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Pandemic brings opportunity for some, devastation for others
- The COVID-19 pandemic dominated news headlines in 2020 and served as the subtext for many of the significant business decisions made in the Spokane area during the year. With that backdrop, the Inland Northwest business community experienced a number of significant setbacks, with longtime retailers and once-promising startups closing, and jobless rates reaching heights not witnessed in more than a decade. At the same time, businesses that boomed during the pandemic made plans for significant expansions that could have lasting effects well after the pandemic is held at bay. Below are the top 25 Inland Northwest business stories of 2020, in chronological order.
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Procore’s Tooey Courtemanche, REEF Technologies’s Ari Ojalvo, Pacaso’s Spencer Rascoff and Sonder’s Francis Davidson (Procore, CoMotion Miami, Getty, Sonder, iStock)
Some got bailouts, others got boosters but across the board, proptech firms continued to reel in cash in 2020 as the pandemic forced the slow-to-adapt real estate industry to fully embrace technology.
As tech stocks led Wall Street’s recovery this spring, private investors also pulled out their checkbooks to fund hospitality startups and companies looking to digitize the home-buying process, from searches to securing titles.
SoftBank continued to double down on real estate tech. Other prolific investors included proptech-focused funds such as Navitas Capital and Zigg Capital, as well as generalist investors like Founders Fund and Greycroft.
OLYMPIA â Washington s embattled Employment Security Department received a critical audit for its handling of hundreds of millions of dollars of losses to hackers in the spring.
Reviewing the actions around those losses, the audit concluded the department did not have effective internal controls in place to ensure unemployment benefit payments were made only to eligible claimants.
The Office of Financial Management also did not properly identify and report those fraudulent payments separate from benefits paid on legitimate claims, auditors said.
The budget agency said it didn t report the losses as an extraordinary event because it expects the federal government to cover most of them. The department said it didn t report the money it received from the federal government to cover the losses because it wanted to allow time to investigate the fraud and come up with a final number.
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