Startups earned the highest amount of investment since 2001.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Startups earned the highest amount of investment since 2001.
According to OregonLive.com, the significant increase in dollars being invested in Oregon coincides with the state’s emergence as a leader in tech innovation.
Among them were Corvallis-based Inpria Corp. and Indice Semiconductor of Tualatin, which hearken back to the state’s roots in computer hardware with new technologies for chip manufacturing and LED lighting, respectively. In Portland, online marketers Opal Labs and Lytics represented a new generation of startup in the city’s core.
Young companies are thriving across the country along with a resurgent domestic economy and a robust tech industry. That’s also helping fuel a spate of merger-and-acquisition activity: investors paid nearly $7 billion in cash and stock for Oregon companies last year, the most in state history.
The Portland Business Journal reports that the data released by Dow Jones VentureSource shouldn’t be interpreted as only positive as the number of deals dropped in 2014.
Looking at the data, its easy to get panicky at first blush seeing the number of deals dip as that can be an indicator of a drop in companies starting up. I’ve always been of the mindset that the volume of deals is more important to pay attention to than the dollar amount to gauge how an investment landscape is doing. However, in this case, the trend is a reflection of the changing strategy of venture capital to invest in companies at later stages in preparation for public offerings.
“We saw record IPOs in 2013 and I expect 2014 to be a record as well across the country,” said Greg Beams, a Seattle-based partner at Ernst & Young. “As we see more IPOs and IPO exit strategies available we see the venture capital focus on later stage investments and those tend to be larger dollars.”
Read Oregon Business’ op-ed about how Portland’s startup success should be handled going forward here.
