Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
If you’ve been curious about Portland’s Expensify going public, the S-1 is now available for your reading pleasure. The high notes? They plan to raise $243 million by selling about 10 million shares priced between $23-$25 range. And they plan to trade on Nasdaq under the symbol EXFY.
And from my personal perspective, I don’t ever recall reading an S-1 — and I’ve read quite a few — that reference a motivation to “Get shit done.” But this one does.
We’ve all gotten pretty used to the pandemic exodus stories of companies, venture capitalists, and the Internet famous choosing to leave the Bay Area for towns like Atlanta, Austin, Madison, and Miami. But in the spirit of doing things that don’t scale, Y Combinator alum Cognito has bucked that trend by deciding to relocate its headquarters from Palo Alto to Sisters, Oregon.
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The Oregon wildfires of 2020. Devastating is an understatement. Many communities were razed to the ground in a matter of moments. Others had structures survive but were without left without much needed infrastructure and utilities. One of those communities — Oregon’s McKenzie River Valley — came up with a creative way of rebuilding Internet access.
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The long running membership organization, OEN, has announced a new board of directors to guide the organization. Six of the board members are returning and nine have been added.
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Wasn’t I just talking about Dan Li? Well apart from the awesome newsletter he composes on Pacific Northwest venture capital, Dan’s day job is at Madrona. And he was recently promoted to partner.
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This post was originally supposed to be about an upcoming OEN Pub Talk panel I was going to be part of. But unfortunately, it’s turned now, instead, into post about OEN, itself. And the dire straits in which the organization has suddenly and unexpectedly become embroiled.
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When I started in Portland area startups, way back when, a lot of us were located way out in Hillsboro. And then the momentum started to shift to Beaverton. And then suddenly all of the activity seemed to be in Portland proper. But there may be a shift in that momentum with Bigleaf Networks.
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So if you’re a regular car sharing user here in town, you’ve likely tried both ReachNow and car2go, two of the providers here in Portland. Not so long ago, those two entities merged and started calling everything Now. ThisNow, ThatNow, NowNow. So when news that ReachNow was shutting down in Portland and Seattle broke, everyone seemed to conclude that we had no more car sharing in town. That is not the case.
We’ve seen it time and time again. The next big thing. Web, open source, cloud, mobile… And time and time again, Portland, with its early adopter culture, has been at the forefront of nascent industries, patiently waiting for their markets to form. I’ve been waiting to see what the next big thing might be. And with today’s news from RealWear, I’m inclined to think augmented reality may be the next industry that Portland is known for.
As much as I love local coverage of the Portland startup community, it’s the national and international coverage that really tends to move the needle for companies around here. That’s why I was psyched to see recent mentions of Ride Report and Open Sesame in Forbes. And even more excited to see this CNN piece featuring Portland startup in-it.