Oregonstartups.com Blog

The Jan. 28 issue of the OregonStartups.com newsletter is out a bit late because I headed to Kasas City, MO on Sunday.  Starting at noon today (Kansas City time) I’ll spend 2 and a half days becoming a certified trainer for three of the Kaufman Foundation’s FastTrak entrepreneur training courses. 

My main interest is in FastTrak TechVenture — a 10-class (3 hours per class)  course for high tech and biotech entrepreneurs that covers all the basics from market validation to operations, business planning, financial projections, fund raising, and product launch.  In addition to printed course materials, they have some useful sounding web resources (stock dilution spreadsheets, financial projection spreadsheets, etc.)

With a little luck, we’ll start offering FastTrac training at OTBC in March or April.  Stay tuned for more info!

May 24-26 is Startup Weekend Portland.  So what is Startup Weekend?  Here’s the definition from their website:

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of small business entrepreneurs to build a community and company in a weekend.

The founders decide what to make as a team, and earn an equal share
of stock in the developed business. Attendees are responsible for
bringing the desire and passion to the project and walk out of the room
with a brand new business, in a short 54 hours. Sound intense? It is.

Start to finish (or at least to initial release?) in 54 hours.  Read about the Seattle Startup Weekend that created Skillbit on the front page of the Startup Weekend site.

The Oregonian featured Ignite Portland in the Living section on Saturday.  For more info, see the Ignite Portland website.  Ignite Portland 2 is Feb. 5 at the Bagdad Theater.

The Silicon Florist reported that Vancouver based Iterasi came out of stealth mode at DEMO 2008.

According to data published this week by the NASVF, Oregon ranked #16 compared to other states in 2007 venture capital investment-dollars, with  $301 million invested in 40 deals.  Oregon received roughly 1% of 2007 VC investments in the U.S.   That’s a lot better than the 0.58% Oregon received in 2005 and 2006.  Whether you look at total dollars, state ranking, or percent of deals, Oregon seems to be making headway.

Here is the State line-up in 2007:

State        2007 Deals    2,007 Dollars ($000)
CA              1564                13,802,961
MA                430                 3,489,131
TX                166                 1,416,470
WA               170                 1,314,590
NY                191                 1,195,328
PA                150                    835,166
MD                 99                    635,283
NJ                  91                    624,906
FL                  63                    608,338
NC                 69                    577,022
CO                 86                    564,200
IL                  70                    510,436
VA                 87                    463,099
GA                 73                    462,935
MN                 54                    427,163
OR                 40                    301,468

From 2005 to 2007, Oregon’s trend was:

Deals            Dollars
27                    $134M
31                    $152M
40                   $301M

The Silicon Florist reported this week that Portland startup wired.md has been acquired by Krames.

According to a research paper that won the 2008 SBA Office of Advocacy Best Doctoral Paper:

The study posits that venture capitalists (VCs) may be willing to fund a marginal team with better venture potential than a good team with limited venture potential.  In other words, entrepreneurs need not only to assemble an effective team, but also to clearly demonstrate the venture potential of their proposed business.  This finding contrasts with most prior studies, which identify the venture team as the key funding criterion.

Down load the full paper here.

A National Venture Capital Association report shows $2.6 billion invested by VCs in CleanTech deals in 2007 – well above the $1.8 billion invested in 2006.

Red Herring reports that $34.7 billion was raised in 2007 by venture funds ($11 billion in Q4 alone) which is the strongest year since $38.8 billion was raised in 2001.

According to IPOHome.com, during 2007, all of the talk about IPOs was that London and Hong Kong
were stealing the New York IPO market’s thunder. But, with the largest
number of IPOs and highest dollar volume since 2000, the 2007 U.S. IPO
market performed well against the backdrop of the subprime and credit
market crises.

Here’s the IPO data from 2003 on: