Elemental Perspective: Startup seedlings or clearcutting in Silicon Forest?

Submitted by Sam on May 27, 2010 - 11:41

Sam Blackman mugshot

Oregon got some sad news last week when Jive Software announced the company was moving its headquarters to Palo Alto. Jive is a terrific company that has built one of the best social media businesses around: unique technology, a deep customer base, and national recognition in publications like The New York Times. Dave Hersh, Jive’s current chairman and founding CEO, helped mentor many other Portland startups and was an inspirational technology leader here. What happened?

For those of us who have lived in the Northwest for a long time, it’s a familiar story. The excuses are plentiful: it is difficult to find great sales and marketing talent here. The epicenter of the technology world is the Bay Area. There's not enough venture capital in the state. I could go on and on.

So, why try to build a company in Portland?

  • Well, first off, there are great technologists here. Intel, Mentor Graphics, Tektronix, InFocus Systems, Clarity Visual Systems, RadiSys, Pixelworks – these companies have engineering teams that know how to build world-class products. That’s a good place to start.
  • Second, employees and executives tend to be loyal through good times and bad. A tough quarter or two doesn’t send them running for the door.
  • Third, for early stage companies, Portland actually has a very supportive entrepreneur ecosystem. The Oregon Angel Fund, a private-public partnership that invests about $3M per year, gives dynamic startups the capital needed to get to the next step. Elemental was fortunate to be selected by OAF for investment in 2007, and the process not only provided some desperately needed seed capital but also taught us what a professional due diligence process looked like.

Clearly, Portland has some of the basic ingredients required — technical talent and early-stage capital. That's a start. But what gets us to the end -- an environment where the Jives of the world stay and thrive?

In my mind, it’s simple. We need some WINS. Big exits, either via public offering or company sale. Liquidity events that pay back the investors who have deployed significant capital here, and thus encourage more investors to back more companies. Exits that give employees the financial freedom to take risks on new ventures, to be able to go without salary for a couple years and innovate. These exits create a virtuous cycle of re-investment, which drives new value-creation innovation. Rinse and repeat!

While the Bay Area, Boston, and New York have perfected this cycle, cities like Austin (Dell) and Seattle (Microsoft) also provide examples of the innovative ecosystem that can be created on the financial back of one successful company. The last time this happened in Portland was ten years ago when Pixelworks went public. Ten years ago! Until a few more local startups manage to scrap their way to successful exits, it’s going to be tough to get this cycle in motion and build an innovation ecosystem.

Jive was the poster child for the Portland technology scene, and now we’ve got to take that poster down and put up a new one. We still have a lot of great startups here; some of these include AboutUs, Avnera, Clear Access, Kryptiq, GreenPrint, Ontier, Prolifiq, Tripwire, Urban Airship, Vesta and Zapproved. Here’s hoping that the next poster child grows up to be a poster adult, and does so right here in Oregon.

NEWS UPDATE (5/28/10): How coincidental that the next day Tripwire announces that they plan to become Oregon's next public company. We're cheering for them!

 

Want to hear Elemental's perspective more often? Subscribe to our blog feed or follow us on twitter: @elementaltech.

Elementals Rebuilding Together, Lending a Helping Hand

Submitted by Whitney on May 14, 2010 - 08:14

Group Photo at Rebuilding Together

If you work at a startup company then you are probably familiar with strict budgeting of money, time and other resources to stay competitive.  Even with the limited resources of a typical startup, Elemental does its best to stay involved with the community by doing good works for our neighbors here in Portland.  We like to get to know members of our community and play an active role in their lives and hearts.  This strong sense of community extends beyond the fourth floor of 620 SW Alder; it is a belief we enjoy sharing with a large number of Portlanders. 

We recently joined forces with Rebuilding Together, a national nonprofit that rehabilitates homes for low-income homeowners, particularly the elderly and those with disabilities.  Saturday, April 24, nine of us Elementals set out to refurbish the home of an elderly and disabled couple here in Portland (Most of the team is pictured above).  The home, inside and out, has been well cared for in the past, but as you can imagine, some things became unmanageable for them over the past few years. 

Elemental CEO and team at Rebuilding TogetherOn this project, we worked with employees of several other organizations, including tech companies, Barco and Kryptiq.  All together there were 30 of us who worked from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. painting the home’s exterior, cleaning the yard—mowing, weeding and attacking dandelions—and inside, remodeling the kitchen.  At one point, while Albert was cleaning the gutters, Steve tried to help by using a hose to flush them out.  Unbeknownst to Steve, Albert was at the other end and let’s just say we had one soaked and filthy worker! 

During the day neighbors brought us snacks to show their appreciation.  Everyone, especially the homeowners, was happy with the outcome; the results were like night and day. The cheerful newly yellow home truly fits the couple's name for their house, "Rainbow's End" (above, CEO Sam remounts the rainbow on the house for the finishing touch).

In the true startup spirit, it's always amazing what you can do in a day when you set your mind to it. This was a great team building experience for Elemental – when we were done, we were covered in smiles and paint!  We are looking forward to our next community service outing on June 14 at the Forest Park Conservancy where we will be lending a hand in restoring a mountain biking trail.

Streaming Bandwagon: Learn to Stream Live Like a Pro

Submitted by Whitney on May 3, 2010 - 14:04

Camera for Live StreamingWhen it comes to live streaming (aka webcasting), everybody's doing it. It's now commonplace to watch the news or playoffs on TV as well as on our laptops and smart phones. Watching current events, like the gubernatorial races across the country, are no exception. Who wants to wait for the recap at 10 o'clock or for the Newsweek Index next week to see who put their foot in their mouth on the campaign trail today? We want our content live, in real-time, and when necessary, free from the tether of the television.

Broadcasters here in Oregon, such as NBC-affiliate KGW Channel 8 and Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB), are getting in on the political action by streaming our candidates' debates live. In addition, OPB's multi-channel approach for the "Think Out Loud" series includes a radio broadcast this morning and TV broadcast tonight at 9 p.m. PT, along with live streaming to the web with content encoded by Elemental Live.

Whether you're a local news station trying to reach more viewers or a large sports organization trying to create new revenue, live streaming to multiple devices is quickly becoming the new black. If you're not familiar with what it takes to stream live video or are interested in learning best practices, join us for a webinar this Thursday, May 6 (11 a.m. PDT/2 p.m. EDT): Learn to Stream Live Like a Pro. Streaming Media's resident online video expert, Dan Rayburn, will moderate a roundtable with panelists from Elemental, Kaltura, Telestream and Highwinds. Register free of charge here.

Topics of discussion include:

  • When to choose live over on-demand
  • Production values: Broadcast-quality, UGC-level, and in between
  • How to increase viewer engagement with interactivity
  • Technologies and services available to deliver live events

Mike Callahan, senior marketing manager and product manager for Elemental Live, will speak about the ingredients for successful live event streaming and how Elemental Live fits in the mix (definitely more of the flour than the sugar!). Be sure to bring your questions for Q&A with the panel – we're very interested in hearing from participants with real-world challenges and successes.

To learn more about Elemental's best practices, subscribe to our blog and get answers delivered right to you!

Elemental's Back On The Road: Streaming Media East

Submitted by Whitney on May 3, 2010 - 06:33

Elemental is preparing to pack up and head to the Big Apple for the thirteenth annual Streaming Media East technology conference, taking place May 11-12.  We look forward to seeing the East Coast broadcasters and production houses, especially those we missed in Las Vegas at the NAB show.

We’re excited to exhibit for the first time at Streaming Media East, especially since it’s such an intimate event compared to NAB and IBC. From the great turnout at Streaming Media West last fall, we expect to see a similar array of content owners, viral video creators, enterprise customers and broadcast professionals. While we might not be able to make it off the show floor for all the interesting sessions, we’re eager to hear about the latest online video technology and emerging business models designed to better monetize content.

At Streaming Media East, Elemental will demonstrate its enterprise-class, GPU-accelerated product line in booth 319, featuring:

  • Four-screen experience with Elemental LiveElemental Server:  a video processing system that provides fast, high-quality, and highly-efficient file-based video transcoding using GPUs. This demonstration will feature nine simultaneous outputs from a single system generating adaptive bit rate streams to support Dynamic Streaming for Flash and Apple HTTP Adaptive Streaming.
  • Elemental Live:  a video processing system that provides content distributors with video and audio encoding for live streaming to new media platforms. We'll present a "four-screen experience," (At NAB on the right) streaming multiple HD and SD outputs to iPad, iPhone, web and HDTV platforms, illustrating the ability to meet the diverse requirements of multiple end user devices using a single system.

We expect the momentum from the launch of Elemental Live last month to grow as more people experience the benefits of GPU-accelerated live streaming. Make sure you see firsthand how Elemental Live can streamline your video production workflow (pun intended).

For those attending the show, we'd love to hear from you. Even if you can't make it to NYC, but would like to speak with our East Coast regional sales manager, just contact us to schedule a meeting and demonstration.

To see what we're up to at the show, follow us @elementaltech or check our events page to see our schedule.