startup

The count is up to $290.25 million in 2011 startup funding

I missed at least one big round in 2011 - the Agilyx December Series C investment of $25 million (thanks to David McFeeters-Krone for pointing that out).  That's now on the list at the OTBC funding page.

That's a total of $47 million raised by Agilyx in 2011, second only to ClearEdge in 2011 fund raising.

David also pointed out that we're missing the Portland Seed Fund and PIE seed investments - good point.  I'm working on those...  That will up the total by more than $300K.

33 Fundings worth $265.25 million in 2011

With two more funding events announced since my December post, I now count 33 startup funding events in 2012 for a total of $265.25 million raised in Oregon in 2011!  You can view the entire list of Oregon funding events for 2010-11 (sortable by date or company name) at the OTBC funding page.

Some take-aways:

  - Wow; a great year for fund raising in Oregon!  Congratulations to all the companies on the list

About Angel Oregon

2011-10-18

Whether you are a concept-stage company or a launch-stage company OEN’s Angel Oregon on April 18, 2012,  is the place to get coaching, networking and real-world feedback to take you to the next level.

But how does it work?  Come find out!  Shelley Gunton, the Chair of Angel Oregon 2012 will describe how Angel Oregon will work, and answer your questions.

Free Event Date: 
Tue, 2011-10-18 12:00

Practical Intelligence Key to Success

 According to the results of a study performed by American University's Kogod School of Business, small business success depends not so much on a business plan, but on "street smarts":

Learn about SBIR Grant Funding for Tech Start-ups on Sep. 17

On September 17, 2010, Congressman David Wu will host a Funding Innovative Research conference at Portland Community College’s Rock Creek campus to bring together Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant program managers from six federal agencies and researchers from around the region.  If you're a technology entreprenuer and you're not familiar with the SBIR and STTR programs, you should consider attending.

How to find a start-up

Are you interested in finding a start-up to join?  If so, here are some ideas on how to find one.
 

Where Start-ups Go Wrong

Larry Wasserman, an experienced COO/CFO who has been a part of and consulted with many start-ups (a dozen or so) provided an excellent presentation this week for the OTBC FastTrac TechVenture program on managing start-up operations.  Larry summarized the ways he has seen start-ups go wrong in their approach to operations management:

One Sentence Challenge

In a blog post at Start-up CFO, Mark MacLeod repeated this comment from an executive who ran a portfolio company of venture capital firm Sequoia:

          ... there is a widely held belief inside Sequoia that those startups
          that can explain themselves in one sentence tend to have a much
          higher success rate than those that do not.

Why Investors will Not Fund your Alpha Development

Fairly often, I have meetings like on I had this past week, with a very passionate entrepreneur who believed he was investor ready, and just needed some introductions to investors.  I had to explain why he wasn't really investor ready, which is never a very fun discussion.  We've had various events and one full day seminar at OTBC on the topic of getting investor ready, but the issue comes up often enough, I thouht I'd try to writing down the thought process as simply and directly as I can.  (Perhaps painfully directly, but that's often what it takes.)