Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
It’s always nice to have investors from outside of town engaging with the Portland startup community. And Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group has been engaged in that sort of activity longer than most. Now, they’re interested in getting better connected with web3 startup community here in town. And ETH Portland seemed like a great opportunity to do so. That’s why they’re inviting web3 founders to lunch.
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A new startup with a presence in both Bend and Seattle has come out of stealth with the announcement of a $6 million round. Meet Magnify, which was incubated in Madrona Venture Labs.
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If you’ve been following the ongoing “Bay Area Brain Drain” exodus news, you’re seeing a few startup hubs coming to the fore. Miami is quickly becoming the go to spot for a number of reasons. Atlanta continues to assert its dominance. And tried and true Austin remains a perennial favorite for those escaping the valley of silicon. But where is the Pacific Northwest mention in this whole thing?
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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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There are any number of venture capital firms outside of Oregon that regularly invest in the Portland startup community. One of those firms — which also boasts a few Portland exits — is Madrona Venture Group out of Seattle. Since they’ve already exhibited a willingness to invest in Portland, I thought it might be valuable for Portland startups to have a better understanding of Madrona’s investment themes for 2020.
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Yes. $200 million. For a Portland startup. It’s really really easy to blanche at that number. I get it. It’s a big number. Especially for a homegrown Portland company in the software world. And were this earlier in the life of Silicon Florist, I could have easily focused on the number, cheered for a company raising that much, and moved along my merry little way.
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.
I’ve been following the Opal crew for quite some time. It’s been an interesting journey to say the least. With any number of hurdles. And any number of changes. But they’ve continued pushing and persevering. And while I’m not touting funding as much as I used to, this seems like one of those times where it’s warranted. Opal just raised $8 million in a round led by Madrona. Read More
Granted, Ecotrust isn’t exactly a startup. But this app release was too interesting to pass up.
Today, Ecotrust opened public access to Madrona, a flexible set of software tools to assist in decision support and spatial planning with an eye toward the environment. Read More
Last year they quietly landed $3 million. Today, ShopIgniter quietly announced that they had landed another $8 million in Series B.
ShopIgniter is kind of one of those quiet startups around Portland. There isn’t a great deal of hubbub around them. Not a great deal of hype. Last year they quietly landed $3 million. Today, ShopIgniter quietly announced that they had landed another $8 million in Series B. Read More