(Photo above: Odysys co-founder and CEO, Kent Schnepp, second from right, celebrates after winning top growth stage honors at Friday’s Bend Venture Conference. (EDCO Venture Catalyst Brian Vierra, far left_. Jones & Roth CPA partner and shareholder, Evan Dickens far right presented the award | by David Clewett)
Bend, Oregon-Based Odysys Wins $205,000 in Growth Stage Competition.
Winners take home investment awards, cash prizes and services.
Economic Development for Central Oregon (EDCO) hosted the 12th Annual Bend Venture Conference (BVC) with a sold-out crowd and announced the winners of $620,000 in investment awards, cash prizes and services. Side investment deals are still being finalized.
The BVC is divided into two categories that consist of Early Stage and Growth Stage companies. The Early Stage competition features companies that have a great idea, are close to “proof of concept” and are located in Central Oregon. The Growth Stage competition features companies that have a proven concept, have generated initial revenues, and are prepared to scale quickly with investment.
The following is a list of the winners:
Winners of the BVC, LLC, Growth Stage competition:
– Growth Stage finalist, Odysys, which helps hotels drive more direct bookings at a lower cost by allowing hoteliers to connect, manage and track digital marketing efforts with one simple platform, won the conference’s major prize, a $205,000 investment. The Bend company offers a self-service digital marketing platform that helps hoteliers improve their online presence and drive direct bookings.
– A secondary investment of $125,000 was awarded to Perfect Company, a Vancouver, Washington, company revolutionizing cooking with a connected scale and interactive recipe solution. The company offers a smart recipe platform that precisely scales recipes for baking and cocktails.
The investment arm of the conference, BVC, LLC, awarded the Growth Stage investments following considerable due diligence of each of the five presenting finalists. The investment included $50,000 from Oregon Community Foundation/Meyer Memorial Trust and $75,000 from Oregon Growth Account.
“The caliber of the companies pitching this year was outstanding,” said Brian Vierra, venture catalyst for EDCO. “Odysys and Perfect Company built on their success from last year and were the strongest on the stage. We hope to announce final investment dollars in the next few weeks.”
SnoPlanks won the $15,000 BendBroadband Business Early Stage Cash Prize. For this competition, conference attendees voted on the company they believed could benefit the most from the money. Based in Bend, Oregon Snoplanks are powder oriented snow-sliding vehicles, surf inspired in both shape and construction and specifically developed to provide a new feeling for the rider who is looking to expand on the roots of their snow sliding experience. A powder weapon in design and function, these planks excel when conditions are knee deep and above.
o Winner of the Cascade Angels Fund Investment Award: Scratch-it, a Portland-based company with an enterprise-class cloud platform that increases traffic and engagement, won a $125,000 Investment Award from Cascade Angels.
o Winners of the Seven Peaks Ventures Investment Awards: Scratch-it also won a $100,000 Investment Award from Seven Peaks Ventures.
o Winner of the Mandala Firestarter Marketing Program Awards: Growth Stage finalist, Perfect Company won Mandala’s Firestarter Marketing Program Award for $50,000 worth of marketing and branding services.
“This conference is a huge highlight every year,” said Julie Harrelson, CEO of Harrelson Group, Fund Manager Cascade Angels.
Nearly every company is a winner at BVC as the event draws private investors who frequently offer side deal investments and form partnerships with the companies.
The Growth Stage finalists, who were selected after a thorough due diligence process and several rounds of discussion by investor teams, were:
HoneyComb: A Wilsonville, Oregon-based company with a diverse team of 12 employees focuses on drone-based aerial imaging solutions for precision agriculture and forestry. Since inception agriculture has been their #1 market with all products, services and values reflecting that. As a company they said they believe in innovation and supporting traditional values. And do this by supporting their community, rural development and providing technologies and services that have a direct impact on efficiency, productivity and profitability.
www.honeycombcorp.com
NemaMetrix: A Eugene-based company with seven employees offers an early stage drug discovery platform that reduces costs 100x by increasing the success of identifying drug candidates early. The company’s mission is to make whole animal electrophysiology increasingly accessible. They believe that this will accelerate the pace of research in many wide-reaching fields: from academics to toxicology texting, drug discovery to the genetic basis of disease. Its technology is an application of soft lithography to biological problems. They make microfluidic devices with incorporated electrodes to make extracellular recording of bioelectric activity easy and repeatable. The microfluidic devices are fabricated from a soft, gas-permeable, biocompatible elastomer called PDMS into which small channels are formed.
www.nemametrix.com
Odysys: A Bend-based company with eight employee’s helps hotels drive more direct bookings at a lower cost by allowing hoteliers to connect, manage and track digital marketing efforts with one simple platform. The founders say they built Odysys because they love staying at places with character. Boutique hotels, historical inns, quirky motels, and off-the-beaten path destination resorts are their passion. They’ve designed the Odysys platform to be both simple and powerful. It has the tools you need to manage your property’s online presence, all in one place. Odysys’s mission is help you book more guests for less money. What they are not: an online travel agency. OTAs serve brands. Odysys serves people, connecting travelers with independent hotels.
www.odysys.com
Perfect Company: A Vancouver, Washington-based company with 12 employees is revolutionizing cooking with a connected scale and interactive recipe solution. How do master pastry chefs bake delicious treats time after time? They start with a great recipe and follow each step, making sure measurements and timing are accurate. The Perfect Bake system turns YOU into a master pastry chef. It weighs each ingredient for accuracy and uses built-in timers to alert you when you’re done mixing, baking, or cooling. Need to rescale the recipe? Perfect Bake does the math for you—whether you’re changing the size of your cake pan, the quantity of cookies you want to bake, or the amount of chocolate chips you have on hand.
www.perfectco.co
Scratch-it: Portland-based company of 14 employees provides a Software as a Service (SaaS) marketing solution that manages a new type of content called “reveal,” which consistently improves engagement by 10x. A marketing strategy that requires the recipient of a marketing message to actively participate in uncovering a hidden message. Reveal marketing utilizes innate aspects of human psychology to motivate your audience to act.
www.scratch-it.com
“This group of finalists represents a breadth of industries, ranging from software to the Internet of Things to drones,” said Brian Vierra, Venture Catalyst for EDCO. “I’m really impressed with how far some of these companies have come in a very short period of time.”
“It’s clear to see that Central Oregon is here to stay for entrepreneurs and business development,” BVC emcee James “Gator” Hudson said.
Several EDCO leaders agreed that the quality of candidates has improved every year and that this was the strongest field BVC has ever had.
www.bendvc.edcoinfo.com
