While Silicon Valley has largely been considered to be the hub of major West Coast startups, recent numbers have shown that Portland, Oregon can hold its own in the technology industry. With this growing number of entrepreneurs thriving in Oregon’s epicenter, startup lawyers may just be able to keep this progression moving forward.
2012 was a catalyst year for Portland when major tech firms made substantial financial profits. Oregon witnessed some huge deals in the first quarter of 2012 with a $30 million round for Puppet Labs, a $33 million round for Janrain and a $25 million round for Urban Airship. With these numbers in place, Oregon surpassed Washington in venture capital investment for the first time since 1993 with Oregon raising $146 million verses Washington’s $100 million.
Furthermore, more entrepreneurs are looking to Portland to settle in as compared to the usual tech startup hubs because of a high quality of life, an abundance of talent and affordability. According to Bloomberg, Portland’s GDP growth between 2007-11 outpaced other cities like Austin, TX and San Jose, CA. The Wall Street Journal also predicted that Portland is a city to watch for major startup growth.
Over the past five years two programs, the Portland Incubator Experiment and the Portland Seed Fund, have been instrumental in supporting startup expansion. Collectively, they have incubated more than 60 companies, which generated more than 775 jobs and raised more than $140 million.
However, successful startups don’t always result in traditional benefits that conventional brick and mortar businesses of the past bring to the area. “Aspirational employees join startups with the expectation that growth will enrich them, and if that does not happen there is usually an exodus,” comments OregonBusiness.com contributor Nishant Bhajaria. “If there is indeed demand to live in Portland and for the value our companies provide, wages will need to reflect that demand. Otherwise, Portland’s growth could go from being a story of possibility to a missed opportunity at best and a liability at worst.”
With the induction of so many new businesses, other legal issues can also arise. Employee rights, understanding local tax and processing laws, protecting IP, filing for copyrights and patents, and entering into contractual agreements can create challenges for many of the entrepreneurs.
Fortunately, while technology is becoming a larger catalyst for the change with growing legal marketplaces, innovators like UpCounsel are able to transcend traditional boundaries of time, space, corporate, and geographical boundaries in order to connect business with legal needs with helpful lawyers in Portland or anywhere across the U.S. in a virtual marketplace environment. They are able to offer much more competitive costs for legal services since they are primarily based online and carry minimal overhead when compared to big law firms.
While Portland seems to have a bright future ahead, these ground floor startups and the lawyers in Oregon who help them are the ones who will determine the economic growth of this dynamic city.
About UpCounsel
UpCounsel helps businesses and entrepreneurs to easily hire great attorneys on-demand that best match their legal needs and budget. By using UpCounsel’s virtual legal marketplace to get advice and compare free proposals from specialized attorneys, businesses save hours of time searching for legal services and reduce their legal costs by 60% on average when compared to expensive law firms. To date, thousands of companies have used UpCounsel to save millions of dollars on legal services.
For more information, please visit: https://www.upcounsel.com
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