Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
It’s always nice to see more early stage investors getting into the game. But what about those early stage entrepreneurs?
Well, Reed College is doing their part. They hosted Reed College Start Up Lab this last weekend. And managed to churn out seven new startup ideas. But the big winner wasn’t even in college yet. Read More
For startups, finding the most cost-effective means of building and distributing your product can be the difference between life and death. That’s why using the Web has been such a benefit to small startups. As have Web services—like Amazon Web Services (AWS)—that allow those startups to get big time functionality for a fraction of the cost of maintaining their own infrastructure.
But no matter how efficient the startup, a little extra cash can always help. So if you’ve built something interesting on AWS, consider throwing your hat in the ring to win the Amazon Web Services Start-up Challenge. Read More
Mugasha continues to make a strong showing in the Portland startup scene. This time it is a little further south. Introducing Startup Weekend Corvallis.
It’s been a while. A while since we’ve had a Startup Weekend in our neck of the woods or Silicon Forest or whatever. The last time we had the chance to participate in this kind of “build a startup in a weekend” experience was about 18 months ago with Startup Portland.
But what a Startup Weekend it was. With five startups launching, including poster-child Mugasha, which continues to make a strong showing in the Portland startup scene.
This time around, the startups will be starting up a little further south. Introducing Startup Weekend Corvallis. Read More
Didn’t we just have a Techvibes Portland Start-up Index a few weeks ago? Yes, we did. But Techvibes has decided to change the publication date, so we’ll be getting these at the beginning of the month.
Techvibes has changed a few other things, too.
And while the listings might be a little more cryptic now—and unfortunately lacking in indicators in regards to movement this time around—this effort continues to provide a interesting way to assess and discuss the local startup scene.
The biggest mover on this edition of the index? Pheedo rocketing up 33 slots to crack the top 20.
Strangest part of the new list? Vidoop has completely dropped off the index during the week that they’re relocating the entire company to Portland. NetworthIQ (acquired by Strands), MyOpenID (JanRain‘s OpenID relying party), and Workplace2go also disappeared from the list.
As always, the official metrics can be found at Techvibes.
Interested in seeing your Portland-based company on this list? You now have an automated way to add it. And make sure to drop the Techvibes folks a note, too.
It’s that time again. Time for the Techvibes Portland Start-up Index, the monthly round up of Portland-area startup companies and products, ranked by the average of their Alexa and Compete rankings.
Admittedly a work-in-progress, the Portland Start-up Index often premieres “new” entries that have been—in actuality—heavy hitters for far longer than some of the “old” companies and products on the list.
This month’s list is a perfect example of that dynamic in action, as MetaFilter (July 1999) and Digital Trends (2001) premiere in the top 10 at #2 and #5 respectively.
So how did the rest of the startup scene fare this month?
To see the rankings, metrics, and movement within the list, visit the Portland Start-up Index on Techvibes.
Hard to believe, but it’s already time for another Portland Start-up Index from Techvibes.
For July, three new Portland startups have joined the listing, which is based on Alexa and Compete rankings. Clicky debuted at 6, Vidoop at 15, and GreenRenter at 46.
The top five slots remained static, but there was a great deal of movement further down the list. Kryptiq was the highest riser, moving up three slots to 37. Others slid substantially. GoSeeTell dropped 10 slots to 49, (my own) Kumquat dropped nine to 52, and IDP Solutions down eight to the last spot on the list.
Enough analysis. Here’s the list:
For more on the movement of these sites, including the Alexa and Compete rankings that determine position, see the Techvibes Portland Start-up Index for July 2008.
Editor: I grew up near a town that was the big city for a fairly rural state. It was the home to many traditional high-tech companies. It had great skiing nearby. And it had a river running right through the middle of it.
Thing is, it wasn’t Portland. It was Boise, Idaho.
And, I had a strange feeling that those aren’t the only similarities between our two towns.
So, when Chris Blanchard offered to write a guest column on the state of the Boise tech environment, a bit of my former Idahoan homesickness came into play. And I jumped at the chance.
The biggest surprise for me? How closely connected the two communities are. And how they, in Boise, are struggling with some of the exact same issues we, here in the Silicon Forest, find ourselves struggling.
Greetings to you Silicon Florists, Portvangelists, Portvangelistas, members of the Twitterverse and others of the technology startup brother/sisterhood from your Brother here in Boise, ID.
Anyway, our friend Rick was kind enough to let me guest post from over here in the Silicon Sandbox, Boise, Idaho.
Why? I’m getting to that.
Last year me and a few friends started a company called Pronetos, the first social network for scholars.
The idea is to give scholars a place to network and collaborate, and ultimately give them a platform to publish their work. We’re still testing the publication tools—a combination of open source software and print-on-demand components—but they are pretty slick and pretty cutting edge, especially when you’re from Boise and resources are limited.
We spent a lot of time last year in Portland, and have a lot of props to dish out to the PDX community for helping us with technology, marketing, business planning, etc. We couldn’t have come this far without you, PDX!
So thanks PDXers for helping grow Boise’s start-ups in addition to your own.
Boise is doing OK as a region. You might have seen that Forbes named us the 7th most promising new tech region or something or other. We get lots of awards like that.
Quality of life is GREAT! Still, the tech community is young. There are very few contract developers here. There are lots of software gigs open here all the time. Boise State graduates about 25 CS engineers every year and 100% have jobs when they graduate. Still, we do have a MySQL office here!
As far as financing goes, a couple months ago at a Kickstand meeting (this is the local tech start-up group) we heard from an angel investor that the local angel group had reviewed 100 business plans in the span of 90 days or so, and funded exactly zero.
We’ve got only one VC here in town and they don’t fund seed deals (and not often true early stage deals). So we have an angel group that wants to fund companies with 3 years of operating history and a VC that wants to fund mezzanine deals (oh, I can hear them racing to the comment link below).
So, if you’re interested, here are some cool things about Boise that may heighten its appeal—and your perception of our town:
We’ve got a good night life scene, beer and blog group, the Tech Boise Blog, 180 Twitterers, and we ran a great Code Camp a couple weeks ago. We’ve also got good institutional support from places like Idaho TechConnect, and the Boise State TECenter.
So it’s coming together—but is Boise “not ready for prime time?” Well don’t tell us that, but I’m still glad for all of you over there in PDX that act as out adjunct tech community.
If you want to keep up on what’s going on over here (like we do with PDX) find me on Twitter—@LGM1—and I’ll point you in the right direction.
Peace to you, PDX. Now a letter to our friends in Corinth.
Corvallis-based MyStrands has just announced a program designed to find the best early-stage startup focused on “recommendation” technologies. And, once found, to fund that startup to the tune of 6-figures of investment.
The $100,000 investment prize will be awarded to:
[T]he best early-stage project in the area of recommendation technologies, considering the technology, business opportunity and team behind the project (without limitations as to which field the technology is applied).
This is a worldwide competition, but I’m confident that some of you Portland and Silicon Forest types—side project or otherwise—have got some cool technology that has a chance of winning this thing.
Why not give it a shot?
All Proposals will be judged using the following judging criteria: (a) implementation and integration of recommendation technologies, (b) originality and creativity, (c) likelihood of long-term success and scalability, (d) effectiveness in addressing a need in the marketplace, and (e) team bios.
Get into the finals and you’re off to Switzerland to present.
Five Finalists will be invited to present their projects during the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys08) next October 23rd to 25th, 2008 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Finalists will be announced on October 6th.
So what are you waiting for? I think you can win this. And I’m sure the investment would help make your dream a reality. And if you’re not going to do it, then maybe our idea for Portland Startup Weekend should be based on recommendation technology.
Entries will be accepted until September 15, 2008.
For more information on the contest and requirements, see MyStrands’ post on the contest.
[Update: I just noticed that ReadWrite Web has posted on the contest, as well, encouraging MyStrands to continue its work in implementing open data standards.]