Sunny Gupta on Apptio’s lightbulb moment, and the key questions behind its success

For Sunny Gupta, the inspiration behind Apptio started with a simple question: What are you struggling with? It’s a question he posed to a CIO at a large financial firm — and led to the creation of one of the Seattle region’s biggest tech success stories. Gupta (above) spoke at an event last week about Apptio's journey and also explained why he thinks Seattle is a great place to build startups. Read more. 

Office-to-residential conversions are a trendy topic in discussions about post-pandemic cities. Seattle's mayor recently put out a proposal to make it easier for developers to morph commercial real estate into housing, as hybrid work becomes the norm and the city looks for new ways to boost tax revenue. But the difficulty of office conversions go beyond simply clearing the path to do so. Read more.

Meet the Geeks Give Back honorees: The Pacific Northwest is home to an impressive share of organizations and individuals leading the charge to make the world a better place through tech-driven initiatives. Learn more about the three recipients we’ll honor at the GeekWire 2024 Awards on May 9 in Seattle.

• Vote for GeekWire Awards finalists | Reserve a seat at the event

Hot Links:

• Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun and other execs are stepping down as the aerospace giant grapples with a quality and manufacturing crisis. (CNBC)

• Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, will be a broad mix of personalized systems designed for specific needs, according to one Amazon exec. (Axios)

• The University of Washington is still struggling with a $340 million software upgrade to its finance system that is disrupting research grants. (Seattle Times)

Thanks for subscribing to the GeekWire newsletter, and have a great week. — GeekWire managing editor Taylor Soper, taylor@geekwire.com, and GeekWire reporter Kurt Schlosser, kurt@geekwire.com.