It’s that time of year. Time for the PIE startup accelerator to open its annual application period. And time for you, founder of a product-based startup, to decide if a startup accelerator could be beneficial for your company at this juncture.
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Former founder returns to the Portland startup community as cofounder and CEO of a new pursuit: Metrist
In the early days of the SaaS and Cloud-based version of the Portland startup community, Jeff Martens was one of the more active, engaged, and recognizable figures in the community. His first startup — a product of Portland Startup Weekend called CPUsage — created a service that provided on-demand high-performance computing services to customers by leveraging idle time on vast arrays of participating machines.
Read MorePortland startup DeepSurface raises $4.5 million Seed Round
While the size of today’s Seed Rounds seem more like Series A rounds from a few years ago, it’s nice to see a Portland startup taking advantage of the trend — and dry VC powder — to fuel their growth here locally. This morning, I got word that DeepSurface has raised $4.5 million. Participating investors include Differential Ventures, which led the round; Osage Venture Partners; Ginossar Ventures; and Peninsula Ventures.
Read MoreREMINDER: Portland Lunch 2.0, still BYOL and virtual… but social
While we had all hoped to be through the whole pandemic thing by now, it’s still doing an incredible job of wreaking havoc on in-person events around these parts — and making every day seem like a repeat of the day before. While not ideal, virtual events still hold the potential to give us some semblance of human connection until we can gather IRL again. And there’s an opportunity to do so, this week: Portland Lunch 2.0.
Read MoreQuestions about startup accelerators? Here are some lengthy, often meandering answers
I had the opportunity to host an AMA session for my day job PIE, yesterday. And what was scheduled to be an hour-long Q&A session wound up going almost twice that long. Lots of good questions. Lots of not-so-direct answers. But if you’re interested in the world of startup accelerators, I sincerely hope you find some value in it.
Read MoreYour paying customers are only one click away with Rally Pay
If there’s one thing the pandemic accelerated it was virtual meeting platform development. But if there was another thing that the pandemic accelerated it would be ecommerce. Suddenly, practically overnight, every retail location was forced to become an ecommerce solution in order to remain accessible to customers.
Read MoreGroundhog Day, all over again: 2-2-22 seemed like a good opportunity for Portland Lunch 2.0
Getting connected to folks in the Portland startup community has always been more challenging than it should be. And the pandemic has only exacerbated that whole situation. And while virtual events aren’t ideal, they are better than nothing. Especially if they take place at a time that’s not forcing you to spend even more of your day in front of the computer. That’s why there’s Portland Lunch 2.0.
Read MorePitchbook: 2021 was $1 billion year for venture capital in Portland
The Portland Business Journal is reporting this morning on numbers from Pitchbook that show Portland metro area startups raised more than $1 billion in venture capital in 2021. The more impressive number from my perspective? That total was the result of investments in 138 deals.
Read MoreIt’s like March Madness. But for startups.
I always knew that the Portland Business Journal had an ongoing case of the brackets. But to date, those brackets have really only handled a local beer competition. But now it’s time for startups to compete, tournament bracket style, as part of the Inno Madness competition.
Read MoreBootstrapped Portland startup LeadsRx acquired by Unbounce
Another exit for a local startup. Portland’s LeadsRx which has been focused on increasing marketing conversion rates since its founding in 2015 has been acquired by Unbounce, an industry leader in landing page optimization.
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