2012-Now
The Startup Ecosystem: mentoring, investing, incubators and accelerators
Startups — newly founded companies — are prized as engines of economic growth. While Oregon’s “fertility rate” hasn’t approached that of the SFO Bay Area, an impressive number of companies have started here. This Silicon Forest Universe chart, circa 2002, illustrated how as a handful of Oregon tech companies grew large, then spawned constellations of new startups — sometimes as formal corporate spinoffs, but more often just founded by former employees of the large companies — and the cycle continues.
Soon after I founded MedicaLogic, I was fortunate to be joined by veterans of Mentor Graphics; a decade prior to that, Mentor had been founded by some former Tektronix employees. That’s one pathway for talent, but there’s much more to the startup ecosystem.
My friend Rick Turoczy, whom I was privileged to have working with me at both MedicaLogic and CCHIT, is now a leader in Portland’s startup ecosystem. If you want to know what’s happening there, Rick’s SiliconFlorist blog is the place to go.
But Rick hasn’t just been writing about startups; for almost a decade he’s been helping them grow, as head of the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE). I signed up as a mentor, and I’ve lost count of how many entrepreneurs I’ve enjoyed talking with as a result of that connection. In 2013, I was a mentor for the Nike+ Accelerator by TechStars and I’ve continued a relationship with my mentee from there, Sprout at Work, now a leader in digital corporate wellness services.
When I work with startups, sometimes I make a modest “angel” investment along with an advisor role, but only when I believe the company can have a positive impact on human health. In many cases I offer technical consulting to worthwhile startups pro bono for the simple joy of it, and there are several examples in my later posts.