Josh Carter shares UpStart Collective progress with Portland City Council

Good morning, councilors. My name is Josh Carter. I’m a Navy veteran, general partner of the Founder First Fund, and cofounder of the Upstart Collective on the 5th floor of Big Pink. I want to tell you about a downtown success story that’s happening right now.

Four years ago, Upstart Collective was a handful of founders in a donated space, and today we’re home to Demolicious and Oregon Startup Week, and we’re bringing back the Willamette Angel Conference.

And since moving downtown in March, our growth has been explosive. We’re now home to over 250 members, with several programs calling Upstart Collective home, including the Oregon UAS Accelerator, which is now planning a permanent move to downtown Portland from Pendleton. One of our companies, Prophetic, has grown to more than 60 people, and we’ve had two successful exits already.

Through Founder First Fund, we’re also creating a $50 million fund with the Korean government to bring Korean companies to Oregon by way of Portland.

We built all of this with no public dollars and no one on payroll, working alongside local support orgs and with the support of owners like Jeff Swickard, who bought Big Pink and helps keep desks at $100 a month.

So the next generation of downtown employers, they’re already here. The question is whether they’ll stay. When our founders step outside, they see more than a third of downtown offices sitting empty, and they hear the same two concerns over and over: people don’t feel safe, and the taxes don’t make sense.

We all want social services funded, but it’s job creators who help pay for them. We should be attracting them back, not taxing them until they leave.

I have three asks.

1. Make downtown safe and measure it.
2. Fix what makes Portland uncompetitive, starting with the taxes and fees.
3. And back what’s already working.

Let’s be honest: the policies coming out of this building are driving these founders out the door, and every new tax and failure on public safety tells them to build somewhere else. Change course or watch them go.

So here’s my challenge. Come to the Upstart Collective, meet the founders building Portland’s next big job-creating businesses, and tell them why they should stay. Thanks.