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Category: Closing

MioWorks closes doors but leaves with valuable startup lessons in hand

David Abramowski the former CEO of MioWorks has shared some tips from what he learned, in the hopes that other entrepreneurs and startups don’t make similar mistakes.

Rick Turoczy on November 9, 2009

It’s unfortunate to see Portland and Silicon Forest startups suffer shutdowns, be it at the hands of the economy or otherwise. But on the upside, it’s alway good to see the execs taking lessons away from their efforts. And even better when they share them with the rest of us.

Mike Berkley provided some insights he learned after SplashCast shut down. And now, with the the shuttering of MioWorks—a people-centric project and customer relationship management app that also happened to speak Spanish—David Abramowski the former CEO of MioWorks has shared some tips based on what he learned during the journey, in the hopes that other entrepreneurs don’t make similar mistakes. Read More

Sad news: SplashCast hits the off button on Social TV

While I love all of the startups in the Silicon Forest equally, SplashCast has always held a special place in my heart. Unfortunately, that scrappy Portland startup’s history has now come to an end. SplashCast has decided to shutter its operations.

Rick Turoczy on August 4, 2009

While I love all of the startups in the Silicon Forest equally, Portland-based SplashCast has always held a special place in my heart.

You see, not too long after I came back to this side of the desk as a consultant, I had the opportunity to meet with QMind founder Mike Berkley a few years back—and signed an NDA, I might add—when he was getting ready to retool the company into what would become SplashCast. And then they hired Marshall Kirkpatrick. And Alex Williams. And they showed a great deal of promise.

Unfortunately, that scrappy Portland startup’s history has now come to an end. SplashCast has decided to shutter its operations. Read More

So it goes: Vidoop is no more

Rick Turoczy on May 30, 2009

To quote one of my favorite authors, “So it goes.” It grieves me to report that—according to TechCrunch—Portland-based Vidoop is officially dead. For many of us in the Portland startup and OpenID scene, Vidoop had the promise of doing something big—and it was simply filled with great people.

But sometimes, even the best and brightest hit a rough patch. Read More

LUNARR in retrograde: After several beta products, startup decides to close up shop

Rick Turoczy on May 4, 2009

I always hate to report on this stuff, but sometimes you just have to. Portland-based LUNARR, one of the first companies to come out of stealth mode after I started Silicon Florist, has decided to close its doors.

Last Thursday, users of LUNARR’s Elements and Themes products received the following notice: Read More

OsoEco shuts down

Rick Turoczy on March 8, 2009

OsoEcoI’m sorry to have to report that Eugene-based OsoEco—a site focused on socially responsible shopping that was in the running to win Angel Oregon last year—has announced it is closing its doors and shutting down its site at the end of this month.

The site never made it out of beta.

Community members received the following email on Saturday:

Hello OsoEco Community:

I’d like to start off this e-mail saying how much all of us here at OsoEco have appreciated your time, insights and patience over the last 18-24 months while we’ve worked to continue building our “healthy social shopping” community. We had been diligently trying to raise more funds from investors to enable us to finish building our Web site; however, we were not able to secure any additional funding. As a result we will be disabling osoeco.com on March 30, 2009.

This deeply saddens all of us at OsoEco. We realize that if it wasn’t for each of you joining our community/adding valuable content that we would not have gotten as far as we have.Your belief in creating a community of people that enjoy helping each other find the healthiest solutions is the real reason why we started OsoEco. Thank you for the the time and energy you put into adding content to OsoEco. We know that OsoEco would have become a trusted source for people to exchange healthy ideas and solutions.

We’d like to take this opportunity and suggest a few online communities that we feel share our values for fostering a business that focuses on personal and/or planetary wellness. If you’re not already members of these communities I encourage you to consider joining them:

Greenlane (Lane County, OR)
“A business network providing education, resources, networking, and marketing for sustainability. Join our community of Lane County businesses, non-profits and individuals and share sustainable ideas and practices.”

Sustainlane (Global)
“The web’s largest people-powered guide to sustainable living. SustainLane.com is filled with personal accounts of how-tos, news, and local business and product reviews for sustainable living.”
NOTE: Our former (and amazing) Community Manager, Cris Bisch <mailto:cris@sustainlane.com> , is now on the SustainLane team. I highly recommend you connect with her if you’d like to talk about “green” products and services. She is a wealth of knowledge!

EcoMetro (Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; Minneapolis/St Paul, MN; and East Bay, CA)
“EcoMetro guides provide great resources and several hundred coupons for products and services that have reduced environmental impacts.”

Helia (Global)
“Healia is the premier consumer health search engine for finding high quality and personalized health information on the Web. It serves as an independent, unbiased gateway to the highest quality health information resources.”

Thank you again for being a part of this exciting ride with us! We look forward to crossing paths with each of you out there in both the real and virtual worlds of sustainability/health & wellness.

Enjoy life!

Sincerely,

Caroline Cummings | CEO/Co-founder
(please feel free to connect with me on Facebook – search for “Caroline Cummings Eugene”)

Katie Wilson-Hamaker | President/Co-founder
(please feel free to connect with me on Facebook or GreenLane
<http://www.greenlane-sbn.org/&gt;