Portland seed investor Northwest Technology Ventures has started gaining access to $14 million in state money intended to fund early-stage ventures.

After nearly a year’s wait, Portland seed investor Northwest Technology Ventures has started gaining access to $14 million in state money
intended to fund early-stage ventures.

Robert Goldfield
Business Journal of Portland
Portland, OR

The capital comes from the lottery-funded Oregon Resource and Technology Development Account. NTV principals Bill Newman and Gordon
Hoffman will invest the capital in fledgling businesses attempting to commercialize technology.

"Our goal is to further the commercialization of technology, based on research produced by state and private universities, medical research
laboratories, and government and corporate laboratories," said Newman, who holds an MBA and a doctorate in mechanical engineering and
applied mathematics. Newman worked for several years as a venture capitalist with Portland’s Shaw Venture Partners.

"Where a business is not yet defined, but technology is available, we’ll work to identify the business opportunity," said Hoffman, who has
founded five startups and who most recently led creation of the Technology Commercialization Office at the Oregon Graduate Institute.

Legislation that renewed the ORTDA was signed in August 2001, and soon afterwards the state selected NTV to invest the funds. State
Treasurer Randall Edwards said the lottery money was committed to other uses prior to the July 1 start of the new fiscal year, so the ORTDA
funds are just starting to accumulate.

"This is something that’s been missing in the whole food chain of expanding Oregon’s economy, a coordinated effort to invest in the ideas that
emerge from our universities," Edwards said.

Other venture funds, including ones that receive some state funding, invest at somewhat later stages of a company’s life, Edwards said. NTV,
in contrast, will use the ORTDA funds to start the businesses that can take a new technology and run with it.

Add in the private equity funds OGA has helped fund, and the ability of the state’s pension fund to invest in more mature businesses, and the
state now has a full array of investment approaches that can help nurture local businesses, he said.

A predecessor to the ORTDA was created as a state venture fund in 1986, a time when few venture capital funds regularly invested in Oregon
companies. The fund eventually ran afoul of laws that barred the state from directly holding stock in corporations.

In response, the 2001 Legislature merged the ORTDA into the Oregon Growth Account, a similar source of investment capital for what the
state calls emerging growth businesses. Instead of investing directly in businesses, the OGA funnels money to private venture and equity funds,
which in turn invest in businesses.

Though it now is a part of the OGA, state officials still consider the ORTDA a somewhat separate creature. For one thing, Newman and
Hoffman are charged with making investments at a very early stage in the life of a business: They may even use the capital to help form a
business if they’ve identified a technology suitable for commercialization. And unlike the venture funds and equity funds that have received
other OGA money, NTV won’t use the ORTDA funds to attract, or leverage, additional funds from other investors: The ORTDA money will stand
by itself.

The four other investment groups to receive commitments for OGA funding are Endeavour Capital, $7 million; Smart Forest Ventures, $6
million; Timberline Ventures, $5 million; and Tamarack Capital Partners, $1 million.

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