Last Thursday our Portland office held a traditional beer bust celebrating the opening of the incubator space on our second floor that i currently hosting 5 startups and 2 organizations. We had beer, wine, food, cookies, and of course pie.
About the PIE Shop
”Autodesk have launched an ambitious program that looks to foster new product startups and help entrepreneurs overcome challenges tied to making physical objects.
Portland design and product agency Uncorked Studios, 3D software maker Autodesk Inc. and the accelerator Portland Incubator Experiment introduced PIE Shop, which will guide startups through the prototyping and manufacturing phases. The program will be housed in Autodesk's new office in the renovated Towne Storage Building.”
“Autodesk’s role in the residency program is to provide the space, technology, and expertise that complements PIE and Uncorked Studios’ visions for a diverse, connected network of local start-ups," the company said in a statement.”
Here are some of the residents:
Mentor:
Rick Turoczy Mentor of the Pie Shop (Startup and Community legend in Portland and on the internets including his popular blog Silicon Florist.)
PDX Women in Tech
Established in 2012, we are a community-based non-profit organization. Our purpose is to strengthen the Portland women in tech community by offering: educational programs, partnerships, mentorships, resources and opportunities.
Bip (https://bip.care/)
Bip is a small format connected device designed to be worn by residents of assisted living facilities as a means of opening lines of communication among between residents, staff, and family, and providing critical data points that inform other assisted living management solutions.
Foundry Collaborative
The team who built the Adidas connected ball has spun off from the apparel company to continue to innovate on the technology they created. They will serve as both a PIE Shop company and mentors in residence for the other companies in the space.
CMD Sense (http://cmdsense.com)
CMD Sense uses a variety of connected devices and other tools to gather outdoor and indoor data in cities in order to help transform cities into a place that benefits all urban citizens. Their first product modernizes surveying by leveraging connected devices to create more accurate measurements.
Dorsum (https://dorsumtech.com/)
Carrying unsupported weight puts strain on the back, increasing the risk for injury. Dorsum has designed and are developing the AdaptiveSpine™, a spinal exoskeleton and supportive device that transfers weight and stress to the hips. The product, inspired by first responders, is being tested by AMR, which is located next door to Autodesk Portland.
Portland IQ https://www.portlandiq.org/
A Public Private Partnership formed when Portland's rapidly maturing higher-ed anchor institutions recognized that shared goals, overlapping constituencies, close proximity, increasing community investment, and complementary real-estate development projects presented a rare opportunity for collaboration — collaboration that would provide exponentially more value as a combined effort than it would as individual projects.
The first signs of this emerging collaborative ecosystem are already part of Portland, materializing in signature projects like the OHSU Collaborative Life Sciences Building, a joint project among OHSU, Oregon State University (OSU), and PSU located at the Tilikum Crossing bridgehead on Portland's South Waterfront. This area — fed by bicycle and pedestrian paths, light rail, streetcars, buses, and the Portland Tram — is quickly emerging as a hotbed for life science, medical device, and digital health startups.
Today, the inspiration from that initial project is already informing other collaborative and complementary pursuits like the $1 billion Knight Cancer Center and the creation of the Eastside Innovation Hub, a new lab-office space in the Central Eastside
I cant wait to show you more of the PIE shop as well as closer looks at the residents and their startups.
