OVF and the Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad…Surprisingly Good Year!

Eric Rosenfeld - January 2022

While the pandemic continued to generate hardship & angst for many, 2021 was a year for the record books for the Oregon Venture Fund’s growing community of investors and portfolio entrepreneurs:

• OVF invested a record $11 million in local startups this past year. We are particularly proud to welcome Cloud Campaign, TrovaTrip, RISE Brewing, and Wayfinder to our portfolio and venture community. 

• OVF portfolio companies raised a record $541 million in startup & growth capital in 2021.

• The 2021 exits of Absci, Hubb, and Inpria combined generated $1.3 billion in new wealth, with much of that staying in our region.

• Absci’s 2021 IPO broke several records, including being the largest IPO in terms of valuation (>$2 billion) and dollars raised ($230 million) for a life science company between Seattle and San Francisco.

• Inpria’s $514 million exit to JSR was a record for an OSU spinout and for an Oregon-grown advanced materials company.

• The aggregate market value of OVF’s portfolio, based on most recent financing and exit valuations, nearly doubled in 2021 to $4.1 billion.

• Together, the startups backed by OVF generated a record $826 million in revenue in 2021 - all the more remarkable given that most had $0 or negligible revenue at the time of our first investment.

• And, while the final numbers aren’t in, we estimate that a record 4,200 people are now employed by the portfolio.

Despite the record year, there’s plenty of room for improvement: In 2022, we are committed to increasing the diversity of our portfolio companies and their boards – eg, to date, 33% of our portfolio companies were founded or are led by a female; 22% by a person of color. While that’s considerably better than Silicon Valley, we know we can do better.

We are grateful for the hard work of our region’s entrepreneurs and for our investors’ commitment to investing meaningfully, ambitiously, and locally.