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I'm a native Oregonian with a Ph.D and 25 years experience in professional software development at places like Bell Labs, Intel Architecture Labs, Tektronix Labs.  Further, I've previously founded a local sw company, and over past 5 years personally developed high-value communications sw essentially on my own in a high profile open source project.

I can say confidently that Portland (and by extension Oregon) is *terrible* for starting a competitive entrepreneurial software company.  The technical talent is here...and very hard working...but the local gatekeepers (i.e. the existing business and investor types) have absolutely *no* understanding of what it means to do competitive sw startup (e.g. see 'the social network'...it wasn't Madison avenue that created Facebook).  Also the local investors have lost to Silicon Valley and Seattle sw companies so many times that they are scared of actually trying to compete with those companies technically (and technical competition is the *only* way to compete in high tech...all you need to convince yourself of this is look at the dominant players in sw...*every one* is driven by technology).

Yes, VC investment may be up, but the *starting* (seed level investment) in the local area is not up...and that's where the money is really needed (i.e. the earliest stages...pre-VC).  At that level (seed stage) we are *terrible* about supporting entrepreneurs like me...and it's people like *me* (not the head of the PBA) that are going to improve the local economy and create high-paying jobs...or perhaps not and we will continue 'circling the drain' with our economy.

Our 'investment class' has to a) get over themselves; b) find people like me that actually *can* compete in technology; c) not be so conservative and actually put some money up for something they don't understand (if they don't want to lose to SV again for the next gen of fb, twitter, youtube, google, etc).

posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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Your guests are talking about incentives for starting businesses in Oregon. 

Question:  What incentives are they refering to?  Is there anything they recognize as incentives for starting businesses *other* than more money for them?

posted 3 years ago
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The host's question at the beginning was excellent:  what is the minimum acceptable business tax?  Your guests proceeded to provide their answer:  $0. 

One guest even invoked Reagan's supply side/trickle down economics...which has long since been debunked by everyone that thinks about how things actually work instead of how conservative fundamentalists would like them to be.

What your guests advocate is irresponsibility to serve their own interests...and nothing else.  How much societal distruction has to occur before this approach is abandoned.

All you have to do to debunk the theory that businesses in Oregon are over-taxed is to compare their tax burden with that of any state with which we compete:  e.g. in technology...Silicon Valley, New York, etc.  The taxes in those places are *not* lower...yet they have much more entrepreneurial and innovative startup business creation.

It's the *culture* of those places that makes them successful and competitive...not tax policy.  Our business culture is old, conservative, ignorant and poor about doing innovation (at least in technology), and as your guests have demonstrated: socially irresponsible.  That's what should be fixed.  When that's fixed, we will have a vibrant environment for businesses...and have new jobs coming to Oregon.

posted 3 years ago
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This from an actual technology entrepreneur:  Many local investment people appear to think that the rich/they are responsible for all entrepreneurial activity...and they perpetuate that idea through the pernicious notion that *any* tax on the wealthy/investment class is damaging to the economy.  That's just wrong.  The biggest factor in creating a vibrant entrepreneurial economy is not more weathy people, it's more/better/better educated middle class.  Further, local investors don't create anything...and their investment history is *unbelievably bad* in this state.

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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I'm a software entrepreneur in Portland and have a family. 

I'm totally disgusted by the assertion of your guest and others that measures 66 and 67 will hurt 'small business owners' or 'entrepreneurs'.   This is a red herring, based upon the assumption that only the wealthy can be small business owners or entrepreneurs.   This assumption is a 'big lie'...propogated by both the wealthy and intellectually irresponsible economists to justify self-interested and socially irresponsible taxation policies.

The truth is that the local wealthy *do not* generally re-invest in local businesses...if you want painful confirmation of this just try to raise local money for an innovative new business...as we have a non-existent local angel investor community, and weak local venture capital.

Maintaining quality schools, and essential social services (police, fire, etc) does a lot more to support local small/new businesses than depending upon the wealthy to reinvest.

As Steve Novick

The REAL entrepreneurs (i.e. the technology people that know how to

As STeve Novick asserted earlier,

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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I second this point. I hope the hosts make this point somehow on the show.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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Your statement about difficulty of keeping our technical people on the leading edge...this is not true. The technical people (e.g. in open source) that are here are the world leaders in software innovation...I know this for sure.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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I also second this idea...I think that the VC model, which depends upon large, very rapid growth, makes it very hard for small companies to develop...and this is a huge disadvantage for Oregon entrepreneurs.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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I just heard Jerry's reply...I do think it's essentially an old boys/girls network...similar to Silicon Valley VC (which is also a clique)...but the network here is very small as the host pointed out...which doesn't open the door to new ideas, and small, early-stage companies.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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I think the 'no major university problem'...which comes up as an excuse for our local small business difficulties...is a red herring. We have strong technical people and many good ideas. Those ideas can't currently be developed into companies here because of financing, management weakness, etc.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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The show is starting with talking with Stuart Cohen and Jerry Langler pretty much just said that they (VCs) invest in their friends.

My question for both Jerry and Stuart is: if local VCs invest in their friends, and their friends are the 'usual local business suspects'...who have not had a big success...then how will Oregon companies ever compete against SV, Seattle, and elsewhere?

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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Hi Jim,

I'm not suggesting that VCs should invest in 'good ideas' just for the fun of it...obviously they are trying to make money. But so are SV VCs and they don't invest in stupid ideas/technologies and ignore good ones like the local VCs. *That's* why we have no big hits out of Oregon. Sorry...I also know plenty of VCs in SV...and the ones here just aren't in the same league when it comes to technology trends understanding, team building, sales, management, etc. This hurts local companies because as I said, they have to compete worldwide right away.

RE: come up with great business plan and team, etc., etc....that's *always* what VCs say...no matter where one goes. With the implication that they (the VCs) are competent to decide what a good business plan is and what constitutes a good team to go after a large market. That competence is not a given.

RE: Jive Software...several things...1) they moved here from out of town...the company got through it's seed/early rounds outside this area. and 2) they went outside of Portland for real VC support (Sequoia). Both good moves for a software startup...for reasons described. And incidently...I was the founder of a company doing similar technology to Jive's (i.e. communications/social computing, etc) in *2000*, and the local VCs uniformly couldn't understand the value of such a business.

I have never asked for charity, and, in fact I haven't been pitching VCs...precisely because I think that especially the local ones are broken for producing viable software companies...at least partially because of their model of 1 in 10 winner with 20x returns doesn't really work for building a real company these days (rather than building a company to go public with no IPO market).

RE: fiduciary responsibility to your investors. Yes, of course I'm aware of that...but what about your responsibility to the community? (and your limited partner's responsibility to the community/local economy?).

And unfortunately your last sentence supports my 'blame the victim' point: "Failure to be "great" on either criteria is a reason to pack your bags". Right...from the serious entrepreneur's viewpoint the only way to be great is to pack one's bags (I'm working with a startup now that is not based here, is pre-seed, and is great...thanks very much).

And how about VCs that don't support the local economy and repeatedly fail to produce viable companies...perhaps they should consider packing their bags. I think many people would prefer to have entrepreneurs stay around over leaving because there are so few/no good companies being created here.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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I would like to preface my remarks by saying that I'm a local software entrepreneur that has had to deal with the local VCs.

Sadly, I do think that the worsening economic situation will hit Oregon's small company/startup economy particularly hard. I think there are a number of reasons for this:

1) Local VCs have made many terrible decisions over the years about what companies to support and promote with local VC dollars. They've been repeatedly wrong, and this has led to the 'no poster children' problem as mentioned by Jim. I have little confidence that in hard economic times this will get better.

2) There are relatively very few dollars venture and/or angel here and as a result the companies that do get funded have a very hard time competing. In software, for example, you compete against Silicon Valley, Beijing, Bangalore, and Seattle from the get go. Many Silicon Valley firms know it is safe to ignore Oregon companies because they can simply out muscle them competitively with more money (and frequently inferior technology and teams).

3) Unfortunately, with many past failures the local VCs frequently take a 'blame the victim' approach...and implicitly or explicitly blame the entrepreneur or technologists in different forms...e.g. 'wrong core strengths', or 'no Stanford or MIT'...which is another way of saying that there are not enough good technology innovators here to compete with Stanford or MIT. That's complete balderdash. Truth is, Oregon and Portland are a great place for technology innovation (in software and hardware). There are many excellent technology people here. Portland has many of the prime movers in open source software, for example...and this has been/still is being squandered by our local VCs.

4) In software at least, the local VCs (and, in fact, the local business and management folks) are not very knowledgeable about what makes good software, how to make it, and how to manage the people that make it. So although the engineering/technology can be very good, the financing, management, and sales are at a disadvantage here in Oregon, and so local companies have a harder time competing.

5) When economic times get hard, the local VCs do fewer deals, and do even fewer deals with local companies. That is, they are driven by their ROI requirements to seek 'safer' deals...no matter where they are...and in many cases those safer deals are outside of Oregon...as a result you see local companies and the local economy hit particularly hard relative to non-Oregon companies. Witness the almost total lack of successful software companies coming from Oregon...a state with a tremendous sw technology talent base.

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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