GeekWire Radio: Football robots, giant piles of tech cash, the ‘Uber of Trucking,’ and Chewbacca trivia

This week on the GeekWire radio show and podcast: An NFL team has begun practicing against robots; how Zillow missed its Zestimate, by a wide margin, on its CEO’s home; Microsoft, Apple and Google hold 23% of U.S. corporate cash; and the return of our GeekWire Trivia Challenge.

We’re joined on the show by Dan Lewis, the CEO of Convoy, a startup that has been called the “Uber of Trucking.” Convoy’s on-demand service matches trucking companies with shippers that need to move freight. The startup has built a smartphone-based, Uber-like system that lets truckers find jobs in a matter of minutes without the traditional legwork required when using a broker.

The company has lined up major investors, raising nearly $19 million from the investment arms of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff; Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi; Dropbox CEO Drew Houston; former Starbucks President Howard Behar, and others.

We talk with Lewis about the origins of the company, its business model, comparisons to Uber, lessons learned from his time at Amazon.

The interview with Lewis begins in the second segment of the show, at 9:20 in the audio player below.

Our GeekWire Trivia Challenge, at 17:50, offers a chance to win a GeekWire shirt for answering a Chewbacca-related trivia question, in honor of which GeekWire’s John Cook wore the special mask. Listen to the segment for the question and send your answer to [email protected] for a chance to win.

John and GeekWire reporter Taylor Soper also give us the rundown on the upcoming GeekWire Sports Tech Summit, featuring speakers including Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber, NFL CIO Michelle McKenna-Doyle, Brooks Running CEO Jim Weber, and Super Bowl champion Doug Baldwin Jr. of the Seattle Seahawks.

Follow Taylor’s sports technology coverage and subscribe to his weekly newsletter here.

Listen to this week’s show below or download the MP3 here.