Bend, Oregon, is a great place for entrepreneurs. Located in the center of the state, east of the cascade mountain range which provides year-round recreational activities (snow skiing, hiking, fishing and mountain biking) and collects most of the rainfall Oregon is known for. For example, Bend averages just 11.4 inches of rainfall each year and records 295 days of sun shine. This is far better than Portland's 43.5 inches of rain and 200 days of blue skies. The pure beauty of the area, pleasant weather, and year-round activities make it a great place to live. The friendliness of the people in the community make it the best place I’ve ever lived.

I’m not alone, about 76,000 people agree. What many people don’t know is, Bend has an active mentor community filled with successful executives from every industry. Technology, medical, oil & gas, education, legal, software, fashion, film, theatre and sports, just to name a few. We have a lot of 50 “something” retirees who live in the area, looking for worthy startups to mentor. This past saturday I met a retired Navy SEAL commander who is volunteering his time to help as a project manager.  "Failure is not an option" has a totally different meaning for him.  He's impressive and so are all of the other mentors I have come to meet and now call friends. 

With the help of EDCO and the leadership of Roger Lee and Jim Coonan, we’re starting to see these mentors organize. It started as an excel spreadsheet of local “Stable of Experts”, a list of people who are willing to help entrepreneurs in the area, often for no-charge. Now we have our Bend Venture Conference and the VentureBox business accelerator joining the ecosystem.

Recently, I had the pleasure of working with six startups in Bend, Oregon. Five were in our VentureBox business accelerator program. We met each Wednesday (3pm-8pm), for 12 straight weeks.  The founders, working with local mentors develop their business strategy using customer development and other lean startup principles. These companies have taken off and are now seeking business and strategic partners, customers (beta testers and early adopters) and angel investors. 

Here are 6 great startups in Bend, Oregon.

JettStream, Inc. (http://JettStreamInc.com)

JettStream helps children who suffer from moderate to severe cases of asthma. It does this by working with existing medical devices on the market to facilitate the delivery of nebulized medication to the child, while they’re sleeping. The JettStream product ensures the medication is delivered as directed by the pediatrician. It’s hands-free and does not require a mask to be placed on the child, allowing them to sleep, taking slow, deep, breathes. Studies have shown this maximizes the success of the prescription medication. JettStream has filed for their patent, and only requires a class 1 registration with the FDA, which they plan to receive within the next 30 days. JettStream is an add-on to the existing 10 million nebulizer air-compressors in the U.S. and will retail for around $200.00 The CDC estimates approximately 1.3 million new cases of childhood asthma are diagnosed each year. Therefore, the market potential is substantial. Bend, Oregon, has a vibrant medical community with Bend Research, a world class medical research and testing facility, Bend Memorial Clinic and St. Charles Hospital. Each of these organizations has offered time and expertise to help JettStream with their mission to help asthmatic children.

CiviData, LLC (http://CiviData.com)

CiviData helps local government service providers compare utility rates and other fees to see how they stack-up with other cities their same size. Have you ever wondered how they come up with the price for parking tickets, dog licenses, airport parking lot charges or your water rates? CiviData is the first SaaS application of its kind and is transforming how local government service providers analyze and compare their operations to either defend their rates or justify rate increases. CiviData saves cities time and the expense of creating one-off reports annually. In a time when cities can’t afford to add head count, CiviData takes a laborious task and simplifies it, allowing city workers to focus on other projects. The application is sold on a per-seat license and can easily become an industry standard in city government, used by tens of thousands of people who work in, for and with city government. The technology is built, and data is being gathered and rolled out. If you work with city government, CiviData is worth looking into.

RallyCause, LLC (http://RallyCause.com)

RallyCause builds a marketplace of local businesses and local causes. For example, say your high school band is invited to play in the Rose Parade in California, but you need to raise $15,000 to send them. People sign-up and register the cause on RallyCause’s mobile application. Next, local merchants get in the act. They make offers, such as 15% of your entire purchase will go to the cause. When you shop at that merchant, you pay the normal price, but the cause receives a bounty. Pretty cool idea. This can be used by schools and other organizations , and it helps create a connection between local businesses and local causes. RallyCause has the ability to disrupt Groupon and other local coupon sites because both the merchant and the sponsors of the cause will be promoting the use of the application. It’s a win-win.

Zipede, Inc

Dr. Rick Cuddihy is working on a solution to better inform parents before, during and after their child’s doctor’s appointment . As parents, we all know how scary it is when our kids get sick. In this information age, Dr. Cuddihy is working on improving the information by creating custom video blogs containing relevant and useful information around the specific diagnosis. Parents will have the opportunity to prepare and educate themselves before their appointment, receive relevant information while in the waiting room and a recap of the key takeaways once they get home, reminding them what the doctor said. This is all designed to improve doctor-parent-patient communication. It’s a very cool idea and Dr. Rick’s style and approachability comes through in his videos, making it a winner.

Good Peeple, Inc.

Good Peeple engages your Facebook friends to help you find the best local service providers (gardeners, painters, dentists, etc.) in your area. Whether you're looking for a new doctor, contractor, day spa, or mechanic, you should trust your friends more than review sites. Good Peeple lets your friends give you trusted recommendations for businesses that they depend on. It’s a great way for service providers to engage their customers and build a social graph with their customer’s friends.

OwnersAsk, LLC (http://OwnersAsk.com)

OwnersAsk relies on customer's smart phones to give small business owners real-time customer feedback, usally while they're still in their business. Taking advantage of Quick Response (QR) codes, business owners simply visit OwnersAsk and sign-up.  Within 5 minutes they're downloading an unique QR code which they can place around their business. (Check out these QR Code Examples). Customers are given the opportunity to win gift cards and other prizes simply by using their smartphone and a free QR reader to register their feedback and comment on their experience.  OwnersAsk is targeting hospitality and foodservice professionals (fast food, bars, hotels, convenience stores, grocery stores) first, but it can easily expand to any business that wants to track customer feedback.. The real gem of the OwnersAsk platform is the registration system for managing the monthly drawings.  OwnersAsk uses Facebook's registration client to allow customers a one-click experience giving business owners the ability to connect with their customers. Customers opt-in for the drawing which OwnersAsk manages, including name, email address and their profile photo. Business owners receive feedback, connect with customers and can now offer future promotions.  Bars, resturants and fast food owners will immediately see the benefit of this application.

Bend, Oregon – An Entrepreneurial City

As promised, these are six great startups in Bend, Oregon. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m bias because I have worked with these companies and continue to help out as time permits.

Bend, Oregon, has less noise than Silicon Valley and can attract talent because people want to live and play here.

As more and more business executives, entrepreneurs, startups, angel investors, business journalist and venture capitalist visit Bend, and surrounding areas like Sunriver, Oregon, I believe Bend will become more and more popular. The one thing the area lacks is a regional VC or Seed fund so these entrepreneurs can focus all of their time on their startups without worrying about feeding their families.

If you’re an angel investor, or run a fund, and want to put a little money to work to help us grow our startup ecosystem, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me via the contact us form. We have the mentors, if we can add the seed funding and provide a fully equipped office with basic services, we could do so much more.

If you know of other startups in Bend, Oregon or Central Oregon, please use the comment section below and let me know. I'd love the opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs in the area.

…Jim

The work with our startups intensifies this week as we continue to work on Customer Development and The Lean User Experience. As our Founders move closer to defining their Minimal Viable Products (MVP), they have gone out in the market and interviewed potential customers of their products. As a result, some of our startups have made pivots in their business plan.

I like to celebrate these pivots with our startups. We're six weeks into the process, we've saved monthes of development time by not building software no one will purchase. We're learning more and more about their market segment each and every day. One interesting observation is, with each pivot, the founders are becoming even more passionate about their business. I contribute this to the fact the nine founders are going through this together\, and they're gaining positive energy from the team. This is another benefit of an accelerator; you push through the challenges at a much faster pace.

The importance of WHY, before HOW and WHAT.

Simon Sinek, an adjunct staff member of the RAND Corporation, one of the most highly regarded think tanks in the world. He wrote a best seller, "Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action". Yes, his principles focus on leaders and the importance of communicating "why". I could write about this topic for pages, but I want to stay on point for this post, so...

Sinek believes you should communicate to your customers: WHY your product/solution matters, than HOW it does it and finish with WHAT it does. We believe most companies do this in reverse. Starting with what features the product has, how it does it so well and finishing with why you should but it.

"Sell to people who believe what you believe." Says Sinek. "People don't buy what you do, they purchase why you do it."

He spoke at a TED talk back in September 2009, it has been viewed by over 4 million people on YouTube.

He does a nice job of explaining his point and connecting it with Geoffrey Moore's Crossing The Chasm principles that help you understand the importance of getting wide spread adoption of your product by the early and late majorities, which is where the "big" sales come from.

Here is his presentation at TED, enjoy!

...Jim

As I discussed in my previous post, we’re finishing up week 3 in our VentureBox Venture Launch class. The course is 12 weeks.  Each week the founders meet every Wednesday from 3-8pm for a formal class and workshop. Dinner is included halfway through. Here is the 20k foot view of what we’ve done with the 7 companies in the program:

• Week 1: Curriculum review, format discussion, introductions and company pitches. This was the first time all the founders got to meet each other. We have 7 companies, with 2 companies with co-founders, so we have a total of 9 founders in the room. The majority of the night was spent having the founders do their 10 minute investor pitch, followed by 20-30 minutes of Q&A from the rest of the founders.
• Week 2: Our partner, LUXr,  traveled to Bend from San Francisco and conducted a train-the-mentors on their Lean Startup Customer Development and User Experience curriculum using their Bento Box training materials. Then the Mentors (yep, me included) taught the materials the next day to our VentureBox class with Janice and Kate guiding us all the way. Each of the founders developed their first customer persona for their product. Their homework was to go out and do in-person interviews with people who match the persona's they created.
• Week 3: Tackled market segments and helped each of the founders understand how to figure out their first, highly focused, target market for their minimal viable product using The Lean Startup framework. I was privileged to co-teach this class with Steven Curley, a local marketing genus and one of VentureBox's Subject Matter Experts.

Alright, with this foundation set. I’m going to change gears and discuss my observations and less on the materials and process, at least for the rest of this post.

The five traits of a startup entrepreneur.

It’s hard to not fall in love with each of these founders and their ideas. Each of the 9 founders are amazing in their own right. They inspire me with their ideas, questions and drive to succeed. Since I have the privilege to work with each of the founders, I thought I would share with you some of the commonalities I have observed among the founders in the class.  

Not in any specific order, here we go:

1. They get their hands dirty every single day. A day doesn't go by that I don’t get an email, phone call or text from one of the founders asking a question. Even though all of them are juggling other jobs and obligations, they are doing a great job of blocking and tackling through the weekly goals and objectives. I’m extremely impressed by their work ethic and drive to figure out this week’s piece of the puzzle.
2. They’re constantly searching for the truth. I’m amazed by their ability to allow all of their assumptions to be challenged. They're making a focused effort to learn everything about their potential customers and look at specific issues about the problems they’re trying to solve. When we asked them last week to get out there and talk to people, face to face, about issues related to the problem they’re solving, I thought I would get push back. When they agreed to do it, I half-joking asked them to take pictures of the people they interviewed so I could match a face with what they learned. This week I was blown out of the water when they showed us pictures and key remarks from the interviews.  How can you not love their drive to seek the truth and to learn as much as they can about their future customers?
3. They’re on the lookout for the pivot. This is somewhat related to #2, but it deserves to be called out. A business pivot is a slight course correction of the business model, without changing the overall vision or idea. We teach founders to watch for pivots and to embrace them. Business models can benefit from continuous development just like product development. Our founders are on the lookout for pivots.  Watching their facial expression when you tell them they just stumbled on a pivot is priceless.  
4. They're excellent at selling their solution. This was a bit of a surprise to me because none of our founders have a sales background, but each of our founders are excellent with their sales pitch. It is because they have empathy regarding the problem they are solving, are passionate about their solution, and extremely knowledgeable on the topic.  Each of our founders will likely be better than the average sales person of their primary competitor. They also enjoy selling and welcome the opportunity to do a sales pitch to an audience. Also, none of them have shown any resistance to cold calling so far, which I find interesting.
5. They're coachable. They don’t blindly accept advice as marching orders; however, they’re appreciative of the advice and fight for feedback constantly.  During the breaks they often ask the tough questions which indicate their willingness to explore and test different ideas to see if we can get a better result. Now that we just finished our third week, it’s pretty cool to see the founders bonding as a team and watching how the founders respond to other founder’s suggestions. This week I saw evidence those suggestions may have carried more weight than the suggestions made by the Mentor team. This was a good sign, and a positive signal the founders are bonding.

I’m sure I’ll discover more over the coming weeks. Please comment below and help me add to the list, I'd love to hear any observations you've had working with startup entrepreneurs.

…Jim

VentureBox is a business accelerator in Bend, Oregon, where I live. Each accelerator is a little different, so let me give you some background.

Business accelerators are different than business incubators (which focus on product ideas) primarily because all of our founders already have a business concept and a basic “pitch” of what their business is and what problem it solves.   Last December (2011) we started with 37 businesses applying to VentureBox and through our vetting process we selected 7.  Most are all in the “Early Concept”, pre-revenue stage.  We have  high-tech web based SaaS products, a mobile app and one physical product in medical devices.  The VentureBox class meets every Wednesday from 3-8pm for a class and workshop.  Each week we teach, then have a workshop on what they just learned and apply it to their business concept.  Then they go home with homework and goals for the week.

The course runs for 12 weeks and concludes with an investor day where Angel Investors get to meet the companies and hear their pitch. The cost for each company to attend the course is $1,500  plus 2% founder equity. The business community in Bend, Oregon, was kind enough to step up and sponsor each of the 7 companies so none of the Founders had any out of pocket expenses to participant in the program.

VentureBox’s executive director is Jim Boeddeker (JimBo) who I met after the Bend Venture Conference last October. He is a servant leader, and coach, over a pool of past founders and local business leaders who make up the Mentor team. Not an easy job managing all of us type A personalities, but he makes it look easy.  The Mentor team is experienced and deep. It’s made up of Founders, Subject Matter Experts, creative and talented individuals who have a passion for startups.

The business model is pretty simple. VentureBox has two groups: Investors and non-investors. Investors have invested cash in the company to cover the first two years of estimated administrative costs. Non-investors are pledging sweat equity and time in the Mentor program.  The 2% equity from each company is placed in a pool and then divided fairly between all involved in the program.

Each company going through the VentureBox program has access to the entire Mentor team. Wednesday is a big learning day, but the majority of the learning happens outside of the classroom where the Mentors meet with the companies over coffee or lunch and block and tackle through the goals for the week.  I think the Mentors is VentureBox’s secret sauce and they have recruited some great people. I’m proud to be a mentor and investor in VentureBox.

It’s also important to note that VentureBox is also a startup. We spent October to February working on the structure, training curriculum, facilities, sponsorships, marketing and vetting process for our first VentureBox class which started on February 15th, 2012.  We’re eating our own dog food and at times haven’t liked the taste, so we’ve done some minor pivots and continue to fight for feedback on what is working and where we need to improve. VentureBox’s foundation is built on Steven Blank’s “Customer Development” framework with Eric Reis’s Lean Startup principles layered on top. So we’re in continuous development mode, calling audibles every single day.

Well, there you have it. If you have any questions on VentureBox please don’t hesitate to use the comment feature below and I’ll be happy to answer them. You can contact JimBo via the VentureBox Website as well.

Now that you have a primer on VentureBox, I plan to blog my observations each week in future blog posts.

…Jim