by RENEE PATRICK Cascade Business News Feature Writer
The enterprising leaders of VentureBox see the potential for Bend to become the next hot spot for high tech startups. With Central Oregon setting the scene for the lifestyle many hard working and even harder playing entrepreneurs want, the VentureBox mentors are certain that incubating continuous innovative business ideas can create a collaborative and rich environment for venture capitol investment.
The mentorship program at VentureBox can offer start-up businesses a chance to work with individuals who have already succeeded in the start-up world. From CEOs, founders and presidents to experts in technology, sales, marketing, business development, finance, law and human resources, mentors will offer their knowledge to businesses enrolled in the 12 week enterprise accelerator.
Venture Box Mentor Chris Capdevila said many good entrepreneurs don’t feel like they need help from business accelerators, but tapping into the knowledge of fellow founders can help them create a business with less pain, time and resources.
The intensive VentureBox program is focused on lean start-up principals with weekly sessions developed and facilitated by pairs of mentors. At least one subject matter expert (finance, marketing, law, etc.) and a core team mentor (CEO or founder with a depth of experience) tailor the week’s topic with regard to their experiences (the personal stories of success and failure can be particularly educational).
“In essence it is successful founders teaching founders,” said Jim Boeddeker, executive director of VentureBox. “We have been there, done that, we have had similar experiences and we can help you. It is a very vertical kind of experiential learning.”
Through the different types of mentorships VentureBox outlines, the hope is that a business and mentor will find a connection, a common interest, so that together they can work towards developing a successful business. Once that relationship has been developed, the mentor could take on the role of investor or could be offered a seat on the board of directors, but much is left up to the organic nature of the process and the individual needs of the company.
Boeddeker commented, “These companies own their own strategies, their own businesses, this is a resource for them. We are going to walk them through a structure but it is up to them to reach into the VentureBox and pull out the resources they need.”
Capdevila, one of VentureBox’s core team mentors, has the depth of experience on several levels; senior manager at Price Waterhouse for over seven years, he provided strategic consulting services to several fortune 100 companies. In 2000 he founded LogicalApps and as CEO, bootstrapped the company for the first five years and grew the company to over $25 million before selling to Oracle Corporation in 2007.
“I am passionate about entrepreneurship, Capdevila said. “I find spending time with entrepreneurs pretty intoxicating, it is a healthy drug.
“I got involved with an early accelerator called the Founders Institute, and became a mentor and investor there…I not only found it extremely rewarding personally but also to see ideas come to fruition and to help others see ideas and leverage the pain and suffering that I went through with my businesses…I wish that I had something like that, it was pretty lonely for me. There were a lot of mistakes that could have been avoided.”
ACCELERATING A STARTUP
Capdevila worked with the accelerator for three years before moving his family to Bend last April. Attracted to the quality of life, he found a surprisingly entrepreneurial culture and got involved in some of the very early stages of VentureBox. “I found it would be a perfect marriage to leverage my experience, not only as a successful entrepreneur, but with the years I spent in an accelerator,” he said.
“We are excited by the experience of mentors, expertise of subject matters and the curriculum we are getting from LUXr (a world-wide leader in entrepreneurship education and lean start-up principals),” said Boeddeker. “But the key element in that mix is the founder to founder relationship.”
“The important part of this process is discovery,” Boeddeker explained. “You can’t start a business and know all of the elements, the advantage of going through a somewhat structured program like this is you go through topic to topic and you have this intense engagement around particular content and you have structure and there is a lot of realization that happens…so if we push them through, they can discover that, but they still need the passion of a founder. We are very careful not to dilute the passion, they have to bring it and sustain it.”
Making relationships and fostering a dynamic entrepreneurial community is at the core of what VentureBox is trying to achieve in Central Oregon. To create sustainable company building, the work will not end after VentureBox’s 12 week program. “We want to have more longevity,” said Capdevila. “It happens informally; we will continue to mentor, coach and get much more serious.”
“When you have two to three successful start-up companies in Bend, the start-up guys leave and start more companies and it creates an inferno,” said Chris Kraybill, VentureBox mentor and chief technology officer at G5. “You need a continual runway of companies to fill in the spaces. It helps get people here [to create]a bigger eco system for the startups.”
www.venturebox.org, 541-409-6560.
