Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
While Founder Gym may not technically be a Portland startup accelerator — it’s a virtual program — interim CEO of Founder Gym, Paige Hendrix Buckner, is a long-time fixture of the Portland startup community. So we’ll just call it a Portland startup accelerator. And this class, two Portland startups joined Paige for the program:
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Arguably my favorite professional organization in town and the one organization I can name that has managed to sustain consistently exemplary programming throughout the ups and downs of the pandemic, PDXWIT — which started as a nonprofit organization to support Portland women in the technology industry — is turning ten years old.
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If you’re a regular reader of Silicon Florist, you probably have caught on to the fact that I tend to focus on more anecdotal evidence and word of mouth than research driven sorts of things. But I appreciate the researched stuff. And that’s why I am glad that there are real journalists who dig into these sorts of things. Like startup fundraising in Oregon in 2019.
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While I’m not one to celebrate fundraising for the sake of fundraising, I’m also one to admit that a growing local company raising a single round of financing that’s north of $50 million is still a bit of a rarity. And therefore, notable, at the very least. So I thought I’d capture the coverage of SheerID’s latest round.
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The big news around the Portland startup community today — and likely for some time to follow — surrounded the latest round of funding for Vacasa. Why? Because the size of the round — at $319 million — was unusual. And the valuation for that round catapulted the company into unicorn territory.
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I’m always a fan of folks who are helping startups. Especially those who recognize the unique challenges of founders. That’s why I’ve been happy to see Women Led working to have a more significant impact on women and the companies they’re leading and building, here in Portland. But in order to do the work they want to do, a nonprofit organization needs funding. That’s why Women Led launched a GoFundMe campaign.
Fundraising is hard. I think that’s something on which all of us can agree. Constructing grammatically correct sentences even if they seem awkward? No. Oxford commas? Probably not. But agreeing that fundraising is a grind? Yes. Definitely. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a company looking for a loan, a startup chasing venture capital, a VC chasing LPs… even an employee looking to get their budget approved. It’s all difficult.
Curious about who in the northwest is getting funding? Well, if diving through Crunchbase or Pitchbook isn’t exactly your cup of tea, our friends at GeekWire have simplified it for you. Introducing the GeekWire Startup Funding List.
With funds raising larger and larger rounds, the economics of cutting smaller checks for seed stage companies get more and more lopsided. And that leaves a gap for the youngest and most vulnerable of companies. That’s why it’s always nice to see folks raising funds specifically targeted at early stage companies. Like Seven Peaks just did.
One of the challenges of the Portland startup community has always been momentum. We sometimes have great—at times even fantastic—startup news, like an exit or a major announcement. But more often than not, that happens as a solitary instance. And then it’s some time before the next major announcement. So it’s rare to have a day like today where both Torch 3D and Vacasa have major news.