 2025

The business: Sports tech startup aiming to digitize scorecards for golfers. The goal is to preserve the traditional experience on the course while giving golfers advanced analytics after their rounds. Barkie is developing social features within its app and is launching next month.

Leadership: CEO Dane Renkert was a sales leader at Docugami, Komiko, and Ben Kinney Companies. He’s also a competitive golfer who placed 13th at the 2009 World Long Drive Championships. His former Docugami colleague Zubin Wadia is a technical advisor.

Mean VC: “There’s something charming about modern tech wrapped in the polite culture of golf — your timing’s smart, too, with golf booming post-COVID. But digitizing scorecards isn’t exactly a deep moat, and Arccos, Hole19, and 18Birdies already live here. The social angle could be your wedge in, but it needs to be more than ‘Strava for golfers’ if you want retention after the novelty fades.”

Gatein

Founded: 2025

The business: Software to help ports track containers using automation and AI-powered computer vision technology. The company is initially targeting small and medium-sized ports that it says have historically been excluded from being able to automate port operations. Gatein is bootstrapped and recently began working on a site in Europe. 

Leadership: CEO Bernardo Mendez-Arista is a longtime product leader with stints at Amazon, Volley Automation, RRAI, and Yaskawa Motoman. Co-founder and CTO Michael Pivtoraiko also worked at Volley and previously started two logistics tech companies.

Mean VC: “Smart to go after small and mid-size ports — they’re often overlooked, yet desperate for modernization. But port operators move slow, and convincing them to adopt computer vision and AI is more about trust and track record than flashy tech. If you can show real savings and keep integration friction low, you might quietly build a very sticky business.”

Primary Bioscience

Founded: 2023

The business: Early stage biotech startup developing a protein sequencing device. The company is stealthy for now but its website describes the business as a “comprehensive proteomics platform” for multi-biomarker screening. Primary Bioscience graduated from the Creative Destruction Labs’ Vancouver program earlier this year.

Leadership: CEO Stacy Anderson most recently spent three years at Roche as a protein engineering scientist. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mean VC: “Proteomics is white-hot, and if your device can actually accelerate multi-biomarker screening, the upside is massive. But ‘comprehensive platform’ is vague, and stealth mode works better when people already know you’re dangerous. The science background is strong, but the key question is: are you a tool company, a data company, or a pharma play pretending to be a device?”

Return Stack

Founded: 2025

The business: A “reverse logistics” startup that helps online retailers process and restock customer returns. It uses computer vision and AI agents to authenticate, grade, and resell returned items. The startup recently opened its first warehouse in Indianapolis to process returns. 

Leadership: Founder and CEO Mayank Sharma spent more than a decade at Amazon, where he led teams working on last mile logistics and returns. Co-founder Maria Pavlovskaia was an engineering leader at Amazon and Uber. 

Mean VC: “Reverse logistics is messy, costly, and growing — which makes it exactly the kind of boring problem that could be a monster business. Having ex-Amazon leadership is helpful here, but you’ll need to prove your tech handles real-world chaos, not just demo videos. The first warehouse is a good start; now show you can scale ops without your gross margins vanishing into the void.”