WELCOME!

We're glad you're here! Our goal is to provide updates on the impact of Oregon Venture Fund portfolio companies and venture capital trends in our region. And, in case you or someone you know is looking for their next gig - you'll also find a few of the open positions at our portfolio companies.

Take a look around and let us know what you think. Thanks for being here.

FUND NEWS + PERSPECTIVES

Why Oregon?

Oregon’s economy is smaller - $350B vs. Washington’s $900B and California’s $4T- but its startup founders punch above their weight. Across Oregon and Southern Washington, a large cohort of VC-backed companies are breaking out. While exits take a bit longer than in Seattle or the Bay Area, failure rates are meaningfully lower here. Why is that? And why do local VC-backed founders consistently outperform their peers in other regions? Eric Rosenfeld offers a perspective on why Oregon and Southern Washington’s venture economy is structurally and culturally different, and better for founders and investors.

Becoming a Great Decision-Making Organization

Matt Compton, OVF's lead for portfolio support, shares a framework for moving from sharp personal judgment to a great decision-making organization. This is not always an easy transition for founders. Matt shares 8 key principles OVF uses when helping founders put an appropriate amount of structure around decisions as their companies grow. Learn more in Matt's perspective here.

Invent Oregon - June 26

This month OVF is heading to Bend to participate in the 10th anniversary celebration of the InventOR program.  InventOR is a statewide invention competition for students from 10 local colleges and universities. Teams develop a prototype throughout the year and compete for $30,000 in cash prizes. Oregon Venture Fund is a sponsor and Vanessa Wilkins - an OVF investor and venture partner - serves as a judge. The event is free and open to the public at OSU-Cascades. The live pitches start at 10:00AM on Friday, June 26. Come and learn about the solutions to tough problems that the next generation are developing now. Register through this link and join us in Bend.   

PORTFOLIO NEWS

Hydrolix #1

Hydrolix was named the fastest growing private company in Oregon and SW Washington by the Portland Business Journal. This comes on the heels of also being named the #1 best place to work by the PBJ. Led by co-founder Marty Kagan, Hydrolix offers a real-time data analytics platform used by streaming media, financial institutions, security, and adtech firms. Recurring revenue grew over 2000% in the past 2 years. You can find the PBJ's full list and article here, which includes additional OVF portfolio companies - Customer.io, GearUp and Brandlive. Congratulations to all!

Kivo launches Headless GxP

The Kivo team, led by Toban Zolman, is launching their Headless GxP architecture for regulated life science R&D in an agentic world. In a world where any tool, any model, and any workflow can plug into a compliant systems of record without living inside, this solution allows Kivo to be the system of action, not just directly in the application, but by enabling AI agents to gain access to data in Kivo, while preserving the human-initiated action in the platform. Read more about Kivo and the impactful launch of Headless GxP in their recent release.

JOBS

Looking for your next gig? Know someone who is? Below are just a few of the open positions at some of OVF's portfolio companies. Please take a look and pass them along.

Product Marketing Manager - Lumen Learning

Sales Operations Manager- Rumpl

Purchasing Specialist - GearUp

Browse the OVF job board for a complete, up-to-date list of 110+ openings at a number of our portfolio companies.

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Since its founding, OVF has invested $212M in 88 companies which have created over 7,068 jobs. 32% of our portfolio companies are founded or led by women and 26% by entrepreneurs of color.

Pitchbook places OVFs total return in the top 25% of ALL global venture funds (2Q2025).

OVF's corporate partners share our passion for supporting local entrepreneurs:

Disclosure: This newsletter is intended to provide general information regarding OVFs investments and impact and not for the purpose of soliciting investors for any fund. Under no circumstances should the information provided be considered an offer to sell, or a solicitation to buy, any security. Such offer or solicitation may only be made to accredited investors and qualified purchasers pursuant to the current offering documents of the relevant OVF Fund. The information provided may not be reproduced or disseminated to any third parties without the written consent of OVF. The past performance of previous OVF Funds and portfolio companies is not necessarily indicative of future results. Investors in OVF Funds may lose investment capital. There can be no assurance that any future OVF Funds or portfolio companies will achieve comparable results.