OVF invested in Salt & Straw in 2019 to fuel their expansion and bring their artisanal ice cream to locations up and down the West Coast. We feel so strongly about the potential of the team, the strategy, and the product that we made a 2nd investment in 2020 to help them add additional scoop shops in Florida. We have been delighted with their progress – the company has generated consistent, impressive growth with new locations and customers from coast to coast. But selling handmade, super-delicious ice cream has always been only part of the equation for founders Kim and Tyler Malek (cousins). They are on a mission to create community gathering places in walkable neighborhoods and arts districts, as well as marquee entertainment destinations. A Salt & Straw scoop shop is a place where you can run into neighbors, spend time with family, or treat yourself.

It’s no secret that students’ mental health is in harm’s way. Young people the world over are feeling more isolated, anxious and disengaged, exacerbated by the Covid pandemic. In the last decade, there has been a 76% increase in adolescent suicide attempts. 76%! Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among adolescents. Chances are you know someone who knows someone who has attempted (or succeeded with) suicide. It has become harder and harder to just be a kid.

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.

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.

Eric Rosenfeld - September 2021

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.

In pursuing our mission of organizing and unleashing the talent and capital in our region to build a new generation of growth companies we must examine and acknowledge the personal, cultural, and institutional racism that exists with us, in Oregon, and in our venture industry and we must address it directly. As a visible and impactful community-based organization, we are obligated and eager to use our resources and network to be a force for positive change. This will not be easy, and we will undoubtedly make mistakes along the way. Diversity, equity, and inclusion have been strategic priorities for us for the past few years and we recognize we need to accelerate our efforts and do better.

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…

Is this the time to invest in artificial intelligence? With interest in the sector rising, venture capital is flowing into AI startups. At this workshop for our investors and portfolio entrepreneurs, we discussed the technology, its near-term applications and use cases, and where potential investment opportunities await.

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.