There’s no denying 2023 has been tough for startups. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank, go-to institutions for many startups and investors, delivered a massive shock early in the year. High interest rates made it more difficult to access capital and some investors abandoned venture investing for what they perceived as less risky options. The IPO window closed, and exits were scarce.
Venture investment in Portland plummeted through the first three quarters of the year. In Q3, the amount invested in Portland-area startups dropped 59%, according to data from the Venture Monitor report from Pitchbook and the National Venture Capital Association.
In conversations with the Portland Business Journal, early stage investors said they met with founders and cut occasional deals this year. Later stage investors confirmed deal flow has slowed.
Voyager Capital Partner Diane Fraiman told the PBJ earlier this year that dealmaking is always cyclical. She’s bullish about Portland’s prospects in large part due to the diversity of startups, which cut across a wide swath of industries and product categories.
Entrepreneurs tend to be an optimistic lot. The outlook was likely tested this year, but not broken.
Below you will find a baker’s dozen of startups we will be watching. Some have raised money, some aren’t there yet and some are bootstrapping. All of them have big plans for next year. If you want to stay in the know on these companies and all other startup news sign up for the the twice weekly Portland Inno newsletter The Beat.
Enduring Planet
Headquarters: Portland
Founders: Dimitry Gershenson, Erin Davis
What it does: Enduring Planet helps climate change startups access capital.
Why watch it: The company has found a strong market for its advance grant funding, which it provides to startups awaiting reimbursement for work funded by government grants.
What’s next: The company has completed more than 30 transactions and deployed $10 million in loans. It has 11 employees. In 2024, Gershenson hopes to have other credit products available to startups related to growth and procurement financing. He envisions a fintech platform with a suite of products to help founders tackle the challenges of climate change.
TrovaTrip
Headquarters: Portland
Founders: Lauren Schneider, Nick Poggi, Brandon Denham
What it does: TrovaTrip is a travel marketplace that allows online creators to book and host trips with their audiences.
Why watch it: Last year TrovaTrip raised $15 million from investors and since then it has almost doubled its headcount and moved into a new headquarters in the Pearl District. Between 2020 and 2022, the company grew 1,000%. The creator economy is huge and TrovaTrip is positioning itself to be another revenue source for those entrepreneurs beyond the traditional advertising model. TrovaTrip has seen a strong rebound since an initial slow down at the start of 2020. Last year it facilitated 310 trips and this year it will be about 500. To date, 1,500 trips have been booked through TrovaTrip for more than 21,000 travelers.
What’s next: After such hyper growth over the last year — it was No. 236 on this year’s Inc 5000 — the executive team has tapped the brakes a bit in order to focus on scaling responsibly. It hired its first CFO and has its core team in place. Next year, TrovaTrip will be leaning into its mission to help people find community and offering resources to help more people access travel.
Altitude Beverage
Headquarters: Bend
Founders: Thomas Angel, Laura Melgarejo Silva
What it does: Makes a line of non-alcoholic canned cocktails that contain CBD, cordyceps and amino acids.
Why you should watch it: Altitude launched in 2021 with a latte product that found national distribution and space in Sprouts Farmer’s Markets nationwide. The founders made the bold decision earlier in 2023, however, to discontinue the latte line and shift focus to mocktails.
What’s next: The move meant less reliance on grocery as a sales channel since the mocktails have gained popularity with restaurants, bars and performance venues. Another bonus, Altitude can produce mocktails in Oregon, whereas it relied on out-of-state production facilities to make the coffee product. The focus now is to build the Pacific Northwest’s biggest NA drinks brand, which will include non-CBD products now in the works.
Fridie Outdoors
Headquarters: Hillsboro
Founders: Lestarya Molloy and Scott Molloy
What it does: Built an app that helps beginning campers access camping info when needed
Why watch it: Fridie Outdoors has been plugging into the local startup community and resources participating in the Portland Incubator Experiment, winning the West Side Pitch Competition and landing the Emerge Award grant from the BFM Fund at Angel Oregon Tech. It’s part of the REI Co-Op’s Embark accelerator and its app is featured in several of the outdoor retailer’s stores.
What’s next: The company plans to add more curriculum to the app in 2024. In addition to the REI partnership, Lestarya Molloy is participating in two additional programs: the Adidas Community Lab Accelerator, which comes with $75,000, and Black United Fund of Oregon’s Emerging Entrepreneur Program, which comes with $8,000.
Wile
Headquarters: Portland
Founders: Corey Scholibo, Gwen Floyd, Julie Kucinski and Judy Greer
What it does: Makes a line of supplements, tinctures and drinks based on herbal and plant formulas designed to address perimenopause and other midlife hormonal shifts in women over 40
Why watch it: Wile has some big-name backers including tennis legend Serena Williams’ venture firm Serena Ventures. This year its product line debuted in all Sprouts Farmers Market locations and 2,200 CVS locations.
What’s next: Wile is slated to roll out products with an as yet unnamed vitamin retailer. It recently added Stacy London, a former fashion editor and co-host of the show “What Not to Wear,” as an advisor. London has worked to raise awareness about menopause issues The company also has new products set for release.
Wicked Saints
Headquarters: Medford
Founders: Jessica Murrey, Alicia Clifton
What it does: Video game studio developing “World Reborn,” which features immersive storytelling, augmented reality and real-world activities for in-game power and stories
Why you should watch it: Wicked Saints was one of the first startups to emerge from the Niantic Black Developers Initiative. Niantic might not sound familiar, but you’ve likely heard of its major title: Pokémon Go. Wicked Saints game will also bridge digital and real life. The executive team includes game, entertainment and tech veterans including CTO Daphne Larose, who was engineering lead on Pokémon Go.
What’s next: The company raised $3.5 million in 2023 from investors including Oregon Venture Fund and game developer and publisher Riot Games. (Riot Games makes the hugely popular game League of Legends). About 350 early game testers in Canada are playing parts of “World Reborn” and next year Wicked Saints plans to launch a U.S. teaser trailer. It’s planning a full game launch in 2025.
ESG Brands
Headquarters: Portland
Founders: Chase Kahmann, Eduardo Gonzalez de los Santos, Ryan Bachman
What it does: Developed a proprietary process which creates fiber using banana stems
Why watch it: ESG’s team includes veterans of Nike and Columbia Sportswear who have R&D chops as well as industry know-how. The company landed investment from Portland-based Ideaship, which helps science-based startups get patent work in order.
What’s next: The company is planning to raise a $3.5 million seed round to help scale its process out of the lab.
360 Sierra
Headquarters: Bend
Founders: Paola Restrepo, Andres Vallejo
What it does: Designs and makes a lightweight camping trailer that can go off-grid and can be pulled by small vehicles or electric vehicles. It comes with an inflatable tent for two, a kitchen with a two-burner gas stove, solar panels, an electric ice chest, device charging and gear storage.
Why watch it: The company made a splash at this year’s Pitch Latino event with a live demo. The trailer used in the demo was one that had already sold. The founders borrowed it from its Portland owner. The company has some sales, but its founders are focused on creating a rental model for the ultralight camping market. 360 Sierra plans to rent trailers in an entirely digital process and wants to be “the U-Haul of the great outdoors.”
What’s next: 360 Sierra launched in July and has sold 4 trailers. Next year it plans to start the rental program in Portland, Central Oregon, the California Bay Area and Orange County, California. It is also in the midst of a $1 million funding round.
ConductorOne
Headquarters: Portland
Founders: Alex Bovee, Paul Querna
What it does: The cybersecurity company’s software automates access and permissions to applications and infrastructure.
Why watch it: ConductorOne raised $27 million in one of the year’s biggest funding rounds. It is generating revenue and has customers such as cloud service provider DigitalOcean, finance operations platform Ramp and managed security operator DeepWatch.
What’s next: Bovee said the company didn’t need to raise money, but the added capital means it can build more tools and meet the product requests of its customers. The company is also hiring across functions such as sales, engineering and product.
Digs
Headquarters: Vancouver
Founders: Ryan Fink, Ty Frackiewicz
What it does: Digs’ software helps residential homebuilders streamline communication and collaboration in construction by creating a digital twin of a physical building. The software collects and stores documents and plans, making them easily accessible to everyone involved in the building process.
Why watch it: This is the third company Fink and Frackiewicz have either started together or Fink has started and Frackiewicz joined early on. The previous two companies were acquired. The most recent was Streem, bought by Frontdoor in 2019, which still has an office in downtown Portland. Digs has raised $7 million from investors and this year released its first product iteration. It also inked a partnership with home services marketplace Thumbtack.
What’s next: Digs is set to announce a new C-level hire early next year. It expects added traction in its go-to-market strategy and, its founders say, will announce a new top 10 builder to its roster. The company is also boosting its AI chops with the planned release of Digs AI, a tool that will create a digital twin in seconds.
Bold Reuse
Headquarters: Portland
Founders: Jocelyn Quarrell, Heather Watkins
What it does: Helps companies replace single use plastics. Its customers own the assets, such as cups, trays and gel packs. Bold Reuse collects and washes them.
Why watch it: Bold Reuse has run a series of pilots with Starbucks, Imperfect Foods and Loop on ways to re-use packaging. This summer it launched a pilot with New Seasons and several food manufacturers to collect used packaging that can be returned to food brands for re-use. It also provides service for Moda Center and the Oregon Convention Center.
What’s next: Bold Reuse is gaining attention from sports teams nationwide that want to replicate the program at the Moda Center. Part of the interest is driven by a live cup counter on the Moda Center website tracking how many cups have been cleaned. The company is continuing to expand locally with more large organizations signing up to bring re-usable cups to use. It continues to improve its washing efficiency and plans to implement AI into its washline next year to optimize production.
Paxton AI
Headquarters: Portland
Founders: Mike Ulin, Tanguy Chau
What it does: The company built a generative AI assistant designed for legal and regulatory research. Attorneys and other professionals can query Paxton for summaries of laws and regulations, and the results include footnotes with citations.
Why watch it: Generative AI is hot, but, unlike many startups in the space Paxton AI is not reliant on OpenAI and its ChatGPT product. Instead, the company has built its own model. Its assistant provides answers based solely on the data within its system, which consists of more than 40 million documents and access to laws and regulations from the federal government and all 50 states. CTO Ulin has a background in legal tech and CEO Chau has connections in VC.
What’s next: Paxton AI is launching paid plans at $99 a month. The model and interface will be continuously updated. The company plans to launch a chat ability designed to allow users to interact with Paxton in a conversational manner. The company is also exploring new jurisdictions and legal specialties for its product.
Keliomics
Headquarters: Portland
Founders: Frank Lau, Jason Bourgeois
What it does: Develops technology that can find targeted treatment for cancer tumors in less time, at lower cost and without discomfort to patients. The lab can keep human fat alive outside the body and stably culture human tissues and tumors in vitro — essentially allowing for human testing without human subjects.
Why watch it: Cancer patients must often try several combinations of drugs and therapy before finding the most effective treatment. Keliomics aims to remove the sometimes painful trial and error.
What’s next: Keliomics has been working with labs at major universities and is piloting its platform with Legacy Health for breast and ovarian cancers. Lau and the team are also gearing up to talk to institutional investors.
