.

Tag: erik benson

Oh it’s on. Beaverton startup Act-On lands $10 million in funding for cloud-based marketing automation

Rick Turoczy on June 1, 2011

It’s always nice to wake up to another nail in the “it’s hard to find funding in Portland” coffin. And this time, not only is it funding for a cloud-based company in the Portland area, it’s funding for a company that sits outside the Old Town/Pearl region of town that has been a recent magnet for capital. Way outside. Like Beaverton.

Act-On software has secured $10 million in C round funding, led by Trinity Ventures. Why does Trinity sound familiar? Oh, because Trinity also just sunk some cash into ShopIgniter. Read More

Oregon startups and venture capital: It’s complicated

For every Oregon company that has had success attracting capital for their pursuits—Jive and AboutUs come to mind—there are hundreds who struggle with where to begin and how to engage the Angel or VC community.

It’s a difficult issue. And no one seems to put his or her finger exactly on the problems or how to solve them. Some say buck up and play the game. Others say the game needs to change. People talk about staying in Portland and figuring out how to bootstrap. People talk about leaving Portland in order to get funding.

Rick Turoczy on May 27, 2009

Start talking to entrepreneurs and side project startups in Portland—or throughout the Silicon Forest in Oregon—and the conversation will inevitably turn to one topic: venture capital or the lack thereof.

For every Oregon company that has had success attracting capital for their pursuits—Jive and AboutUs come to mind—there are hundreds who struggle with where to begin and how to engage the Angel or VC community.

It’s a difficult issue. And no one seems to put his or her finger exactly on the problems or how to solve them. Some say “buck up and play the game.” Others say “the game needs to change.” People talk about staying in Portland and figuring out how to bootstrap. People talk about leaving Portland in order to get funding.

What’s the answer? Read More

Wayback Machine 2.0: AboutUs and Iterasi partner to give you a view of present and past

Rick Turoczy on March 3, 2009

[Full disclosure: Iterasi is a client and I’ve been working with AboutUs on a top-secret widget project.]

If you’ve ever been looking for dated information on the Web, you’ve likely come across the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive. No site provides such a detailed reference to the yester-Web, allowing us to reach back to forgotten history and grab snippets of the Web as it once was.

But for all the compliments I can pile on the Wayback Machine, it is not without its flaws.

The biggest gripe? The Wayback Machine only archives HTML. That means that any image files or CSS that is needed to render a page doesn’t get archived. Which means if that information gets deleted from the original server, then the Wayback Machine archives don’t render properly.

Needless to say, a bunch of pages render poorly.

My other complaint? The Wayback Machine wasn’t created in the Silicon Forest. But that’s just how I am.

Okay. That’s Wayback Machine 1.0. Hold that thought.

Now, when it comes to accessing current information about any Web site, few resources can compete with the simplicity and ease-of-use of Portland-based AboutUs. Even if AboutUs doesn’t have a current page about a site, they’ll render one in a matter of seconds. So, typing “http://aboutus.org/%5Bwhatever URL you want]” is about the easiest way to get information on any site—as it currently exists.

There’s just one problem: seeing how a site looked in the past isn’t always that simple. You can review the Wiki change tracking, but that’s not always the best way of assessing the changes to the site. And if you just added the site to AboutUs, you have no idea what the site looked like previously.

Now for that historical reference, Portland-based Iterasi is about the easiest way to see how a site looked in the past.

But Iterasi has its own flaw: the archive isn’t terribly broad. It’s deep for certain “Web 2.0 cool kid” sites, but it could use more breadth.

If only AboutUs could find a site that helped provide the historical reference they’re missing. If only Iterasi could find a site that could help extend the breadth of their Web archive.

Well welcome to a “You got your archive in my current information! You got your current information pointing to my archive!” moment as two great Portland tastes have found a way to taste great together.

That’s right. AboutUs and Iterasi are partnering. And the result could be what we’ve all been wanting the Wayback Machine to provide: current details and accurate historical renderings.

Welcome to the Wayback Machine 2.0.

AboutUs IterasiSure, the Iterasi link isn’t huge, but it is important.

Now, you can visit AboutUs to get the latest information about any given site. Looking for historical information? Iterasi is there to provide the archived pages that they have on file. Voila!

Iterasi describes the peanut butter of the AboutUs-Iterasi partnership this way:

So why is this cool? Well for a whole bunch of reasons. It gives the AboutUs user a very cool new feature (obviously…right!). AboutUs users can now search through the iterasi archive to research the evolution of the Website, search for information of historical significance, whatever. For iterasi, it should be a source of traffic to our site where we can hopefully turn them into happy users as well.

AboutUs describes the chocolate of the partnership this way:

Now, we’ve partnered with the smart folks at Iterasi to give their archive greater visibility and provide the people visiting AboutUs with an additional resource for information about websites and the organizations and people attached to them. Now at every AboutUs page, you’ll find a link to the Iterasi Archive of pages relating to that site.

And to think, it was all put together by Erik Benson of Voyager—a VC. As Pete Grillo of Iterasi recounts:

Recently I ran into Erik. I suspected he had something to do with putting iterasi and AboutUs together. The talk went something like this:

Pete: ‘Erik, are you behind this?’.

Erik: ‘Yes. It makes sense to me’.

Pete: ‘You know, if people find out you do nice things, it could be the beginning of the end for you as a VC’.

Erik: ‘Yes, it could appear that I am losing my edge’.

We both had a good laugh and went our separate ways.

Whatever the case, it’s a great move for a couple of outstanding Portland startups. And it’s really cool to see this kind of collaboration in our community.

Long story short, we all win. And now we have a much stronger information resource—right here in our Silicon Forest backyard.

[HTML1]

[HTML2]

[HTML3]