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Month: December 2019

State of the Portland startup community: Prosper Portland Inclusive Business Resource Network reports on findings and progress

Rick Turoczy on December 20, 2019

Used to be, the startup community made it a regular habit of showing up to Portland City Council meetings to show support for issues that were important to us. That’s why things like the Portland Seed Fund exist. It’s been awhile, but since the opportunity presented itself, a bunch of startup community folks showed up at City Council yesterday to hear the report from the Prosper Portland Inclusive Business Resource Network, a community of practice composed on numerous organizations in the Portland area who work to support entrepreneurs.

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What is the current state of the startup world? Early stage venture capital firm First Round shares findings

Rick Turoczy on December 19, 2019

While I spend the vast majority of my time heads down focused inwardly on the Portland startup community, I do realize that, from time to time, it makes sense to pick my head up and see what’s going on elsewhere. That’s why I was happy to see the First Round State of Startups 2019 making the, ahem, rounds.

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An investment from Elevate Capital results in a new Beaverton startup

Rick Turoczy on December 11, 2019

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A company manages to land early stage capital and, in so doing, decides to move their headquarters from their founding city to a city closer to their investor. Of course you’ve heard it. It’s something that regularly happened to Portland companies not so long ago. But today, there’s a new twist. Instead of companies leaving town, folks are starting to relocate those headquarters to Portland. And this time, at least part of that decision was thanks to a local investor.

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Nothing ventured, nothing gained: Cowen Partners announces new non-tech early stage venture fund

Rick Turoczy on December 10, 2019

Apparently, it just takes a little while for an idea to gain traction. After years of founders bemoaning a lack of early stage funding, a new crop of early stage venture funds are taking shape here in Portland. First, 1859 Ventures launched a new early stage venture fund. Now Cowen Partners Venture Fund has launched.

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Envisioning a startup exit strategy that results in more winners and more sustained value

Rick Turoczy on December 6, 2019

When folks are talking about startup activity, there are generally a few topics that jump to the fore: starting companies, funding companies, and liquidity events, the euphemism for that point in time when founders, investors, and ideally employees generate wealth from their efforts. But what if that last event — that exit — could also benefit the folks who find the most value in what that company was providing? That’s the concept with Exit to Community.

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Well that was quick: Portland startup Streem acquired

Rick Turoczy on December 5, 2019

If you’ve been around the Portland startup community for any amount of time, you realize that many of the startups in our midst generally have a significant period of time between their founding date and when they experience a liquidity event like acquisition or private equity. (Or I guess there’s always on IPO. But seriously, who am I kidding?) Suffice it to say, “overnight success” is not a term that has much traction here.

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Learning about Portland through a visitor’s experiences

Rick Turoczy on December 5, 2019

There’s a running joke among some of the startup community that the best opportunity to get to spend quality time with folks from Portland is to wind up together in another town for an event or some such. Now, I’m happily realizing that sometimes the best way to learn something new about our community is to have someone from outside of town tell you about it. This was recently the case with Anika Horn. And something similar just happened with Anthony Ware, who spent a couple of weeks in Portland, recently.

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