Field Trip!
May 2026
Melissa Freeman
Two years ago, Oregon Venture Fund convened a diverse group of trustees, executives and leaders from our region’s foundations, universities, colleges and other institutional investors for the first time to get acquainted, hear from a couple of our founders, and learn about Oregon Venture Fund.
This year, they reconvened to discuss shared challenges and opportunities to better support each other. This was followed by a field trip to tour two of OVF’s growing portfolio companies, Brandlive and Salt & Straw. In addition, OVF partners, Deepthi Madhava, Alline Akintore and Matt Compton described several portfolio investments in Mueon, C-1, Source and Customer.io, companies that would be less interesting to physically tour at this time. They all have produced or are developing incredible software platforms, defensible AI solutions, energy efficient data servers and more.
Our local institutional investors play a unique role in our region’s economy. Many are large grant makers to nonprofits addressing social services, the arts, early childhood education and more. Several participants provide stewardship for our region’s college and university endowments that provide scholarships and operating funds for our higher education institutions. Through their conversations, a couple of themes emerged. Trustees and leaders are seeking to have a positive impact through their investments in addition to the grants or scholarships they provide. Trustees and leaders are thinking about not only what they are investing in, but who they are investing with and how their values align. They discussed taking more risk through private equity, including venture capital, and how to invest more locally without sacrificing returns. They compared the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing investment management versus keeping it in-house. Most noted they enjoyed having a flexible stash of funds for unique, strategic and mission-aligned opportunities, but it could also create more work at times.
The tour of Brandlive on Mississippi Avenue in North Portland gave everyone a behind the scenes glimpse of how they create entertainment-quality hybrid meetings using a green screen and endless layers of graphic design to customize an experience for a company when they want to engage their employees, investors or customers in diverse regions with a powerful message. OVF invested in Brandlive in 2013, 2016, 2021, 2022 and 2023. The company now has 128 employees and over $30M in revenue. All of these jobs and value have been created from scratch.
Kim Malek’s team at Salt & Straw headquarters in Portland’s Central Eastside Industrial District took us on a tour of their manufacturing facility. Our guests were respectful of the health and safety codes, donning smocks, hairnets, gloves and booties for our shoes. It was hard to imagine the sheer volume of ice cream leaving the facility on a daily basis to serve Salt & Straw’s 55 scoop shops and retail customers nationwide. A few guests wondered why OVF invested in an ice cream company. They quickly realized Salt & Straw is creating artisanal ice cream sourcing local ingredients at scale in a way that no one has ever successfully executed. Other brands have the same flavors and it is mass produced. Salt & Straw has the makings of a cult brand and it shows. OVF invested in 2019 and 2020. Today, they have surpassed $100M in annual recurring revenue and employ nearly 2,000 people.
Time is precious. We were honored to have 35 institutional investors from Walla Walla, WA to Medford, OR spend the day with us. Our main goals were to strengthen connections among and between leaders and increase awareness of the amazing startups and growth companies in Oregon and Southern Washington. Investing locally allows you to get behind the scenes and understand what it takes to compete, and scale, globally. We’re so glad they came along for the ride.
If you or an organization you know is interested in learning more about Oregon Venture Fund and the companies we back, please reach out to Melissa Freeman, Director of Investor Relations and Capital Raising, at Melissa@OregonVentureFund.com.
“I thought the event was very well done. It brought together a unique group of individuals who have common roles, but few opportunities to learn from each other or collaborate to make our region stronger.”