Tag Archives: Bend business

EDCO Announces the BVC 2021 Growth Stage Finalists

EDCO ANNOUNCES THE GROWTH STAGE FINALISTS PRESENTING AT THE BEND VENTURE CONFERENCE OCTOBER 21-22, 2021

BEND, OR – October 7, 2021 – Economic Development for Central Oregon (EDCO) announces the Growth Stage finalists presenting at the 18^th Annual Bend Venture Conference (BVC) taking place Thursday, October 21 – Friday, October 22, 2021.

The Bend Venture Conference, the largest Angel conference in the West, is an annual celebration of entrepreneurship, bringing together entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders, both virtually and in-person in Bend, Oregon.

Companies in the Growth Stage have previously won investments ranging from $100,000 to $2,500,000. The below companies join the finalists previously announced in the Impact and Early Stage categories.

In alphabetical order, the five Growth Stage finalists are:

DeepSurface (Portland, OR) – A risk-based predictive vulnerability management platform that contextualizes vulnerabilities within a business’s digital infrastructure.
Lora DiCarlo (Bend, OR) – Sex tech products using advanced technology to mimic human touch and movements.
Portl – (Eugene, OR) An innovative tech platform dedicated to empowering creators with equitable tools for monetizing content and building community.
PupPod – (Hood River, OR) – A multispecies gaming platform that provides dogs with software-driven, positive reinforcement games and humans with a powerful tool to be great pet parents.
The Run Experience (Bend, OR) – A daily fitness app with daily audio runs and training programs designed to build a healthy running habit.

Ticket Sales
Tickets to the 18^th Annual Bend Venture Conference are on sale now and are available here.

About Bend Venture Conference (BVC)
Now in its 18^th year, BVC, hosted by EDCO, is one of the largest angel conferences in the country. Over the past five years, more than $10 million has been invested in 40 companies as a result of the conference. This year’s conference will take place October 21-22, 2021, gathering entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders. bendvc.com

About Economic Development for Central Oregon (EDCO)
EDCO is a non-profit corporation supported by private and public members and stakeholders, whose mission is to create middle-class jobs in Central Oregon by recruiting new employers to move to the region; helping entrepreneurs start new, scalable businesses; and working with businesses that are already here to grow their operations. edcoinfo.com

2020 Bend Venture Conference: Down to the Wire

BVC Speaker Aidan Reilly Farmlink

2020 Bend Venture Conference Speaker: Aidan Reilly

Co-Founder of The Farmlink Project

Down to the Wire: Saving and Redistributing Food Waste During a Pandemic & Beyond

The Farmlink Project is a not-for-profit grassroots movement that connects farms with food banks to feed thousands in need while supporting essential jobs. Co-founder Aidan Reilly is a rising senior at Brown University studying Political Science with a concentration in comparative politics. Born in Los Angeles, Aidan’s primary interests have largely centered around documentary filmmaking. As reflected in his past work covering the 2018 Nicaraguan Civil Crisis and the ongoing Syrian Refugee Crisis, Aidan has a passion for finding ways the everyday person can resonate with seemingly vast and unsolvable problems. This interest manifested at the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic with his co-creation of The FarmLink Project, an initiative aiming to motivate everyday Americans to fight both food waste and food insecurity in the United States.

Since its beginnings in April of 2020, Farmlink has grown from a small network of college students to a nationwide movement to fix the broken food system in the United States. In the last 6 months, the project has utilized the help of 200 full-time volunteers (average age of 21) to save 13 million pounds of produce from going to waste, and instead get it to communities in need across 40 states. In addition, the project has been able to pay nearly $1 million in wages to farmworkers. The ultimate goal of Farmlink is to democratize access to fresh produce to underserved communities for years to come.

Bend Venture conference moderator Megan Bolt

2020 Bend Venture Conference Moderator: Megan Bolt

Founder of Raddr

Local entrepreneur and OSU-Cascades student, Megan Bolt is currently a Business Administration student at OSU-Cascades where she works as both the Student Outreach Coordinator for the Career Development Center and as a Student Consultant for the Innovation Co-Lab. When not studying, she is rock climbing, fishing, hiking, or working towards developing her own business, Raddr – a company that blends the passion for fishing with the desire for quality, fitting, and fun gear that aims to fit the needs of fishing women everywhere.

bendvc.com

2018 Bend Venture Conference: Keynote Speakers

2018 BVC Keynote Speaker

2018 Bend Venture Conference Speaker: Emily Chang

Anchor & Executive Producer of Bloomberg Technology

2018 Keynote Speaker

Friday’s keynote, Emily Chang, is the anchor and executive producer of Bloomberg Technology, a daily TV show focused on global technology. She regularly speaks with top tech executives, investors, and entrepreneurs in her podcast, Bloomberg Studio 1.0. The Harvard University graduate has won five regional Emmy awards for her reporting and was previously a CNN correspondent in both Beijing and London. She is also the bestselling author of the groundbreaking book, Brotopia, a look at the world of Silicon Valley and what it is like to navigate the “boys’ club” culture as a woman in tech.

2018 BVC Impact Keynote Speaker

2018 Bend Venture Conference Speaker: Breanna DiGiammarino

Senior Director of Social Innovation at Indiegogo

2018 Impact Speaker

Thursday’s Impact keynote, Breanna DiGiammarino is the Senior Director of Social Innovation at Indiegogo. She actively raises awareness about the value and best practices of crowdfunding for social entrepreneurs, working to empower many of the most impactful campaigners on the site. She’s worked on campaigns such as blogger Humans of New York’s fundraiser to address bonded labor in Pakistan with a $2.3 million raise and the B Corp Cotopaxi’s Allpa Travel bag campaign with a $1.3 million raise. Before Indiegogo, Breanna was the Senior Associate at the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a leading social venture fund and an Associate Consultant at The Bridgespan Group, the non-profit arm of Bain & Company.

bendvc.com