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Making Oregon is a podcast by Built Oregon that brings you our conversations with innovators, makers, doers, disruptors, foodies, dreamers, and groundbreakers from all across the state. These entrepreneurs talk with us about the inspiration and ingenuity it takes to make Oregon the best place we know to build and sustain a prosperous lifestyle.
33 Episodes
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Our guest in this edition of Making Oregon is Erik Olson, founder and owner of Portland Design Works (https://ridepdw.com/PDW). PDW makes bike gear and accessories that are designed in-house for the urban and everyday cyclist. The designs and gear have a little bit of fun and flair too, an aspect that distinguishes their products from the rest of the pack.
Erik moved to Portland from Madison Wisconsin in 2008 to start Portland Design Works, and we’ll hear about his childhood in Minnesota, his decision to study Chinese while he was in college, how his entrepreneurial spark came about while he was working at a Madison bike shop, and why he chose Portland as the best place to start his own business.
He’ll also share a ton of helpful advice and hard-earned wisdom for the aspiring maker-entrepreneur.
Our guest in this edition of Making Oregon is Charlie Gilkey, founder and owner of Productive Flourishing (http://www.productiveflourishing.com/) Charlie calls his company “A community for the doers with the vision to see how the world could be, the smarts to figure out how to make it happen, and the grit to do the work.”. We’ll find out more about what’s underneath the hood of that statement, and more, including:
- How his service in the US military and deployment to Iraq shaped his life and business practices
- How his starting a blog about academic personal development morphed into a real business
- The key influencer who pushed him along (see http://ittybiz.com/about-naomi/)
- The book that influenced his eventual move to Portland (http://www.creativeclass.com/richard_florida/books/the_rise_of_the_creative_class)
- The benefits of living in a "long-tail" state and community
- The importance of email marketing (yes, it still is!)
- Going beyond the "how" and to the "why", and why it's better not to go it alone
- The key element of business greatness
One more thing before you dive into the podcast – Charlie describes himself this way – “If a mad scientist were to do a freaky Friday experiment and cross an entrepreneur, Army officer, and philosopher, I’d be what popped out of the tube”.
Listen, learn, and enjoy!
In this edition of Making Oregon, our guest is Tressa Yellig, co-founder of Salt, Fire & Time (https://saltfireandtime.com/). Based in Portland, Salt, Fire & Time has been a producer of traditional healing food products on a community scale since its inception in 2009.
They also operate the Broth Bar, Portland’s first dedicated bone broth café, a collaboration of Tressa and her sister Katie. The Broth Bar offers high quality therapeutic bone broths with a variety of add-ons, that are gluten-free, paleo-friendly, and are sensitive to the needs of those with food allergies
Tressa also teaches a variety of old world cooking & nutrition classes around Portland, and believes that our personal food choices are beautiful vehicles for change in our communities and the world. Salt, Fire & Time’s ambition is to be a sustainable solution to the growing need to heal our bodies, and our food economies, through the choices we make in defense of quality foods.
We’ll talk about Tressa’s personal journey, where her love of food and alternate healing comes from, and how a septic infection cured by organ meats, raw milk and yoga became the catalyst for a move to the Pacific Northwest, the start of Salt, Fire & Time of 2009, and, the opening of the Broth Bar in 2015.
On this edition of Making Oregon, we chat with Zeph Shepard, founder of Proletariat Butchery (https://proletariatbutchery.com/). Listen as we discuss the “Journey of All Things Meat,” beginning with Zeph’s fascination with a pig roast he attended when he was 15 years old.
We’re going to find out how Zeph’s big idea of Saving the Earth lead to becoming a butcher and opening a butcher shop, and how Zeph’s family life and his philosophical bent have led him to re-think the social and environmental impact of food, and what responsible stewardship of the planet entails.
We’ll also discuss how Zeph’s rationale aligns with vegans and vegetarians. We learn about his experience as an apprentice on a farm where he learned his craft, and how the idea of starting his own shop grew over time. We also unpack the name “Proletariat Butchery” and its significance to Zeph.
Lastly, we also asked Zeph, a determined “do it yourself-er”, to open up about what it means to hit your limits as a business owner and why he had to learn to ask for help and expertise that are crucial to his business.
On this edition of Making Oregon, our guest is Eric Rosenfeld, co-founder of the Oregon Angel Fund ("OAF”), headquartered in Portland. (www.oregonangelfund.com)
OAF started in 2007 as an interesting collaborative experiment, combining the collective minds and experience of angel investors and entrepreneurs, with the typical discipline and rigor of a venture capital fund.
A 4th generation Oregonian and former entrepreneur, Eric will talk to us about his path to the genesis of the fund, and the other innovative twist that he and his co-founders devised to make OAF one of the most unique, and most successful, angel funds in the United States.
He’ll also talk about the key qualities and characteristics the fund looks for in a startup, and of its founders, before taking the risk and making an investment.
It’s been a real marriage of talent and capital that have now supported 50 Oregon companies over 10 years.
We’ll chat about the overall Oregon and Portland venture capital and financing landscape, and Eric will offer his perspectives on what it would take to speed up the cycle of local & organic wealth creation and reinvestment in Oregon, and drive a more robust entrepreneurial economy.
Lastly, we’ll discuss how OAF and its investors go beyond just angel investing to provide help and mentorship to business founders over a wide range of industries and verticals, as a key player in a community and state that strives to support entrepreneurship in all of its forms.
In this edition of Making Oregon, our guest is Anna Van Tol, founder of It’s Only Love Activewear in Portland
Anna will talk to us about the inspiration behind the It’s Only Love brand, and the company she started in 2014.
She’ll also explain her evolution from apparel to tote bags, and more importantly all the “whys” (and the personal journey) behind that decision, and why she donates 10% of her proceeds to fund scholarships for single mothers.
Anna had a lot of help from the Oregon community to push her business forward, and she'll chat about that too.
And you’ll also hear a great story about why she pronounces her first name as “ah-na”
For more information about Anna and her tote bags, go to https://itsonlyloveactivewear.com/
In this edition of Making Oregon, our guest is Cameron Madill, founder of PixelSpoke (https://www.pixelspoke.com/) a Portland-based start-up that creates websites and digital marketing for credit unions and progressive businesses.
We’ll learn from Cameron how he became an entrepreneur, and what he has learned from working with his father. He’ll talk about the joys and challenges of working with family, and the broader issues encountered by business partnerships.
Cameron talks about bootstrapping PixelSpoke, and how the business has continued to pivot to find its market niche. PixelSpoke is also a B Corp, and Cameron discusses the rigorous process required to earn and sustain that certification. As Chair of the B Corp Board here in Portland, he’ll describe the benefits B Corps hope to generate across the economic and social spectrum.
Cameron’s wide range of interests include world travel and working to help refugee families detained in the US after fleeing horrendous violence in Central America. He’ll talk with us about how these pursuits are a great test of the strength of his business here at home.
Links noted in the podcast:
Cara pro bono (http://caraprobono.org/)
Innovation law lab (https://innovationlawlab.org/)
PixelSpoke impact report (https://www.pixelspoke.com/impact-report-2016/)
In this edition of Making Oregon, our guest is Andrea Valderrama, senior policy advisor for City of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler.
With a background in grassroots organizing and community outreach, Andrea has a passion for economic and social justice as the daughter of political refugees forced out of Peru.
She has been working specifically in Portland’s East Side neighborhood to help identify and prioritize the needs for this oftentimes underserved area, and to help insure equity and inclusion for women and minority groups.
It’s from this public service perspective that we chatted with Andrea about her background, her passion for social justice, the value of public service and leadership, the role of a city government in economic development, and her views on how to close geographic, economic, and demographic opportunity gaps in a fair and equitable way.
In this edition of Making Oregon, our guest is Jala Smith-Huys, founder of Seek & Swoon, a new Portland company selling soft and cozy eco throws designed in Portland and made in the USA, and inspired by Jala’s love of travel.
It’s the latest chapter of an entrepreneurial journey that was years in the making, and taking its inspiration from the vibrant Portland maker community.
In her role as the Creative Director, Jala was part of the team that opened the first New Seasons market back in 2000, and that led to her later work as a freelance Social Media and Digital Strategist, advising a “who’s who” of local and national consumer product brands, including well-known Oregon brands like Tillamook Cheese and Dave’s Killer Bread.
In 2016, her experiences building strong and sustainable brands eventually merged with a deep passion for travel and a long-held desire to take the entrepreneurial leap, and Seek & Swoon was born.
We’ll talk about Jala’s journey, and find out why she chose throws as her entrepreneurial and maker entryway. Along the way we’ll touch on lessons learned and the insights gained from essentially launching a new product from scratch, and the benefit of a supportive creative community.
Check out Seek & Swoon at https://www.seekandswoon.com/ . If you use the code BUILTOREGON at checkout you'll get $15 off - offer is good until 12/31/16.
On this edition of Making Oregon, we chat with Jen Moore, founder of Jem Nut Butters. With extreme dedication to craft and quality, she makes healthy nut butters we can’t live without.
As a healthcare professional from Bend, Oregon, Jen became an entrepreneur after a long, dedicated career in exercise physiology, dietetics, and director of extensive health education programs.
What she brought to her entrepreneurial endeavor, besides a long history with patients and clients, were high quality standards, tenacity, a hunger for learning, and humility. She didn’t pretend to know more than she did. She asked for help and built lasting relationships all along the way.
In our podcast, we ask Jen about her unusual childhood in Idaho, how she found her way to Bend, Oregon, and how experimenting with chocolate truffles eventually led to her nut butter epiphany.
Our conversation digs into the building blocks of a sustainable, scalable manufacturing company. We’ll unpack vocabulary like the Triple Bottom Line, and Jen will explain what functional food is all about and how her recipes are based on the needs of our body's systems.
But Jen’s experience covers more than steady growth and a winning product lineup. She’ll talk about the hardships she faced dealing with consumers and regulatory agencies, and how she stuck to her guiding principles even when she faced a total product recall.
In this edition of Making Oregon, our guest is Joe Mueller, founder and proprietor of the downtown Portland clothing maker Wildwood & Company. They make high-quality and stylish suits and shirts by hand in their on-site workshop, keeping the traditional craft of hand tailoring alive.
A native of Banks, Oregon, Joe started Wildwood in 2014 after an impressive run as a lawyer – he graduated first in his New York law class and worked in top-notch law firms in New York City and in Portland.
While in Portland he noticed that the long-time New York tradition of the “bespoke” suit, a suit handmade to the customer’s detailed specifications, was nowhere to be found in the Rose City, which sparked his entrepreneurial idea – Wildwood & Company.
Our conversation takes place in Joe's wonderful lounge fitting room, a walnut-paneled lounge with posh leather furniture, and adorned with cool art, bolts of beautiful fabrics, and great scotch - a perfect complement to the stylish, traditional, high-class and hand-made suits Wildwood is making here in Oregon.
On this edition of Making Oregon our guest is Sonja Skvarla, founder of the Portland non-profit A Social Ignition. ( https://asocialignition.com/ ) Sonja started A Social Ignition in the Spring of 2012, and since 2014 has offered and taught a curriculum of entrepreneurship and professional development at the Columbia River Correctional Institution in Portland, OR, called the “Ignition Option”. It’s focused on a successful transition for men returning to the community.
Recently, A Social Ignition added a “Long Haul” program, which provides graduates of the core entrepreneurship program individual and small group coaching towards their particular business goals.
Sonja had gotten great traction with the program with very little outside resources – there have already been 49 graduates of the Ignition Option, there are 22 members of the Long Haul, and 12 graduate businesses are either launched or in development.
They will be celebrating the men of A Social Ignition at a gala on November 10th in Portland (get more info here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/first-annual-celebration-tickets-27956631036?aff=es2)
On this edition of Making Oregon, our guest is Molly Lindquist, founder and CEO of the Portland non-profit Consano. Molly has created a unique crowdfunding platform that that enables donors to give their support directly to a medical research project that matters to them. By harnessing the power of a crowd, they aggregate donations so the public can directly choose and support high quality medical research, pooling their money with others who care about the same health issues.
Molly started Consano in 2013 after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011. Frustrated by her inability to make donations to specific medical research projects that could impact her two daughters , the idea for Consano was born, and since its launch, Consano has raised nearly $700,000 in project donations to directly support 40 research projects in 28 unique health categories.
Molly tells us her inspiring story and candidly talks about her battle with breast cancer, the impact of the medical research Consano is enabling, and the many life and business lessons she's learned along the way.
In this edition of Making Oregon, we got out of the studio for a “Founder Coffee Talk” – lively conversation with Oregon founders at a local coffee house. For this chat, Built Oregon co-founder Terry St. Marie ventured to Groundwork Coffee Shop in SE Portland, for a fine almond milk latte and an iced mocha with our guest Britt Howard, co-founder of Portland Garment Factory, serving companies in the fashion design and product creation industries. The business started in 2008, and now has 11 employees at a 5,000 square foot facility on SE 79th and Stark
Portland Garment Factory helps creators from the beginning development of a product’s concept to seeing it through to completion. Serving clients both large - such as Nike and Levis – and small, they offer everything from pattern drafting and sample construction, to the branding of the final product.
Britt and her partner started the business because they saw a pressing need in Portland for these kind of services – until they came along, fashion makers had to seek help elsewhere, slowing down the creative flow. They’ve forged a niche in the Oregon creative ecosystem and economy, and our conversation reveals the unique and creative path that Britt took to get there, as well as her perspectives on sustainability and “zero waste”, the Portland fashion scene, and “pursuing beauty from odd angles” when designing clothes.
And, she reveals her (very simple) secret to success that may surprise you.
On this edition of Making Oregon, our guest is Juan Barazza, a Portland champion for entrepreneurial development, as the Program Manager at Portland State University Center for Entrepreneurship, the President of the local chapter of ALPFA (the Association of Latino Professionals for America), and as the founder and CEO of startup VDO interpreters, a A SaaS platform that provides Language Access Compliance for the Healthcare Industry.
He’s also going to be a speaker at the upcoming “GoGreen” conference in Portland on October 5th (Built Oregon is a sponsor).
We’ll talk about Juan’s personal journey, his transition to startup founder after a corporate career in multiple industries, and his budding local involvement in mentorship, startup development, and sustainability through Startup Weekend Latino, the PSU Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Cleantech challenge
Lastly, we’ll have a great discussion about his leadership in helping Oregon and Portland keep the conversation going regarding diversity, equity and inclusion in the entrepreneurial and investment arenas.
In this edition of Making Oregon, we chat with Justin Yuen, President and founder of FMYI in Portland. FMYI, which stands for “for my innovation”, is a collaboration software company Justin started in 2004, after he finished an 8 year run with Nike in Beaverton, where he was a Senior manager of corporate sustainable development.
We chat about Justin’s early years in New Jersey and how his parents influenced his worth ethic and commitment to family, and his college years where he caught the entrepreneurial bug and indulged his great intellectual curiosity.
We talk about his years at Nike, including his time in the Netherlands and his progression to being one of the leaders of the company’s sustainability efforts.
We find out what sustainability really means to him, and ask him to simplify its definition through the lens of the triple bottom line.
Justin will also chat about FMYI and its genesis, growth, and how it empowers teams to make a difference through its collaborative platform.
And, we hear about Justin’s passion for community, and how he balances it all to live a productive entrepreneurial life.
In this edition of Making Oregon, we feature Jude Gerace, founder of Sugar Wheel Works in Portland. She talks with us about her entrepreneurial story, how she came to love cycling, develop her craft, and the elements behind her drive to make high-quality bike wheels.
Jude remembers her first bicycle, a pink, second-hand Schwinn Fair Lady and how it represented the gift of independence. By the age of 14 she had 3 jobs—one of them a business she started herself—complete with a jingle she wrote to attract customers.
Jude explains some of the difficult turning points in her life, and how she got from Chicago to Eugene to Portland. She’ll talk about what she learned in her travels, how cycling became not only a passion but a career path, and how she “collects brains” to continually build her expertise.
Jude explains what it took to boot strap her business and what happened when her original business name was contested by a larger company. She has a lot to teach us about building a team, especially what she has learned from one of her employees, Dan, a young man who is living with autism.
Jude also reveals some of her own ongoing struggles, like the difficulty in achieving the elusive work-life balance, dealing with fear, and how she see thinks about the future growth of her business.
On the latest edition of Making Oregon, we discuss the craft beer industry in Oregon with a great panel representing the breadth of an industry that is constantly growing and evolving. And one that has close to a $4 Billion economic impact in the state.
The panel is moderated by Mellie Pullman, a Supply Chain Management professor and the director of the Business of Craft Brewing Certificate at Portland State University, an Online education program, which teaches all the business skills for starting and running a craft beverage business. The members of the panel include Kevin Shaw, head brewer of Astoria based Buoy Beer, Brad Windecker, Founder/CEO of Orchestra Software, and Blake Crosby of Crosby Hop Farms.
We asked the group about the innovations that are driving the beer industry, and what makes Oregon such a hotbed of craft beer. We discussed how raw material production can keep up with growing demand, the ways software is helping to reduce operational inefficiencies within breweries, and how you break into a crowded market. We also dived into some of the challenges and opportunities that face the industry as craft beer continues to evolve. And of course, we asked each member on the panel to name their favorite beer.
At the core, this panel gives us a snapshot of all the moving parts that are associated with craft beer, and how through collaboration and community, Oregon remains one of the key cogs in the future of the industry.
For this edition of the Making Oregon podcast we bring you one interview divided into two parts. We chat with Portland startup founder Stephen Ridley, the founder of Senrio. Senrio is an entirely new approach to data security, a Software as a Service product that unveils solutions and tools to provide unprecedented visibility and intelligence into the IoT devices all around us, a long-considered "blindspot" in cybersecurity.
In this Part 2, we back track to Part 1 for a couple minutes and talk once again about how Senrio works. Then we dive into a discussion about best practices for protecting data, especially if you are a small business.
Stephen will also talk about the vulnerabilities he and his developers find in consumer electronics and how Senrio can play a role in providing solutions.
Plus, we’ll get his take on data privacy, metadata and what social media giants like Facebook are doing with the information users supply, whether they know it or not.
Finally, we’ll ask whether data privacy really exists in today’s world, and how Stephen balances his awareness of security issues with his own personal practices in daily life.
For this edition of the Making Oregon podcast we bring you one interview divided into two parts. We chat with Portland startup founder Stephen Ridley, the founder of Senrio. Senrio is an entirely new approach to data security, a Software as a Service product that unveils solutions and tools to provide unprecedented visibility and intelligence into the IoT devices all around us, a long-considered "blindspot" in cybersecurity.
In the this part 1, we ask Stephen to tell us about his path from teenage hacker to working for the Department of Defense, Wall Street banks and social media companies. He’ll tell us how his love of research eventually lead him to become an entrepreneur—two pursuits that require very different skill sets.
He’ll describe Senrio, how it works, and what makes it different from other security applications. We’ll learn how it addresses the vulnerabilities found in embedded systems. And we’ll explain how ubiquitous embedded systems are—and here’s a hint—they exist in your cell phone.
And, if you’ve never heard of a USB Condom (also called Syncstop) and what it can do to keep your data safe, Stephen will explain what the device he designed and produces in Oregon can do for you.
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