An imperfect and meandering history of Portland startup incubators and accelerators

While I was researching the top 10 Silicon Florist posts for Q1 2026, something dawned on me: The Oregon AI Accelerator revealing its inaugural cohort was the second most-read story of the quarter. And there’s talk of a new accelerator program joining the Portland startup community, soon. As well as a couple of new PIE experiments that have popped up out of nowhere. Which all collided in my brain and got me to wondering: How many incubators and accelerators has Portland actually tried over the years? And perhaps a distant second: How many of them had I covered over the past two decades…?

So I went back through the entire Silicon Florist archive and pulled every Portland startup or incubator program that I’ve covered since 2007. And it’s a bunch. (Though, it’s highly likely that the bunch is still an incomplete list.) Some still going. Some that had a brief existence. Some that began as one thing but then pivoted into another.

But they’re all important. And they all should serve as examples of what this community can do when it chooses to step up and support the amazing entrepreneurs in our community. So let’s take a walk down memory — and still current — lane, shall we…?

2000-2009: Before anyone called it an “ecosystem”

Starve Ups (2000-present)
Before there was an ecosystem, there was Starve Ups. Founded in October 2000 by John Friess and a group of first-time founders from seven Oregon startups — all of which successfully exited. No equity. No fees. Just founders helping founders scale — for 26 years and counting. The flagship Launch Pad program has run through 250+ member companies across Portland, Eugene, and Bend, with an 81% survival rate and 39 positive exits. Notable alumni include Sightbox (acquired by Johnson & Johnson, 2017), SpaceView (acquired by Atheer, 2017), and Manage My Co-op (acquired 2017). Three acquisitions in one year from a program that never took a dime of equity. Portland’s oldest continuously running startup accelerator — by a wide margin.

PSU Business Accelerator (? – present)
Its founding predates my writing on Silicon Florist. Still going. Jive Software and Jama Software are both alums. Still doing the work to serve “local startups from their early stage through growth by providing facilities, programming, and mentors while activating and engaging relationships with each other, PSU, and the entrepreneur ecosystem.”

OTBC (Oregon Technology Business Center) (2007-2021)
Again, already running when I started blogging about the Portland startup community in 2007. Quiet, practical, unglamorous. Ran various startup challenges and support programs for more than a decade before eventually becoming the Oregon Startup Center.

Startup Weekend Portland (2008-?)
Arrived in Portland in January 2008. The brainchild of former Sisters, Oregon, resident Andrew Hyde. Build a startup in 54 hours. It became a gateway for a generation of founders who didn’t know they were founders yet. It still happens globally. But it’s been a minute since anything has happen here.

Portland Ten (2009-2011)
Launched February 2009 with the goal of incubating 10 $1 million startups by 2010. Connected to the coworking movement and NedSpace. Sure. That number sounds a bit quaint now — especially in an era where people are raising billion dollar seed rounds — but at the time, it seemed like a stretch goal.

PIE (Portland Incubator Experiment) (2009-present)
August 2009. Wieden+Kennedy collaborates with the Portland startup community to launch a startup incubator. It evolved from its initial incarnation as a coworking space into an early stage startup accelerator. Worked with SaaS and mobile. Collaborated with Autodesk to form an accelerator for manufactured physical products. Ran accelerator classes through 2020, then evolved into something harder to explain. Considering a couple of new experiments, so it’s still going -ish.

Angel Oregon (2008-present)
OEN’s annual angel investment competition. First covered in 2008. Gained new life through a reboot a few years back. Restructured into vertical pursuits. Now focused on CPG, biotech, and tech. Still running in 2026.

2010-2013: The boom

Portland Seed Fund (2010-present)
Launched October 2010. It was an investment fund that wanted to do more to support their portfolio companies. And in so doing, it because the first modern-day startup accelerator in Portland. Competitive applications. Mentorship. Demo Days. PSF did more to professionalize Portland’s startup funding infrastructure than any single program before or since.

Nike+ Accelerator powered by TechStars (2012-present)
First covered when TechStars Seattle launched — a train ride away for Portland founders. Then they came here directly with the Nike+ Accelerator powered by Techstars in December 2012. Nike. TechStars. Portland. The first corporate partnership for Techstars. It lasted for a class, locally, with 10 companies, June 2013. But became the model for corporate collaboration with startups for the world. And for a minute there, it felt like Portland was on the national accelerator map.

Upstart Labs (2011-2014)
Cofounded by Greg Rau, Kevin Tate, and Jenn Lynch. Portland’s handcrafted startup venture studio that worked with one or two companies at a time instead of running big cohorts. Wound down around 2014 when the team joined Chirpify full-time.

TiE Oregon (2011-present)
TiE launched its Oregon chapter in 2007, but they ramped up startup programs starting in 2011 with an incubator in Hillsboro (with Melvin Mark), then TiE Pearl in the Pearl District in 2013. Their angel group, TiE Oregon Angels, has backed 90+ companies — including GlobeSherpa’s seed round. One of the most quietly prolific startup support orgs in Portland.

2013-2016: Specialization begins

Oregon Bioscience Incubator (OBI) (2013-present)
OTRADI had been doing bioscience research translation since 2007, but the actual incubator — the Oregon Bioscience Incubator — opened in 2013. Home to 31+ startups working on therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, and digital health. I’ve called it the best incubator in the city, and I meant it. The kind of program that doesn’t generate a lot of social media hype but quietly houses companies that are trying to cure things.

Oregon Story Board (2013-2016)
An accelerator focused on digital storytelling and immersive media — VR, AR, interactive narrative. Portland being Portland. Funded by the state of Oregon. Lots of collaboration with Intel Labs. Produced some genuinely interesting work in augmented reality and served as a the initial support for a number of founders who are still actively part of the community today.

Built Oregon Accelerator (2014-present)
Launched September 2014 — a deliberate bet on consumer products, not software. Oregon is the Silicon Valley of consumer products (Columbia, Nike, adidas, Leatherman, Stumptown, Benchmade, Danner, Keen, Tillamook, Reser’s, Dutch Bros… the list goes on and on). Mitch Daugherty recognized that the consumer startups he was constantly meeting needed a more effective way to learn glean knowledge and expertise from a region that was the undisputed epicenter of consumer products. So he — ahem — built it.

Cascadia Cleantech Accelerator (2016-?)
Oregon and Washington partnered on a cleantech accelerator in 2016. Not sure if they’re still running cohorts. Most recent efforts seem to be around 2024, when they selected Portland’s Ranger EV and HumanKind Homes for the annual class.

Leap Venture Studio (2018-?)
R/GA Ventures, Mars Petcare, and Michelson Found Animals Foundation teamed up to create a pet care-focused startup accelerator housed at R/GA’s Portland office. The inaugural cohort of six companies arrived in August 2018, working on everything from pet microbiome supplements to cultured protein pet food. Another example of the corporate-powered accelerator model that Dylan Boyd pioneered — alongside the Nike+ Accelerator, LA Dodgers, Disney, and Snap programs.

WeWork Labs Portland (2018-2020)
WeWork’s no-equity accelerator arm landed in Portland in December 2018. The pitch was simple: mentorship, programming, and a global network — and you didn’t give up a single point of equity. Startups paid $380/month. Then, of course, the pandemic. And it didn’t really reboot from there.

Oregon Enterprise Blockchain Venture Studio (2019-?)
A public-private venture studio backed by Business Oregon, Moda, Portland State, R/GA, Smith + Crown, and Umpqua Bank — with the ambitious goal of making Oregon the hub of blockchain innovation. The inaugural class of six startups included Brave, Chronicled, and Patientory, alongside Portland’s own Concord. Another Dylan Boyd effort.

2023-now: The new landscape

Oregon Startup Center (2007-present)
Evolved from OTBC. Running the Beaverton Startup Challenge. This program changed leadership recently. But it remains focused on helping westside startups with the support they need.

XXcelerate Fund / Xcelerate Women (2017-present)
Founded in 2017 to accelerate and fund women entrepreneurs in Oregon. Ran XXcelerator cohorts. Partnered with VIDA on grants for women-owned businesses. Rebranded to Xcelerate Women, broadening the mission to support “business owners who embody or share traits of womanhood, within or beyond the gender binary.” One of the few programs in Portland built specifically to address the funding gap for women founders.

Latino Founders Accelerator (2023-present)
The consolidation of nine years of work. Juan Barraza had been building the infrastructure since 2015 —Startup Weekend Latino, Pitch Latino events across Portland, Bend, and Seattle. In 2023, all of that became the Latino Founders Accelerator, as part of the nonprofit Latino Founders. Industry agnostic. 32 companies in the 2024 cohort. In 2025, they landed a Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund grant for a climate-focused accelerator track targeting cleantech, energy, and transportation. Plus the coworking space. Plus Pitch Latino, which keeps expanding.

Oregon UAS Accelerator (2024-present)
Drones. Pendleton. One of the FAA’s designated UAS test sites. Went from 7 companies in spring 2024 to 34 in winter 2025. Counter-drone defense tech. The fastest-growing program on this list by a mile.

North Bank Innovations (2025-present)
Founded in 2017 by Dave Barcos as a 501(c)(6) to grow the startup community in Southwest Washington. Landed a home for its tech startup incubator at the Vancouver Innovation Center (The VIC) in August 2025. Coworking for founders, EIRs, and programming that serves both sides of the river. The Columbia River has always been an unintentional border for our startup community. North Bank is bridging the gap.

Oregon AI Accelerator (2025-present)
The newest. Inaugural cohort of 20 companies announced February 2026. Backed by PSU, OHSU, and OSU. Demo Day at Big Pink on May 14. (More on that later.)

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That’s a lot of programs. If you’ve been part of any of these — as a founder, mentor, organizer, or just someone who showed up — you know how much work goes into each one. And if you know of a program I’m missing, tell me. I’ll add it. Like Dylan Boyd and Josh Carter who have kindly offered a few programs that I had spaced.

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