Silicon Florist's Rick Turoczy

Rick Turoczy: Welcome back to part 2 of the Venture Northwest recap. If you missed part 1 yesterday, you can catch up over here. What's Venture Northwest, you ask? It's a pitch event put on by the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN). No cash prizes. Just the opportunity for startups to pitch potential investors.

Think DEMO or TechCrunch 50 only on a much smaller scale. Got it? Good. Let's get to the remaining folks with pitched their companies on stage.

Calidora

Now admittedly, Calidora presented during the morning session and---given that my focus is generally tech---I left them out of the mix. But then I rethought that. Because I like you. And I want you to have a complete picture of the event. So I'm going to throw them in here. Besides that, they're from Seattle. I mean, medical aesthetics is technology, right? Am I right? Hello? Is this thing on? Anyway.

During his morning talk, Dave Moffenbeier talked about "looking for the crossing lines" when assessing business opportunities. Calidora is staking its business on the sweet spot where the lines of "increasing youth-obsessed yet aging population" and "decreasing cost of cosmetic medical procedures" cross.

To capitalize on that, they're trying to build a chain of "medical aesthetics" clinics that allow folks to re-engineer their appearances in trusted and comfortable environments. And they seem to be hitting the mark. Their 2009 sales are projected to hit $5.7 million with cash of $1.9 million EBITDA. And they're expecting to triple that next year.

Advanced Inquiry Systems

Hillsboro-based Advanced Inquiry Systems is a good old fashioned deep tech semiconductor testing play. And there's nothing more quintessentially Portland than that. They plan to focus their efforts on providing full wafer contactors, tester interfaces, and automated test platforms for popular products like flash memory and DRAM. To do that, they're going to need around $15 million. Most impressive about the company?

The rock stars of the semiconductor industry they've attracted as employees and advisors, including some impressive folks from Intel and TI. But for all the upside, they stumbled on the whole "crowd favorite" award, opting instead to go for the "put foot in mouth" award when they besmirched one of the other presenters. That's right. I said "besmirched." And I'd say it again, too.

ShopIgniter

One of the most anticipated pitches---at least from my perspective---was Portland-based ShopIgniter, a "real time, social ecommerce platform." And it didn't disappoint. ShopIgniter provides an elegant ecommerce package, delivering exactly the functionality you would expect---but then they take it in a couple of different directions that make it all the more compelling.

First, they allow sellers to publish their store as a native Facebook app, allowing them to tap into an entirely different group of users in an their preferred environment. And second, they have a sentiment-based Twitter search that allows sellers to more easily identify potential customers---and to more quickly resolve customer issues. It's the first product I've seen that promises to formally extend the reach of small and medium sized business sales into social networking---and in a way that holds the promise of direct revenue generation. ShopIgniter is available on a subscription basis as software as a service or it can be installed on the users' servers.

They've partnered with Bend-based EllisLab, making it the first ecommerce solution for EllisLab's popular ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter platforms. From an investor perspective, the numbers seem to all be pointing to the upside. Most interesting? Even though they are pre-launch, ShopIgniter claims that $2.5 million investment would help them be profitable in nine months.

Second Porch

It was a shame that the two strong social network plays got clumped into the same group for voting purposes. That said, in a region that's known for investing in deep tech and apparel, it's always great to see these more cutting-edge technology folks getting selected to pitch at all. Portland-based Second Porch is a Facebook app that allows people with vacation homes to promote them to friends without being smarmy or spammy. It's a great way for owners to make sure their homes are filled more often---and by people they trust. Not to mention, it's an easy way for renters to find lodging.

In short, they're making a trusted relationship generate revenue. And it's an idea that people immediately understand. As such, they're getting a ton of uptake from the popular press which is always good for a startup. Sometimes, it's the most straightforward solutions that hold the most promise. What's more, they've got an attainable revenue goal---with the potential to grow much larger.

At this point, profitability requires 2.5 percent of the vacation home market to participate with each making around 9 transactions per year. Second Porch is looking to raise $700,000 in the short term and another $1.5 million in mid 2010. They're planning to exit via acquisition.

DesignMedix

The final presenter was Portland-based DesignMedix, a drug development company working to battle the problem of drug resistance. Diseases are beginning to mutate in ways that are making them resistance to drug treatments---no matter how successful those treatments have been in the past. Malaria is a great example. As such, drugs need to adapt to fight these changed diseases.

But the development times and regulatory approvals for drugs makes the process of keeping up with the resistant diseases anything but quick. DesignMedix is looking to optimize the process by eliminating the discovery process and reducing the difficulty of patient screening. How? By starting with an existing drug and mutating the drug. Their first product is attacking the malaria problem. Their next product will be a broad spectrum antibiotic. DesignMedix is seeking a $5 million investment in order to speed the development of their current malaria project.

It's all over but the voting

As a reminder, while there is no "winner" of Venture Northwest, per se, there is a "crowd favorite." DesignMedix won round 3 of voting. That put them up against Wicked Quick and Prolifiq in the finals. And while it was neck and neck for a bit, Prolifiq finally emerged the clear victor at the end.

So that was this year's Venture Northwest. But the end is really the beginning, isn't it? I mean, it's great to see those folks pitch. But the real story is when one of them gets funded. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for all of them.

Rick Turoczy is the publisher of Silicon Florist. Follow him on Twitter @turoczy. Guest posts are the opinions of their authors and don't necessarily reflect those of TechFlash or its staff. Have an idea for a guest post of your own? Tell us about it at techflashtips@bizjournals.com