The Startup Effect
Last July, I met with Rick Turoczy who co-founded the Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE) and most recently launched Oregon Story Board (OSB).
When PIE turns ideas into companies and supports startups in a similar way than the incubators we are used to in Europe, OSB fosters the entrepreneurial spirit in a slightly different way.
Rick explained that the entrepreneurial profile in Portland is different than other parts of the US. In one hand, you have the individuals who can see a market opportunity and decide to go after it. They need financial support, advice, MVP… to kick start their business. On the other hand, you have the guys who are great at building products, they are the engineers of this world who are passionate about finding solutions to complex problems but lack the market vision.
Oregon Story Board is an enabler to make these products market fit. They analyse local industries, bring forward the challenges and opportunities, create a visual represenation of the ecosystem, highlight the differentiators that make Oregon unique, identify the companies who are working within and ultimately connect the problem solvers with their market. Oregon Story Board acts as the bridge between industries, media and innovation.
This is quite inspiring for a studio that works with early stage startups, can the incubator model be turned around in Ireland too? Can the innovators of this world bring solutions directly to the corporate world. Can bigger companies take part in this movement and be right there, where new ideas take root.
Karl Aherne certainly believe it can. Karl launched Red Planet last month. “Ultimately we get to a point where we identify specific digital challenges that the corporate is experiencing,” he says. “We uncover what is the ideal solution for that corporate. Then we go out to the start-up world.”
It‘s a nice thought, the startup virus infecting larger companies, bringing real innovations to markets from within and ultimately allowing people to create and grow. One that needs to be challenged.
