2021 Best Tech Startups in Oregon

March 11, 2021 thetechtribune

The Tech Tribune staff has compiled the very best tech startups in Oregon. In doing our research, we considered several factors including but not limited to:

Revenue potential
Leadership team
Brand/product traction
Competitive landscape

Additionally, all companies must be independent (unacquired), privately owned, at most 10 years old, and have received at least one round of funding in order to qualify.

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1. SheerID

Founded: 2011

Also honored in:

“SheerID is redefining how enterprises create instant trust in a digital world.

Its digital verification platform instantly verifies the identity of individuals and businesses, enabling enterprises to deliver authenticated offers and experiences without friction and without fraud.

By using authoritative data sources to verify credentials in real-time, within an organization’s brand experience, SheerID delivers a seamless customer experience that reduces churn and fuels loyalty to drive revenue growth.”

2. Lytics

Founded: 2012

Also honored in:

“Lytics helps enterprises automate personalized marketing experiences through the industry’s most advanced Customer Data Platform (CDP). Popular retailing, media, consumer goods, banking, and tech brands use Lytics to execute one-to-one marketing programs that their customers welcome.

The Lytics Customer Data (CDP) Platform, the company’s flagship product, was launched in October 2014. The Lytics CDP connects a company’s marketing data about customers and users from multiple sources (e.g., structured and unstructured data from tools, anonymous and known profiles, and other interactions and events from the marketing stack, sales, and support databases) and creates behavior-rich user segments (e.g., likely to churn, most active on mobile, coupon lover).”

3. Dutchie

Founded: 2017

Also honored in: 2021 Best Tech Startups in Bend

“Dutchie is a technology company that connects consumers with their favorite dispensaries. Our mission is to create easy and safe access to cannabis for everyone. We are the leading and fastest-growing e-commerce provider in cannabis, facilitating $2.4B in sales, powering online ordering for the top dispensaries throughout the United States and Canada. We deliver insights to our dispensary partners that grow their business and ensure they are compliant with ever-changing rules and regulations.

Dutchie has raised $53M in funding to date, backed by Howard Schultz (Former CEO of Starbucks), Thrive Capital (Investor in Instagram, Stripe, Spotify, and Slack), Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde Capital, one of the leading cannabis-focused VC’s, Gron Ventures, members of the founding team at DoorDash, Kevin Durant’s Thirty Five Ventures, and other notable angel investors.”

4. ESS

Founded: 2011

Also honored in: 2020 Best Tech Startups in Oregon

“ESS Inc. is a leading provider of long-duration (4+ hours) energy storage solutions ideally suited for C&I, utility, microgrid and off-grid applications. Our iron flow battery, the Energy Warehouse (EW), is capable of up to 8 continuous hours of energy delivery with a 20+ year operating life and no capacity degradation. Composed of earth-abundant iron, salt and water for its electrolyte, the EW is a safe, long-lasting solution with the lowest levelized cost of storage (LCOS) per kWh.

ESS was founded in 2011 by a team with deep experience in fuel cells, electrochemistry, advanced material science, and renewable energy. After 5 years of extensive innovation, engineering development, and rigorous validation, backed by ARPA-E and others, we began shipping turn-key battery solutions in 2016. In 2017, BASF, the world’s leading chemical company, became a significant investor in ESS, joining forces with us to deliver energy storage solutions for a sustainable future.”

5. OpenSesame

Founded: 2011

Also honored in:

“We help companies develop the world’s most productive and admired workforces.

With the most comprehensive catalog of elearning courses from the world’s top publishers, we are here to help you every step of the way, from finding courses, mapping them to your core competencies, syncing them with your LMS to increasing utilization and improving your L&D programs. Not only will you have the flexibility of multiple purchasing options from OpenSesame, you’ll find it simple to use and administer your elearning courses.”

6. Vooks

Founded: 2017

Also honored in: 2021 Best Tech Startups in Portland (Oregon)

“Vooks brings storybooks to life.

We are a video storybook streaming service dedicated to providing a new and unique media format for children’s books. Vooks is a new approach to providing parents a kid safe educational and entertainment option. Vooks are storybooks that have been animated and enhanced with sound that together both engages and entertains children from Birth – 10 years old.”

7. Bumped

Founded: 2017

Also honored in:

“Bumped is a platform that gives banks, brands, and businesses the ability to reward customers in fractional shares of stock. Our suite of products can help businesses reward their customers in stock and build stronger relationships—from retailers to restaurants, from favorite brands to financial institutions.

Bumped is available across the U.S., and proudly built in Portland, Oregon. Learn more about integrating stock rewards into your loyalty programs at Bumped.com.”

8. ZincFive

Founded: 2016

Also honored in:

“ZincFive is the world leader in innovation and delivery of nickel-zinc based energy storage and delivery solutions for mission critical industries including Data Centers, Intelligent Transportation, Motive Power and more. ZincFive leverages patented nickel-zinc chemistry within our solutions to provide superior safety and environmental advantages simultaneous with performance delivered through high power density.”

9. Conversa Health

Founded: 2014

Also honored in: 2021 Best Tech Startups in Portland (Oregon)

“At Conversa, we understand that health happens every day. It’s not a one-time event in a hospital or doctor’s office. We know that our health (and the health and well-being of our loved ones) is made up of many experiences, actions and conversations — that happen anywhere and at any time.

That’s why we created The Conversa Virtual Care & Communications Platform TM. Our technology delivers capacity improvements to help organizations virtually manage, monitor and engage with their health consumers at scale more efficiency than ever before. With Conversa Connect™, our proprietary patient profiling and health signals engine, and our extensive library of over 1,000 clinically intelligent conversation programs, we enables healthcare organizations to serve automated, personalized doctor-patient conversation experiences around chronic condition management, post-hospital discharge, pre- and post-surgery, medication adherence, consumer health education and lifestyle health coaching. These automated conversations are leading health systems, pharma, and payers to more informed and meaningful patient relationships, effective population management and better outcomes.”

10. PayRange

Founded: 2013

Also honored in:

“Everyday payments made easy.

PayRange was founded in 2013 by Dr. Paresh Patel, a serial entrepreneur and veteran of the automated retail industry. While credit card solutions for machines have been around for two-decades, 95% of the 30 million machines worldwide only accept cash. His patented innovations combine payment, rewards, and convenience into a mobile service that brings premium experiences to unattended retail locations.

Consumers download the free mobile app (iOS, Android) and with flexible funding options, including all major cards and wallets (Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Masterpass), they are empowered to pay machines with ease.”