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The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) is the largest entrepreneur assistance organization in the state of Oregon. [1] As such, this not-for-profit organization provides resources and support for emerging, growth-oriented companies in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.
The OEN provides a number of programs to help their members:
Startup Services [2] Designed to help entrepreneurs plan their businesses and execute said plans. These include evaluation of long-term potential for business concepts; seminars on business plan development; review of business plans with a team of experts; and training and review of presentations with a panel of professional investors and service providers.
Executive Education Series [3] —A sixteen-part series to help entrepreneurs and founding executives with such ideas as "Go-to-market Strategies," "Building sales strategy, process and people," and "Developing financials, projections and valuations."
OEN Online Community [4] —A place where blogs and discussions are posted to help entrepreneurs with the small things of starting a business. There are helpful links, and is a judgment free forum to express concerns, questions, or comments on anything in the business community.
Pub Talk [5] —An informal program of presentations by startups looking for feedback in a non-threatening venue—a pub. Held the second Wednesday of each month except in July and December.
SwapMeet [6] —A new program held quarterly around the Portland area. Created specifically for people looking to connect with entrepreneurs, early-stage companies, and the people who help them both grow. As the Oregon economy continues to develop, there will be more and more opportunity to work with, work for, or start new companies in growing industries.
Portland Angel Network [7] and Women's Investment Network [8] —Private angel investor groups which meet regularly to see presentations from companies looking for investors.
Angel Oregon [9] —AO is a day-long conference, and is the premier education, investment, and networking event in the Northwest, for angel investors and early-stage entrepreneurs. The education component focuses on how angel investing works, due diligence, etc. The investment component features companies who are chosen after having gone through an application and screening process, making their pitch to investors.
2009 OEN Angel Oregon finalist [10]
Venture Northwest [11] —Venture Northwest (formerly Venture Oregon) is an annual conference that draws institutional investors and investment bankers from across the Western U.S. who are interested in emerging Northwest businesses and the region's growth segments.
OEN Tom Holce Awards for Entrepreneurship [12] —An annual evening of celebration for the Pacific Northwest's entrepreneurs. Award categories are:
Entrepreneurs Bus Tour [13] -– This quarterly program launched in the spring of 2006. No more than 10 early-stage entrepreneurs are put in a van, and taken to the business location of two different, very experienced, serial entrepreneurs. OEN invites early-stage entrepreneurs to hop into a bus to visit the business locations of two different, very experienced, Northwest CEOs. Entrepreneurs will receive a brief tour of the business facility and spend about an hour and a half with each CEO, learning about this entrepreneur's road to success and their lessons learned.
CEO Roundtable [14] -– Join in on one of OEN's CEO Roundtables to discuss business strategies; current challenges; how to build a team; how to raise capital; and what distribution channels make the most sense for growing a Northwest business. An experienced CEO will facilitate the discussion. For more information, see the OEN's comprehensive program list.
Formerly the Oregon Entrepreneurs Forum (OEF), the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network was started in 1991 as one of 20 worldwide chapters [15] of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Enterprise Forum (Enterprise Forum). Known at the time as the Oregon Enterprise Forum, the organization merged in 1997 with the Oregon Young Entrepreneurs Association.
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to become registered, startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder. At the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to be successful and influential.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the firms they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. The start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Jason McCabe Calacanis is an American Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, author and podcaster.
Social venture capital is a form of investment funding that is usually funded by a group of social venture capitalists or an impact investor to provide seed-funding investment, usually in a for-profit social enterprise, in return to achieve an outsized gain in financial return while delivering social impact to the world. There are various organizations, such as Venture Philanthropy (VP) companies and nonprofit organizations, that deploy a simple venture capital strategy model to fund nonprofit events, social enterprises, or activities that deliver a high social impact or a strong social causes for their existence. There are also regionally focused organizations that target a specific region of the world, to help build and support the local community in a social cause.
Doug Richard is an American entrepreneur best known for his television appearances in the United Kingdom. He appeared as a "Dragon" on the first two series of Dragons' Den and was also a government adviser.
Cambia Health Solutions is a nonprofit health care company based in Portland, Oregon. It is the parent company of Regence, a member of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association operating in Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Washington; Asuris Northwest Health; BridgeSpan Health; and LifeMap.
An Entrepreneur in residence, or Executive in residence (EIR), is a position most often held by successful entrepreneurs in venture capital firms, private equity firms, startup accelerators, law firms or business schools. The EIR typically leads, or has led, a small, early-stage, emerging company deemed to have high-growth potential, or which has demonstrated high-growth in its number of employees, annual revenue, or both. An institutional fund may provide an entrepreneur in residence, or executive in residence, with the working capital to nurture expansion, new-product development, or restructuring of a company's operations, management, or ownership.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors usually give support to start-ups at the initial moments and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital, as well as to provide advice to their portfolio companies. Over the last 50 years, the number of angel investors has greatly increased.
David Semel Rose is an American serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He is an investor in startup technology companies and founder of New York Angels, an early-stage technology investment group. He is Managing Partner of Rose Tech Ventures, a venture fund focused on Internet-based business, and CEO of Gust, which operates a collaboration platform for early stage angel investing.
New Ventures is a global program that provides services for the development of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) whose main goal is to generate a positive environmental or social change within their own communities.
The Portland Incubator Experiment, often abbreviated as PIE or PIE PDX or stylized as Pie, is a business incubator based in Portland, Oregon that provides mentorship and resources to select startup companies. Co-founded by Renny Gleeson and Rick Turoczy, PIE is run by the Portland-based advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy (W+K). The program was informally launched in 2009 before converting to a formal structure in 2011. PIE participants are chosen by a selection committee, following an application process. Startups receive seed money and spend three months developing their businesses with support from W+K and participating mentors. Companies that have provided financial assistance and mentorship include The Coca-Cola Company, Google, Intel, Nike, Inc. and Target Corporation.
Angels Den is the Europe's first and largest online investment platform that connects businesses with angel investors. It was founded in 2013 and is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Baybars Altuntaş is a Turkish entrepreneur, angel investor, speaker and author based in Istanbul. He founded Deulcom International, a vocational training school in Turkey in 1992 and currently serves as the president of the executive committee of the company. He is currently a jury member on the new Turkish entrepreneurship program and is the current host of the Turkish version of The Weakest Link, En Zayıf Halka
The Alchemist Accelerator is a venture-backed accelerator focused on accelerating the development of seed-stage ventures that monetize from enterprises. CB Insights rated Alchemist the top accelerator in 2016 based on median funding rates of its grads. The accelerator’s primary screening criteria are based on teams, with primacy placed on having distinctive technical co-founders. The organization provides seed investment into companies it admits, and provides founders a structured path to traction, fundraising, mentorship, and community over the course of a six month program. Alchemist's backers include many of the top corporate and VC funds in the Valley—including Khosla Ventures, DFJ, Cisco, Siemens, GE, and Salesforce, among others. The accelerator seeds around 75 enterprise-monetizing ventures per year.
Raymond "Ray" King is an American entrepreneur and co-founder of multiple companies including AboutUs.org and Top Level Design. He began his career by creating The Computer Workshop with a group of friends which offered computing classes at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. This venture earned him $60,000, enough to cover tuition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for one year. King studied computer science there until he left in 1984 to start Semaphore Inc. which sold accounting and project management software, that he had begun developing in college, to architecture and engineering firms. He founded SnapNames, which specialized in "snapping up" expired domain names, in 2000 after relocating to Portland, Oregon. King left the company in 2005 and founded the wiki Internet domain directory AboutUs.org in 2006. He served as chief executive officer until stepping down in 2013. In 2012, he and his brother-in-law founded the registry Top Level Design, which manages the new top-level domains .design, .ink, .wiki, and .gay. King and his wife have one daughter and reside in the Portland metropolitan area.
Revant Optics is an American online retailer that designs, develops, and sells replacement lenses for sunglasses and prescription glasses, based in Portland, Oregon.
Yadin B. Kaufmann is an Israeli-American technology investor, social entrepreneur and writer.
RFPIO is a privately owned developer of cloud-based software that automates and streamlines the process of responding to a request for proposal (RFP) based in Beaverton, Oregon. The company also maintains an office in Coimbatore, India. Founded in 2015, the company has expanded rapidly and now has more than 150,000 users worldwide after tripling its user base in 2019 and sustaining growth during the global pandemic. RFPIO software has supported more than $20 billion in RFP responses.
Elevate Capital is a privately owned venture capital firm based in Portland, Oregon, that focuses on early-stage investments in startup companies and particularly those companies led by women, minorities, and veterans. The firm manages the Elevate Capital Fund that invests in early-stage companies and the Elevate Inclusion Fund that invests in startups run by women and minority entrepreneurs.
Venture capital in Poland is a segment of the private equity market that finances early-stage high-risk companies based in Poland, with the potential for fast growth. As of March 2019, there is a total of 130 active VC firms in Poland, including local offices of international VC firms, and VC firms with mainly Polish management teams. Between 2009–2019, these entities have invested locally in over 750 companies, which gives an average of around 9 companies per portfolio. The Polish venture market accounts for 3% of the entire European ecosystem of VC investments, mainly in the digital space.
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