The Scouts
Juan Barraza and Stephen Green
Organizations: Indie.vc (until it wound down), VamosVentures
The Players: Barraza is director of student innovation at PSU Center for Entrepreneurship and a board member for several entrepreneurship organizations such as OEN and VertueLab Climate Imapct Fund; Green is chief operating officer at A Kids Company, a member of the Oregon Growth Board, and board chair Built Oregon.
What they do: Help investment funds from outside the area spot local opportunities
For more stories on this new generation of investing see the main story here.
Juan Barraza knows what it's like to pitch venture capitalists. As founder of the health care startup VDO Interpreters, he pitched plenty of them on his medical interpretation tool to assist patients who don't speak English.
He knows how hard it is and the sting of rejection.
VDO shut down in 2016 but since then, Barraza has thrown himself into the entrepreneurial community and worked in various organizations aimed at helping founders successfully launch and build companies.
Earlier this year, he was tapped as a scout for Los Angeles-based venture capital firm VamosVentures. Through this program, he learned “how the sausage gets made,” the ins and outs of what investment partners have to consider, and the rules of the playing field.
Unlike entrepreneurship, there are no quick pivots to new markets and new investment theses, Barraza said. It's valuable information he shares with entrepreneurs. Barraza said the scout program is helping him identify potential Oregon investments for Vamos, a $50 million fund focused on Latinx and other underrepresented founders.
Want more Portland startup news? Sign-up for The Beat delivered to your inbox twice weekly
Stephen Green came to the investment side of the entrepreneurial equation from a semi-related field: banking and economic development.
“I spent my career in access to capital. It’s a natural transition going from lender to being an investor,” said Green. “The spreadsheet is a little different but you are still in it for the same reasons.”
Green was a scout for San Francisco-based Indie.vc, a fund that in addition to offering traditional convertible notes also offered founders a way to repurchase shares if they opted not to sell or raise more money. The scout program was focused on funding businesses founded by women and people of color.
Green was given $50,000 to invest into one or more companies that would be part of the Indie.vc portfolio. And importantly, Green was given the carry, or the fund’s share of any upside from that investment.
He backed Portland-based remote work software maker Workfrom, which has for years built tools and a community for remote employees.
Additionally, Green works as a mentor with Los Angeles-based Backstage Capital.
Both Green and Barraza see their scout work as a way to help the community and ensure that founders who have been traditionally overlooked get the knowledge and access needed for success.
Bringing in more investors to the region expands the opportunity for founders to secure capital and as Barraza puts it, expands an investment pool that is still too small.
Green also sees the competition as generally a good thing.
“Whether it’s traditional VCs or more angels or the scout programs that are focused on underrepresented communities, I think that competition is needed here locally,” said Green, who noted he hears lots of stories of frustration from founders of color. “The investor landscape here hasn’t been really forced to change and evolve and prioritize trust building and understanding different ways of reaching founders.”
