Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
The Portland Seed Fund, one of the most active investors in Seed stage companies in the state, has been working to invest in early stage startups for more than a decade. But they’ve had a couple of meaningful firsts recently. All thanks to ESS, a startup in their portfolio.
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Switchboard, a Portland company founded by Mara Zepeda — and one that powers the Portland Startups Switchboard — has announced the completion of a successful merger with a similarly minded business out of Chicago, Hearken. The combined entity will retain the Hearken name.
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When folks are talking about startup activity, there are generally a few topics that jump to the fore: starting companies, funding companies, and liquidity events, the euphemism for that point in time when founders, investors, and ideally employees generate wealth from their efforts. But what if that last event — that exit — could also benefit the folks who find the most value in what that company was providing? That’s the concept with Exit to Community.
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In case you missed it, Portland’s Janrain was acquired by Akamai. Given that it was the first real Monday following the holidays, I can totally appreciate that you might have missed it. So I thought I would round up some content to help get you up to speed on the deal.
Startup exits—or “liquidity events” as they call them in the biz—are great. And when the exits are multiples of the amount of capital a company has raised, they’re great for both the founders and the investment community. But sometimes the impact of those exits and their impact on the Portland startup community can be a little more nuanced. So I thought I’d share some thoughts on why the recent Cozy and Radar exits are important to our community.
One of Portland’s quietly successful startups, Cedexis, has been acquired by Citrix. I say “quiet” because, like many startups in town, the company kept a fairly low profile, all while providing behind the scenes business-to-business services for a wide variety of brand name customers around the world. And while they were relatively quiet locally, Citrix—who also invested in Cedexis—was well aware of them, as was the entire cloud industry.
[Editor: Another guest post from Dale Davidson of TrekDek. This time out, Dale took some time to sit down with Dan Christopher to talk about the experience of creating, maintaining, and eventually selling of his Web startup, BassMasta, from Portland. Eight years later, Dan has a successful exit under his belt—and a wealth of experience on the world of starting up and cashing out.
And so, without further ado, the story of BassMasta.] Read More