Madrona Venture Group is leading a $3 million investment in ShopIgniter, a Portland company which provides an e-commerce platform to about 95 retailers. As a result of the deal, Madrona managing director and Amazon.com board member Tom Alberg has joined the company's board. And that's not the only way the Seattle venture firm is getting involved.

Matt Compton -- a former Yahoo executive who joined Madrona as a venture partner 15 months ago -- was tapped as ShopIgniter CEO earlier this week. Compton said he's been tracking the company's progress for the past three months, and has been impressed with the technology and the team. "I love what they are doing," said Compton, who has evaluated dozens of startups in the Portland area since joining Madrona.

And just what is ShopIgniter doing? Compton explains that the company is essentially taking over the heavy lifting of retailers' Web operations, providing the software development and social media expertise that they either can't afford or don't want to pursue.

"The thesis we are looking at is that e-commerce is one of the growing areas in technology, but it is all run on these home-grown systems," said Compton.

Of course, getting retailers off those home-grown systems could be a chore. But Compton said that most retailers "want to be retailers" and don't want to mess with software development. Part of the ShopIgniter offering includes deep integration with social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, allowing retailers to tap those communities in order to drive more sales.

Founded in 2008 by Alan Wizemann, Dan Warner and Jason Glover, ShopIgniter competes against Venda, Magento and Demandware. Demandware, for example, has built e-commerce sites for brands such as Crocs, Burton Snowboards and Columbia Sportswear.

Madrona has a history of backing startups in the e-commerce arena, starting with partners of the firm taking an early stake in Amazon.com. More recently, it has pumped money into e-commerce startups such as Mercent and Avelle.

ShopIgniter represents one of the few bets Madrona has placed in the Portland startup community in recent years. And with Compton moving to a full-time CEO role at ShopIgniter, the Seattle firm no longer has a point person in Portland.

As we've pointed out, there's been a lot of activity in Portland's startup community in recent weeks.

In fact, there's so much going on that I am going to check things out first hand, reporting this Friday from the Angel Oregon event in Portland. I also hope to pop in on the Beer & Blog meetup, so if you've got a cool startup in the Rose City look me up and say hello.