Portland, Oregon, startup news, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
If you’re not familiar with the Oregon Capital Scan, it’s an effort in which a variety of folks from around the state engage, every two years. The “scan” is an effort to look back and determine the impacts and needs for capital in Oregon as it applies to business creation and growth. The Oregon Capital Scan for 2020 was just released.
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Another local venture capital fund has leveraged the success of its previous efforts to raise another larger fund. Portland based Elevate Capital has announced hitting the first close on their $40 million fund II. And they’ve already started cutting checks out the fund.
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Portland based Conversa has raised another chunk of capital, expanding its Series B raise to $20 million. The funding will be used to “continue to scale its technology platform, expand its library of automated virtual care digital pathways, and fuel growth with new and existing customers.”
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While it doesn’t happen as often as it used to, there’s always something uplifting about companies “coming out of stealth” around here. The latest is StackPulse, which calls Portland home. The reveal included an announcement of a $20 million venture capital round to complement $8 million raised previously.
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There are any number of startups that aren’t headquartered here, but that have a bunch of employees here, either remote or through a regional office. One of those companies is Zapier, the popular Low Code/No Code service that lets you automate online tasks by tying disparate APIs together. More than 30 Portland area folks currently work there. So when I saw the news about Zapier’s founders selling shares to Sequoia, it piqued my interest.
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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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It’s that time of year. When folks are looking back and analyzing what happened in 2020. We’ve already taken a look at venture capital in the Pacific Northwest and the creator economy on Gumroad. Now, Crunchbase gives us a glimpse of what happened around the world in venture capital in 2020.
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One of the newsletters I make sure to read every week is The DL by Daniel Li. Given his vantage at Madrona, the newsletter tends to focus on trends in venture capital and venture funded companies in the Pacific Northwest. To kick off the new year, Dan put together some slides to recap of the stuff he was tracking in 2020. And it’s a good reminder that there was some decent progress last year, even with all of the weirdness.
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It’s always nice to see more capital focused on helping entrepreneurs around here. So it was a bright spot in all of this weirdness to see that there was a new venture fund in town. And it was an even brighter spot to see that the Oregon Growth Board had committed $350,000 to the new fund. Meet Include Venture Group.
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If you follow the world of venture capital and private equity, you’re likely familiar with the concept of funds. They’re the folks who are doing due diligence, cutting checks to provide capital for companies, and actively managing a portfolio. What’s less obvious and murky is where those funds actually get the money they use to make those investments. Some of that money comes from a-whole-nother group of funds — often referred to as a “fund of funds” — that provide capital for venture capital and private equity funds to do their work. And one of those fund of funds is the Oregon Public Employees Retirement (PERS) Fund.
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