Portland Incubator Experiment reorients mission to reflect city’s changing business climate.
BY JACOB PALMER | DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
Portland Incubator Experiment reorients mission to reflect city’s changing business climate.
Part of those changes: No more business accelerator program.
PIE’s budget isn’t changing, according to [PIE general manager Rick] Turoczy, and he said the initiative still has W+K’s support. But he said PIE will now focus on developing a broader set of startup resources by working with other organizations, publishing the results of its experiment, participating in startup events and developing online tools for entrepreneurial networking.
When PIE launched in 2011, startup incubators such as Y Combinator and TechStars were all the rage in tech hotspots such as Seattle and Silicon Valley.
PIE brought a taste of that excitement to Portland’s relatively small tech community, offering up to $18,000 in investment (later $20,000), temporary office space in W+K’s Pearl District headquarters and mentorship from many of the Silicon Forest’s best-known technologists.
(SOURCE: OregonLive.com)
PIE will focus on enhanced collaboration with similarly-minded groups.
“I would hate to see the ongoing situation be corporations have money and give money to startups and that’s all that happens,” Turoczy said. “There needs to be a knowledge transfer.”
On its face, the new PIE could seemingly become an online school for entrepreneurs or some sort of accelerator’s accelerator. And Turoczy isn’t ruling either of those options out since, at its heart, PIE, is indeed, an experiment.
(SOURCE: Portland Business Journal)
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