The university’s ‘Business Accelerator’ provides opportunities for local start-ups
Tomorrow, the Portland State Business Accelerator will host its annual Company Showcase from 4 to 7 p.m.
The event, which is open to students as well as the general public, offers attendees the chance to learn about the 23 local start-up companies taking part in Portland State’s business incubator program. It will take place at the PSBA facility, located between the Portland State campus and the South Waterfront at Southwest Corbett Avenue and Meade Street.
Chris Axtell, the PSBA associate program manager, describes the showcase as “a chance for the companies to tell their story, and for Portland to learn some of these stories. There’s a lot of negativity and disappointing stories about the economy, but things are chugging at full speed here. We’ve been busier and busier, our program is full, and we have a list of companies waiting to get in. When the economy goes down, entrepreneurs get working.”
The PSBA was launched in 2005 with the mission to accelerate the growth of young, local start-up companies, particularly those based in clean technology, bioscience and information technology. Those start-ups selected to participate in the program—referred to as “client companies”—are provided with access to university resources, such as connections with research, professors and student interns. The client companies are located in the university-owned building, which offers below-market rent for office space and state-of-the-art wet labs, helping the start-ups control operational costs.
Over its lifespan, PSBA companies have provided nearly 400 Portland State students with internships and capstone opportunities.
One company taking part in Wednesday’s showcase—information tech start-up WeoGeo—includes four PSU graduates among its thirteen full-time employees. The company, which works in the field of business intelligence and predictive analytics, moved to Portland after branching out from a Tampa-based research institute.
“We needed some technical talent that we couldn’t find in the Tampa Bay area,” said WeoGeo CEO Paul Bissett. “The West Coast seemed to be the best place for us to find that talent.”
One example is Adam Jones, a 2010 Portland State graduate in computer science.
“I started out working here on a fixed internship that we kept extending until it was time for me to graduate,” Jones said. “I just walked in one day and they said, ‘Hey, we need to talk about this, because we want you to keep doing this.’ So it rolled pretty much from an internship into a career.”
Bissett hopes the showcase will introduce more interested students to WeoGeo.
“We certainly want [students] to get excited about us, because we’re always looking for people,” Bissett said. “In fact, I think we have a couple openings and employment opportunities right now.”
Another company featured at Wednesday’s showcase will be Ambulatory Parkinson’s Disease Monitoring, a biotechnical venture with very close ties to PSU. Based on university research conducted by electrical engineering professor James McNames, APDM now produces a highly sensitive movement-measuring device used to assess gait and balance.
In 2007, McNames co-founded APDM in cooperation with faculty from both OHSU and the Oregon Institute of Technology. The devices are used primarily to assess early stages of movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, and are shipped to other universities and research centers across the globe.
In addition to having a PSU professor as its CEO, APDM counts three Portland State graduates among its twelve employees, plus three or four interns at any given time.
The young company is another example of a PSBA success story. Matt Johnson, APDM’s director of sales and marketing and a 2006 Portland State graduate, reports that APDM is completely independent of research funds now.
“We started out as research-funded, but now, no more grants…our product’s been on the market for just over a year, and we can’t keep up with the orders,” Johnson said.
Axtell hopes visitors to the PSBA Company Showcase will find a more engaging experience than the typical collection of business presentations. Students visiting the showcase will be able to interact with entrepreneurs and employees (including several PSU graduates), view product demos and learn about internship and employment opportunities.
“The whole second floor will turn into an innovation village, with product demos and representation from every office,” Axtell said. “It’s a chance to interact and ask questions with the entrepreneurs, to look at and touch the products being made here. It’ll be discovery everywhere.”
