The Portland Seed Fund Demonstration Day event took place this past Wednesday, June 6, at Zilba Design in the Pearl District, where businesses presented their startup plans. Wednesday, the Portland Seed Fund began its second round of startups. According to The Portland Business Journal the leaders of the program “are confident that they’ve found the right formula for nurturing the entrepreneurs.”
John Osborne, CEO of Showkicker, an online service where music fans can pledge to buy tickets to their favorite bands and venues, was just one of the many entrepreneurs to present their startups to the Portland Seed Fund on Wednesday. Startups chosen to participate in the program will receive an initial $25,000 investment as well as 90 days of intensive coaching and product building.
Twitter and Rackspace were just some of the high-profile sites the startups will visit for information gathering sessions. The second round of startups included a lot of mobile software companies, with the notable exception of Portland-based Indow Window, “a manufacturer of thermal window inserts that, according to CEO Sam Pardue, just closed a $1.3 million Series A round,” according to The Portland Business Journal.
The other businesses included Beeminder, a Web-based service for tracking personal goals; Cloudability, a software-as-a-service startup that helps companies manage cloud spending; Gliph, a digital identity platform that allows users to control their personal information; Globesphera, a mobile ticketing service that uses mobile devices to replace tickets to be tested this summer via TriMet; Good Works Now, a cloud-based service that helps nonprofits manage fundraising; SERPS.com, a search engine optimization service; and Supurb.ly, a document management software service for legal and financial companies.
The Seed Fund also opened the application process for a third round of startups. This application window closes July 9.