The Founder's Co-op has joined with True Ventures to back Urban Airship, a Portland company that is developing technologies to help publishers send sports scores, breaking news and other mobile alerts to smartphones. Rick Turoczy at Silicon Florist has the scoop on the $1.1 million funding round, writing that the startup will use the cash to move faster and expand into other mobile markets.

The participation of the Founder's Co-op -- led by Seattle entrepreneurs Andy Sack and Chris DeVore -- is interesting because it marks their first investment (that I know of) in Portland. (VentureBeat notes that DeVore and Urban Airship's Scott Kveton met the at the MobileBeat conference last year).

Meanwhile, True Ventures -- the early-stage Silicon Valley firm -- has been fairly active in the Pacific Northwest. Among its other investments in the region are 1000 Markets, RescueTime and Reductive Labs.

In addition to the push notification service, Urban Airship is developing a technology that allows publishers to integrate in-app purchasing directly into iPhone applications. The company was formed in 2009 by Steven Osborn who came up with the idea after struggling to build in-app purchasing into a gaming application. The startup is led by Scott Kveton, who previously worked at Amazon.com, Rulespace, JanRain and Vidoop.

Since its launch, the company says it has added more than 1,500 customers and sent more than 110 million messages.

UPDATE: Here are comments from Chris DeVore at Founder's Co-op who confirmed that this is their first deal in Portland: "...Urban Airship has bootstrapped their way to a great business in a strategic layer of the smartphone ecosystem. Scott and his team are killer entrepreneurs who have made a lot happen already with limited resources and we're very excited to see what they can to with a little more runway."