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Photo via Redfin Redfin first quarter results : The Seattle real estate company saw a 40% surge in revenue in the first quarter, reporting $268 million in sales. Its gross profit soared 229% to $42 million, and its net loss was cut nearly in half to $36 million compared to the first quarter of 2020. Its net loss came out to 37 cents per share. The consensus analyst revenue estimate for the quarter was $253 million, while the earnings per share estimate was -34 cents per share. Full results here . What the execs are saying : “After scrambling in the second half of 2020 to hire enough agents and lenders to handle a pandemic-driven surge in demand, Redfin is just about hitting on all cylinders,” said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman. Key numbers : RedfinNow, the company’s direct home buying and selling service, sold 171 homes in the first quarter. That was the same number as the first quarter of 2020, and was up from 83 in the fourth quarter of 2020. Redfin’s market share in the U.S. residential m

The news: Seattle travel giant Expedia announced Tuesday that it has agreed to sell its corporate business arm Egencia to American Express Global Business Travel. Both companies offer tools for business travel management. Travel trends:  It’s unclear how business travel will bounce back from the pandemic, with many executives citing cost savings from video meetings and a push to reduce carbon emissions. Expedia’s B2B unit, which includes Egencia, saw revenue sink 64% to $942 million in 2020 as the pandemic roiled the travel industry. B2B made up 18% of Expedia’s total revenue last year. Egencia background: Expedia acquired a French corporate travel firm called Egencia in 2004, changed its name to Expedia Corporate Travel, then rebranded it to Egencia again in 2008. “We are thrilled by the potential transaction and what GBT and Egencia could achieve together, as Expedia Group seeks to simplify our business and be a leader in all of our endeavours,” President of Expedia Business Se

The University of Washington campus in Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser) The University of Washington will require all students get vaccinated against COVID-19 before the start of the autumn quarter, UW President Ana Mari Cauce announced Monday . In a message to students, faculty, academic personnel and staff at UW, Cauce said “widespread vaccination is the only real way we can put the COVID-19 pandemic behind us and return to a more normal way of living, learning and working.” Unless claiming a medical, religious or philosophical exemption, student will need to verify that they have been vaccinated. If they are unable to get vaccinated where they currently live, UW says it will provide access to vaccinations once they arrive on campus. The COVID vaccine requirement is similar to UW’s  Tri-Campus Immunity Verification Requirement , which is aimed at protecting the university community from outbreaks of infectious diseases like measles, mumps and meningitis ACWY. As colleg

Era Software CEO Todd Persen. (Era Software Photo) New funding : Seattle-area database architecture startup Era Software , formerly known as EraDB, raised $15.2 million in a Series A round led by Playground Global. The tech:  Era helps companies manage their cloud-native workloads. Its first product, EraSearch, is built for log management and offers an alternative to Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. The idea is to reduce cloud hardware and operational costs. EraSearch is in private beta. Leadership: Era was founded by CEO Todd Persen , co-founder and former CTO of InfluxData, and CTO Robert Winslow , co-maintainer of Google’s FlatBuffers low-latency storage framework in Rust and co-creator of the Time Series Benchmarking Suite. Investors: Other backers in the 20-person company include Foundation Capital, Array Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and angel investors. Total funding to date is more than $22 million.