Venture capitalists love metaphors. And nowhere is this more prevalent than when we talk about a good startup “pitch” – the first meeting with an investor where you get to tell your story.

We like to say things like, a good first meeting is like a good first date. You want the person you are meeting to remember you and think you are interesting enough to get a second date. No one should be getting married after a first date.

One of the areas where we’ve experienced confusion between investors and entrepreneurs is getting to a common vocabulary for the current stage of a company. An entrepreneur might say, “We’re raising a $5m Series A to build our product and run pilots with 10 customers,” which in many cases sounds to an investor more like a seed or pre-seed investment rather than a Series A.

The Technology Association of Oregon (TAO) was kind enough to present me with a lifetime achievement award, which is wonderful recognition of what we have all accomplished as a fund and community.

OVF is very grassroots in origin and nature - it was created by our community, for our community; a community of hundreds of investors, local entrepreneurs, and organizational partners, including TAO. What we’ve accomplished, we’ve accomplished together.

Our thoughts are with our doctors and nurses working long hours; our parents and grandparents feeling isolated and scared; our families with children adjusting to life without school, extracurriculars, sports, and play dates; our employers facing abrupt losses and changes in demand; and pretty much everyone adversely impacted by this virus.

As early-stage investors, we’re often the first institutional partner of a founding team, and we’re all working together to grow a successful, self-sustaining company. That said, one of the first tasks of a startup board is to create an exit strategy and plan, knowing the plan will evolve and change over time as the company evolves and grows.

Danny Meyer came terrifying close to pursuing a career as a lawyer. In the early 1980s, Danny moved to New York City and took the LSAT exam. The experience of taking that test caused him to quickly decide that he really did not want to be a lawyer. His parents were not pleased. Instead, Danny took a job as a host at an Italian seafood restaurant. 2 years later, at age 27, he used all his savings to open his first restaurant: Union Square Café.

Since 2016, the Oregon Venture Fund has collaborated with The Brentwood Group and other regional and national venture funds investing in Oregon and SW Washington to survey and track founder, employee, and board compensation at local venture-backed companies. As the only annual survey focused on Oregon VC-backed startups and growth companies, the data has unique value for identifying trends, benchmarking compensation, and assisting startup executives, investors, and board members with recruiting and retaining key people.

Blockchain best suited where:

· Immutability matters

· Either transparency or anonymity/confidentiality matters

· Multiples entities involved, and trust is an issue

· Millions/trillions of transactions

· A centralized architecture fails, and peer-to-peer works better (eg, YouTube, not Comcast)

· Disintermediation can/should occur

We invited Gerry Langeler to meet with us and share his advice on what the Oregon Venture Fund and our portfolio companies should be doing now to prepare for the inevitable next economic downturn.

Worth remembering that during the mortgage meltdown and the ensuing Great Recession (12/07 to 6/09), the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 50% of its value. Venture financing dollars dropped 40% and the number of initial venture financings also dropped 40%. 9 million jobs were lost. $7 trillion in home equity evaporated. 7 million American families lost their homes.

We believe there will be an increasing number of local venture-fundable startups operating in life science and medical technology markets. The Oregon Venture Fund has made 9 investments to date in these sectors…

How are VC-backed companies in Oregon and SW Washington compensating their employees? The Oregon Venture Fund teamed up again with the Brentwood Group to find out.

To get meaningful, longitudinal data, our approach is to directly survey all privately held VC-backed companies in our region. This allows management teams and investors to track annual compensation levels and trends, including base and variable comp and equity ownership, by position, and controlled for company size, stage, and funding level.

Why Oregon and Why OAF

We believe this is Oregon’s day in the sun. Even when it’s raining, like it probably is right now…

The frequency and quality of local venture-backed exits continue to accelerate

This means that virtuous cycle of local wealth creation and reinvestment is shifting from first to second gear. The result: More local capital and more entrepreneurs wanting to do it again.

Thorough diligence is a cornerstone of successful investing - and a hallmark of the Oregon Angel Fund. OAF's thoroughness is born of our collaborative model, which harnesses the vast wealth of talent and experience that our investors bring to the table. But as with any project involving lots of people, OAF diligence could become chaotic and time-consuming if not carefully choreographed.

What: B2C Investing Workshop - What are the early predictive indicators of success for a venture fundable consumer-facing startup?

Why: Develop a framework for investing in early-stage, consumer-facing businesses & what to look for as leading indicators of scalability, defensibility, and exitability.

We explored the unique dynamics of the medtech market (healthcare IT & medical devices), the ins and outs of investing in medtech, and guidance for OAF as a locally focused, early stage investor. A pair of healthcare-focused VCs led the conversation: Alex Suh with California Technology Ventures and Thomas Kluz with Providence Ventures.

Julianne Brands - June 2017

What are VC-backed companies in Oregon and SW Washington compensating their employees?  OAF teamed up with the Brentwood Group to find out.  Here is a summary of the 2017 survey findings.

There's been a lot of hype and local/national press about Portland's startup economy. OAF and CBRE convened a panel of economists & startup community members to separate fact from fiction with a data-driven discussion led by the most knowledgeable economists who study and track Portland to understand how does Portland compare and what metrics could we look at to track, measure, and predict the success of our startup economy?

Julianne Brands - Jan 2017

The beginning of a new year often marks an important time for reflection, resolutions, and, if you’re in our industry, speculating about startup and venture financing trends.

In October, we suspended disbelief and took a deep dive into the emerging worlds of Virtual and Augmented Reality with a workshop featuring industry leaders in the field. In a wide-ranging discussion, we explored the foundational technologies needed to realize the full potential of augmented and virtual reality, the evolution and importance of content on this this new medium, and the business models that will emerge to monetize this emerging technology.

OAF strives to be thorough yet efficient with our diligence, tapping into the expertise of our investors to make great investment decisions and employing a structured yet flexible process that rewards everyone involved with an extraordinary learning experience.