Portland is certainly growing as a startup city, and now there’s a new batch of companies ready to make their mark in the Rose City.
The two-year-old Portland Seed Fund just graduated its fourth class of early-stage companies. The incubator, a unique public-private partnership supported by various government agencies and organizations, gave the startups $25,000 in capital to get their ideas off the ground in a TechStars-like three-month long bootcamp.
Here are the 11 graduates who just pitched at Thursday’s Demo Day and a brief bio from the Portland Seed Fund for each:
- Alum.ni: Simple alumni websites aimed at the over 180,000 alumni and member organizations in the US from schools to fraternities to summer camps. Co-founder Edoe Cohe came up with the idea after attending a 2-hour workshop during his MBA to teach him how to use his alumni website.
- Appthwack: Founded by two former Intel employees, Appthwack tests your mobile app across 100′s of devices from Android to iPhone’s in 10 minutes. Your other option — which quality assurance agencies and engineering teams do — is to buy hundreds of devices and test on each one individually.
- Celly: Lets anyone create an instant social network called a “cell.” There are tons of issues with current networks from privacy to reputation management. Some ways Celly has been used: Classroom cells where teachers and students can communicate; search-and-rescue cells set up during Hurricane Sandy.
- Indie Vinos: A Shazam-like mobile app that lets you buy a wine the exact moment you taste and fall in love with it. They want to connect the 46 million wine enthusiasts in the US directly with wineries.
- Measureful: Over 70 percent of midsize businesses spend over 15 hours a month collecting mountains of marketing data. Measureful does this in five minutes and its proprietary algorithm sifts through all the data to find trends, anomalies and subtle changes that affect your bottom line, and beautifully presents the results.
- Minetta Brook (Washington-based): An enterprise startup solving the issue of information overload with their product knewsapp that aims to bring hyper-relevant real time news impacting specific market positions; the news that you won’t find on Google.
- Opal Labs: 70 percent of companies want social enterprise software, but only three percent report a social enterprise benefit. Opal Labs helps teams solve complex problems via social business software. Customers include Nike, NASA, Intel and BP.
- PrestoBox: Small businesses have very few choices when it comes to branding and 47 percent of small businesses in a $125 billion market don’t have a website — think your local mom-n-pop store or doctor. Prestobox is the “world’s first automated brand in a box.” Answer 12 answers via their Brand Genie and they give a brand personality that includes logo, business card, and website templates.
- RallyCause: Their app that lets you support your local small business, while also giving back to a cause. A portion of your purchase at a participating small business is donated to a cause.
- Simple Emotion: Founded by two college undergrads, Simple Emotion created technology (patent filed) to help people with autism recognize emotions in speech: Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Fear. It’s over 90 percent accurate.
- Smart Mocha: Making it easy for device manufacturers to make ordinary devices smart devices by providing a full-service platform for the Internet of Things. It’s a framework — both software and hardware — that allow you to create Internet connected devices quickly, securely and easily.
