These guys know small businesses drive the economy and in Portland that is just what we need now, being known as a pretty slow start up scene when compared with fast runners Seattle and San Francisco. They may not seem so glamorous to the naked eye but these small start ups need investors to get them off the ground and angel investors in Portland have not been so quick to spread their wings.

Oregon Business Magazine has just published the article to explain who is out there and what they are doing to get these small businesses and startups funded and on a steady growth pattern. The young business leaders featured here bring with them a wealth of new ideas to “ignite the startup scene”. These are the guys who are investing in Portland’s small startups not only financially but with new ideas and dynamic views on how to succeed.

Find out who they are and what they have been doing.

“For some of you, this might be the first SAO event you’ve been to in a while. For many of the rest of you who have been to a recent event, you have likely felt the buzz – that positive momentum – that SAO is fueling in the software community in Oregon.  There are some awesome new opportunities for you to get involved:

1. With SAO’s goal of drawing more CTOs and CIOs from tech and non-tech organizations into the mix, we are especially pleased to be attracting great speakers like tonight’s Bill Weihl, Czar of Google.
2. We’ve also rolled out a Leadership Exchange program where leaders and managers across each department of your software organization are gaining insights and perspective that are simply not possible within the walls of your own company.  I know it’s had a game-changing effect on my company saving me from some pretty huge mistakes that our execs or I would have made or we would have missed some major opportunities that I would have never known about had it not been for these monthly roundtable discussions and follow-on discussions.
3. Police Chief Sizer has already touched on the value of SAO and the tech community reaching out to the public sector through our Fireside chats. Other gatherings have included also included Portland’s Mayor.
4. Finally, the social gatherings and networking opportunities have gained critical mass.  The last SAO Blazer game I attended was double the size from a year ago.

One thing that hasn’t been talked about tonight, but it’s been bugging me for the past 6 months. In conversations with some software folks about how to grow the software community in Oregon, I often hear complaints that Portland and Oregon as a whole does NOT have 2 things: CAPITAL and TALENT. It’s been the same complaint for the past 20 years and I’m getting tired of it. I think we do have the talent – a lot of it is right here in this room.  IT’S UP TO US to grow our own companies here, start new ones, and invest and mentor promising Oregon start ups.  No one is going to save us.  WE ARE THE ANSWER. SAO is part of that answer.  If we’re making the same excuses and complaints 20 years from now, we’ve failed.  Together, we can create a stronger, growing tech community in Oregon.  I firmly believe this!

I really encourage you to get involved – it will likely be the most valuable and even selfish thing you do this year – to help your career and your company.  Thank you.”

The Tourney was a scramble and I had to contend with incessant smack-talking from the uber-outgoing, affable Dave Sullivan in my foursome.  Somehow, thru all that smack-talking, I raised my game (not hard to do when one is as bad of a golfer as I am).  Four holes into the match, Sullivan drilled a 75 yarder into the cup for an eagle.  The foursome of Sullivan, David Uslan, John Hayden, and I celebrated on the green with a few chest bumps (yes, old men try to act younger with a few beers in them).

A few holes before the end of our play, the golf gods were kind to me.  A perennial wicked slicer, I actually hit my drive 270 yards straight down the fairway to about 15 feet on the fringe of the green.  As luck would have it, I chose my putter instead of the predictable Pitching Wedge and nailed a 45 foot putt for eagle (first in my life). Ridiculous.

What does this blog post have to do with anything relevant to eROI or the interactive communty? Nothing, other than to say that the Portland software community and SAO in particular is not only alive but thriving.  SAO President Matt Nees starts in his role this Monday and we’re back in the saddle again.

Our cause is to engage with software freelancers, engineers, tech entrepreneurs, interactive freelancers, bloggers, mobile app enthusiasts, anyone related to the tech industry in Oregon and let them know that SAO finally has something pretty valuable besides great networking and events – SAO is one of the only associations that now offers Healthcare coverage to single employee companies or organizations – yes, freelancers can finally get affordable medical coverage thru SAO (thanks to Regence Bluecross Blueshield for getting flexible with us to make this happen).  When SAO President Harvey Matthews mentioned a year ago that SAO was looking into having this unique health coverage come to fruition at a Bar Camp, he got a standing ovation.  Let’s hope that kind of goodwill is still there in the software community in today’s economy.  To learn more about the healthcare plan, go to SAO’s site >>.

Here are a few of the events we’ll see you (thanks Scott Kveton for heading the charge on this) – source for these events and more is http://calagator.org:
** Lunch 2.0 – AboutUs
** Ignite Portland 5 – 2/19
* RecentChangesCamp – 2/20 – 2/22
** Lunch 2.0 – OpenSourcery
** Innotech – 4/22 – 4/23
** BarCamp Portland – 5/1 – 5/3
* Webvisions – 5/21 – 5/22
** Open Source Bridge (the OSCON replacement) – 6/17 – 6/19

Also: we will try to make some of the Beer & Blog events that happen every Friday, 4-6pm, at the Green Dragon.