Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community

For anyone who has tried to raise early stage venture capital, they’ve come across the concept of an “accredited investor.” In my oversimplification of the concept, it’s often a classification based on how much an individual or household earns that is used as an indicator that they are probably knowledgeable enough about financial things to invest in high risk endeavors like startups. There’s only one problem: The definition is pretty restrictive. Okay two problems: Net worth isn’t necessarily an indicator that you understand startup investing. That’s why there have been any number of efforts to expand the definition to allow more folks to invest in early stage startups.

As long as I’ve worked in startups, there’s always been the “promise of data.” You know, the idea that if you just accumulate enough data that somehow value would magically be created from all of it. And for the longest time, we’ve continued to amass an almost insurmountable amount of data as we continued to pursue that seemingly unattainable value. But with AI, that insurmountable suddenly becomes surmountable. And valuable. Meet Data Speaks.

Every once in a while, I get to sit on the other side of the desk and talk to actual journalists about things and stuff. Like recently, when I had the opportunity to spend some time chatting with Suzanne Stevens, the editor of the Portland Business Journal. I can tell she’s an actual journalist because she managed to somehow distill my rambling observations on Portland and the startup community into something intelligible. And digestible.

Seems like those VC pocketbooks are starting to thaw a little bit. Eclypsium revealed a significant round, yesterday. And today, Bend-based Paxton — an AI platform focused on the legal industry — announced a $22 million Series A.

It’s been a minute since we’ve heard from Eclypsium. But clearly, they’ve been heads down making progress. Because they just announced another round of funding. And with existing investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Madrona, and Ten Eleven continuing to invest, they’re clearly onto something big in cybersecurity.

Portland has its fair share of events where a variety of amazing founders take the stage to pitch their company, share their story, or answer questions about their journey — after its over. But what we don’t have is an opportunity to check back in with founders along their journey to figure out really where they are at this given moment. We want to know: Where are they now…? So we’re going to ask.