“What should I look for when evaluating a venture fund?” is a question we occasionally hear from prospective investors as well as OVF investors considering funds focused on other geographies, founder demographics, or specific sectors.

March 2023

Eric Rosenfeld

Last October, the Oregon Venture Fund (OVF) management team spent time in Southern Oregon, visiting the cities of Medford and Ashland. We had the privilege of meeting Laura Olson, Executive Director of the Patricia (Rusty) D. & William B. Smullin Foundation and learned about the Foundation’s commitment to improving the education and health outcomes of people living in Northern California and Southern Oregon.

Oregon Community Foundation (OCF) is the state’s largest charitable foundation. Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, OCF is a true Oregon success story - beginning in 1973 with a $63,000 donation and growing to over $3B in AUM now. While OCF is best known as the state’s largest grant maker, supporting thousands of nonprofits, and carefully stewarding the philanthropic resources for over 2,000 individual, family, and corporate funds, OCF is also a meaningful investor in Oregon’s innovation economy.

In any given year at Oregon Venture Fund, we meet hundreds of new startups that could potentially fit our investment thesis. Roughly 15% of those receive a screening meeting, the next stage in our evaluation process, and about 20% of those progress into formal diligence. As a result, only 1% or so of all companies we meet end up receiving an investment from OVF. My review of other top-performing VCs show they are similarly selective.

A key question we are often asked is, why is the selection rate so low?

A different year. Same great fund

2023 is finally here! We had a good 2022 at OVF and as we look forward to what may potentially be a bear market, we at the fund remain bullish on hungry, driven early-stage founders in Oregon and Southern Washington.

January 2023

Melissa Freeman

January 2023

Eric Rosenfeld

Thoughts from Eric Rosenfeld and the Oregon Venture Fund

The most anticipated recession of our generation is supposed to arrive any month now. Which means it may not. Regardless, at the Oregon Venture Fund we are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. We’ve been investing in startups since 2007 and here’s what we think may be new and different with respect to our market and strategy in 2023:

Eric Rosenfeld - November 2022

Predictive Indicators

Darwin wondered what nature was thinking when it created the peacock and its enormous tail. Why would nature saddle a bird with such a ridiculous disadvantage? A peacock’s tail hampers maneuverability and the ability to fly and makes the bird a sitting duck for predators – it certainly reduces the male’s odds of survival. Darwin concluded it was due to sexual selection. From a peahen point of view, a male must be particularly strong, fit, clever, and suitable to mate with if it can survive with such a ridiculous disadvantage. In other words, the size and quality of a peacock’s feathers are predictive indicators of valuable attributes much harder to quickly ascertain – the strength, smarts, and health of the peacock.

Risk, Reward, & Uncertainty

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” The correlation between risk and reward is accepted wisdom. The greater the risk, the greater the potential reward. That may be true with most forms of investing, but it may not be always true with venture investing.

Matt Compton – October 2022

Some of the most successful companies in the world are disrupting their industries because they found an effective way to unlock and make available an underutilized asset…

Airbnb unlocked underutilized residences to create a new supply of lodging.

Uber & Lyft unlocked underutilized people and vehicles to create a new supply of transportation.

Amazon unlocked and made available underutilized books, and then everything, including a new supply of web services.

Google unlocked and made available the world’s underutilized information.

TikTok unlocked underutilized teenagers & their inexhaustible creativity.

Deepthi Madhava - August 2022

Moore’s Law – where the number of transistors in an integrated circuit roughly doubles every 2 years and which has governed the semiconductor industry’s march of progress since the 1970s – was about to hit a brick wall. The lack of a photoresist – a photo-reactive ink – to work with next-gen extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, meant that engineers could no longer develop chips with increasingly smaller transistors.

In April of 2022, Oregon Venture Fund (OVF) invested $1M in Kivo, leading a $3M round in the electronic document management and collaboration solution targeting the growing number of emerging biopharma companies. We were impressed with the Kivo team, their mission to support underserved small biotechs, and their broader vision for Kivo.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take a whole generation for most seed investments to bear fruit. In fact, the mean time to harvest for Oregon Venture Fund seed investments is just 4.5 years. Over the past 10 months, OVF and our region experienced a bumper crop of exits from recently planted seeds:

We want to thank our investors and portfolio executives for getting dressed, leaving the adorable cat/dog behind, and joining us in person to celebrate the achievements of our region’s top entrepreneurs!