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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesIn 2018, after five years at Amazon, Kevin Lin left to build Cloud.Thence, a cloud consulting business with an eventual goal of becoming a software-as-a-service platform. He was also hosting Folk Stories, a long-form interview podcast. Those were the plans and projects described in GeekWire’s December 21, 2018 profile—not confirmation that the SaaS product launched or that either venture continued afterward.
Why Kevin Lin left Amazon
Lin joined Amazon in 2013, intending eventually to start a company. But projects and colleagues kept him there longer than he had expected. In the GeekWire profile by Kurt Schlosser, Lin recalled that receiving a yellow badge to mark five years at the company prompted him to reconsider whether to leave or remain for another five-year stretch.
“I realized then that I need to do this now or stay at Amazon for the next five years.”
The badge was a personal turning point in the story, not evidence that Lin’s departure was prompted by a workplace dispute. The profile presents it as a moment when he weighed his long-held ambition against the prospect of continuing at Amazon.
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What Cloud.Thence planned to do
At the time of the interview, Lin described Cloud.Thence as a consulting firm helping businesses use AWS and other public-cloud services. Consulting was funding the venture; Lin’s longer-term ambition was to develop a SaaS platform to help companies manage cloud infrastructure.
That product was an end goal, not a reported launch. The profile offers no later account of Cloud.Thence’s business, product development, or status, so it cannot establish what became of the company after 2018.
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Why Folk Stories focused on long conversations
Alongside the startup, Lin hosted Folk Stories, an hour-long conversation podcast about guests’ work, paths, and lessons. Its guests included people in film, the arts, business, security engineering, and nonprofit work—not only technology insiders. Lin said he valued the chance to talk at length with people he admired.
“I like the long-form conversation format because it runs counter to the frenzied, tweet-inspired media blurbs that seem so prevalent today.”
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Sound Stories Round the Year: Folk Tales, Fables, and Poems for the Music Classroom, Book & Online PDF
- Format: Book & Online PDF
- Category: General Music and Classroom Publications
- Contributors: By Karen Farnum Surmani and Anna Wentlent
- Pub Date: 7/2014
- Level: Grades 1--5
The profile also notes that Lin had previously hosted an internal Amazon podcast featuring senior leaders, engineers, and creative workers. It describes his reasoning and the show as they stood in 2018; it does not establish whether Folk Stories continued later.
From Logo to distributed systems
Lin traced his interest in software to middle school, when he programmed in Logo to draw shapes and make games. At Amazon, the profile says, his work centered on designing and scaling large distributed systems.
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Schlosser’s profile explains a distributed system in accessible terms: multiple computers communicate to accomplish a task. Scaling means optimizing a system along a dimension such as throughput. The description helps explain the technical work Lin had done, while his next venture aimed to help businesses navigate the complexity of public-cloud infrastructure.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.A career snapshot, not a current profile
The 2018 article says Lin was born in China, raised in Germany, and educated in Canada and the United States. It also describes a life outside work that included competitive running, an interest in trail running and ultramarathons, cooking, blogging, salsa dancing, and improv.
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- Format: Book & Online PDF
- Category: General Music and Classroom Publications
- Contributors: By Anna Wentlent
- Pub Date: 6/2023
- Level: Grade 1--6
GeekWire’s profile includes details of Lin’s workspace at the time, including a Kinesis keyboard. Those details are historical snapshots, not current product recommendations or evidence of what he uses today. More broadly, the article is a record of Lin’s plans and activities in December 2018; it does not document his subsequent career or the later outcomes of Cloud.Thence and Folk Stories.
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