Portland startups have already announced more than $51 million in venture capital funding in 2018 [updated]
While still striving to hold true to my promise to Jive cofounder Bill Lynch — that I would stop using Silicon Florist as a platform to celebrate fundraising announcements — I feel obligated to take a little tangential liberty to share a developing theme I’m seeing… Because this isn’t a typical. Portland companies have announced more than $51 million in venture capital, this year. And it’s not even a month old.
- Discogs announced $2.5 million (Portland Business Journal)
- Fleet announced $10 million (Portland Business Journal, Techcrunch, The Oregonian)
- NurseGrid announced $5.7 million (Geekwire, Portland Business Journal, The Oregonian)
- SheerID announced $18 million (Geekwire, Portland Business Journal, The Oregonian)
- ZincFive announced $11 million (Portland Business Journal)
- [Update] And apparently, I missed one from BigLeaf…
And while that still pales in comparison to other metropolitan startup communities, it’s a meaningful and noteworthy metric for our community. Because with the 2017 tally of $348 million in venture capital — if you include Vacasa’s private equity round of $103 million — that means 2018 funding announcements are already up to 13% of last year’s totals.
Now, there’s no telling if this trend will continue. But there were a number of companies not mentioned here, said to be pursuing funding in 2017. So it wouldn’t be surprising to see that number continue to grow.
I’ll keep an eye on it. And try to provide context. But I still promise not to celebrate fundraising announcements just for the sake of celebrating. Because as we all know, fundraising is difficult, but the real challenge is putting that money to good use.
Originally published at siliconflorist.com on January 24, 2018.
