2010 OEN Tom Holce Entrepreneurship Winners & Finalists
2010 OEN Development Stage Winner and Finalists
• TrustID, Pat Cox, CEO - Winner
• Columbia Green, Vanessa Keitges, CEO - Finalist
• ShopIgniter, Matt Compton, CEO - Finalist
2010 OEN Working Capital Winner and Finalists
• ClearAccess, Ken Hood, Founder - Winner
• Certified Languages International, Kristin Quinlan - Finalist
• Elemental Technologies, Sam Blackman, CEO - Finalist
• Oh!Shoes, Greg Van Gasse, CEO - Finalist
2010 OEN Growth Stage Winner and Finalists
• Smarsh, Steve Marsh, CEO - Winner
• Avnera, Manpreet Khaira, CEO - Finalist
• Coffee Bean International, Patrick Criteser, CEO - Finalist
• nLIGHT, Scott Keeney, CEO - Finalist
2010 OEN Individual Achievement Finalists
• Jim Johnson, Tripwire - Finalist
• William Kelly, Learning.com - Finalist
• Manpreet Khaira, Avnera - Finalist
• Sohrab Vossoughi, Ziba Design - Winner
2010 OEN Lifetime Achievement Recipients
• Ken & Joan Austin, A-dec
Individual Achievement Category
James Johnson, Tripwire – Portland, OR
http://www.tripwire.comJames B. Johnson has served as Tripwire’s President and Chief Executive Officer and as a director since he joined the company in 2004. Prior to joining Tripwire, Jim spent 27 years at Intel Corporation, where he served as Vice President of the Internet Service Operation and Director of Marketing for the Internet and Communications Group. He also co-founded and served as General Manager of Intel’s PC Enhancement Division, its retail products group. Jim holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.S. degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.
William Kelly, Learning.com – Portland, OR
http://www.learning.comBill Kelly is the founder and CEO of Learning.com. Since co-founding the company in 1999, Bill has been recognized as a leading innovator in the Educational Technology industry as well as a leading advocate for education in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. Prior to Learning.com, Bill was the co-founder and Executive Vice President of Sapient Health Network, which became part of WebMD in 1999. There, he pioneered the development of sustainable online support communities and personalized information delivery. Sapient Health Network was listed as a top Web site by Business Week magazine in 1998. Previous company experience includes Creative Multimedia, Fidelity Capital, and Knight-Ridder, Inc.
Manpreet Khaira, Avnera – Beaverton, OR
http://www.avnera.comManpreet Khaira is the Chairman, President and CEO of Avnera. He has 17 years of experience in the semiconductor industry.
Manpreet co-founded Avnera in early 2004. Prior to Avnera, he was the founding CEO of Mobilian Corporation, which was acquired by Intel Corporation in 2003. Before becoming an entrepreneur, he held various engineering and management positions at Intel.
Manpreet is a recipient of the distinguished President of India Gold Medal from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He received his Master’s degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Sohrab Vossoughi, Ziba Design – Portland, OR
http://www.ziba.comSohrab Vossoughi is Ziba’s Founder, President and Chief Creative Director. During his 25-year tenure, Sohrab has received numerous accolades that include being named one of the five innovation gurus in the US by Business Week magazine, elected as a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum and serving as an elected advisor to the Hong Kong Productivity Council since 1998. He holds more than 40 patents. Sohrab speaks internationally and regularly contributes to Business Week, AdAge and Rotman’s business journal.
Development Stage
CGT – Portland, OR
http://www.columbiagreenroof.comCGT/Columbia Green’s quest is Eco-Technologies that provide sustainable tools, products and services to fundamentally improve the environment. The company’s first product, the Advanced Vegetative Roof System® (“AVRS®”) is a turnkey proprietary eco-roof system that addresses the stormwater and environmental issues created by impervious surfaces. No other clean technology solves more environmental issues than the AVRS® System.
ShopIgniter – Portland, OR
http://www.shopigniter.comShopIgniter is a cloud-based ecommerce platform provider. The company delivers an extensible, ecommerce solution integrating store management, merchandising and product content across physical retail stores, branded websites and the social web. The ShopIgniter platform enables retailers, wholesalers and product brands to merchandise products on social networks and manage all the functionality of their online store through an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.
TrustID – Portland, OR
http://www.trustid.comTrustID helps financial institutions and other enterprises conducting telephone-based commerce to combat the growing threat of Caller ID Spoofing and ANI Spoofing. The first technology to address social engineering security breaches, TrustID’s patent-pending telephone firewall solution accelerates the authentication process to pre-answer, validating ID with physical information without relying solely on knowledge based authentication and the risky handling of personally identifiable information (PII.)
TrustID’s customers across financial, telecom, healthcare and retail industries can aggressively mitigate fraud and minimize risk while building brand loyalty and driving additional revenue.
Working Capital Stage
Certified Languages International, LLC – Portland, OR
http://www.certifiedlanguages.comCLI was established to provide a bridge between diverse cultures and languages. They are a privately held company and serve over 4,000 customers with professional interpretation and translation services via a network of over 2200 articulate and sensitive US-based interpreters. CLI provides services in 176 languages to businesses, government and other public sector clients primarily via telephone interpretation. They also provide document translation, American Sign Language and in-person interpretation services.
ClearAccess – Vancouver, WA
http://www.clearaccess.comClearAccess offers service providers new possibilities in broadband deployments including the ability to manage TR-069 compliant gateways and other home or office networking devices. The ClearVision management system reduces operational costs, and provides an applications platform for delivering new revenue generating consumer services over a variety of network types including DSL, Fiber, Cable, and Wireless.
Elemental Technologies – Portland, OR
http://www.elementaltechnologies.comElemental Technologies is the leading provider of massively parallel video processing solutions for enterprise video customers. Elemental’s enterprise products, including Elemental Server and Elemental Live, use off-the-shelf, programmable graphics processing units (GPUs) for compute-intensive video processing and conversion tasks. The product line is ideal for digital media workflows that require video encoding for Internet and mobile delivery, faster-than-real-time transcoding, or support for adaptive bit rate distribution. Elemental’s innovative solutions deliver unprecedented price/performance advantages to a variety of customers including broadcasters, online video platforms and content delivery networks. Elemental is headquartered in Portland, Oregon.
Oh! Shoes – Portland, OR
http://www.ohshoes.comOh! Shoes has uniquely combined patented American technology with Italian design to create the first complete collection of women’s heels that are proven “healthy” to wear. Oh! targets the millions of women suffering from the foot and joint damage caused by traditional heels. The products conform to recommended standards from both the American Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Association and the American Podiatric Medical Association, and were developed by medical professionals, mechanical engineers and Italian designers. Oh! Shoes is changing the world of women’s footwear as women discover they can finally have heels that are both sexy and healthy to wear.
Growth Category Stage
Avnera Corporation – Beaverton, OR
http://www.avnera.comAvnera is a venture-backed fabless analog semiconductor company based in Beaverton, Oregon that has pioneered Analog Systems-on-Chip (ASoC) technology for consumer electronics applications. The company’s ASoC products are designed to accelerate time to market by enabling very high levels of system integration on chip thereby reducing product development time. Avnera’s ASoC solutions allow consumer electronics manufacturers to quickly and easily create wireless “wired-quality” multi-source, multi-listener high fidelity consumer electronic audio products. Avnera is funded by Altien Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Best Buy, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, JAFCO Ventures, Onkyo Corporation, Panasonic Venture Group, Polycom and Redpoint Ventures
Coffee Bean International – Portland, OR
http://www.coffeebeanintl.comFounded in 1972, Coffee Bean International is a visionary coffee company in the heart of the Pacific Northwest. As one of North America’s first roasters of specialty coffee, its unwavering commitment to handcrafted quality and sustainable business practices has earned it respect and a place among the coffee industry’s premier roaster/wholesalers. Coffee Bean International serves more than 2,000 active customers, including many independent specialty coffee retailers and prestigious larger, quality-oriented chains. Coffee Bean International operates out of a LEED® Silver certified roasting facility and invests in partnerships, direct trade and certification programs which support improving coffee quality and coffee growers’ lives and communities world-wide.
nLIGHT – Vancouver, WA
http://www.nlight.netnLIGHT is a leading supplier of innovative high-power semiconductor lasers and high-performance specialty optical fibers for industrial, medical, defense and consumer applications. nLIGHT provides customer advantages in performance, reliability and efficiency. Global support is provided through state-of-the-art manufacturing and application centers in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Smarsh – Portland, OR
http://www.smarsh.comSmarsh® provides hosted solutions for archiving electronic communications, including email, instant messaging and social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Founded in 2001, Smarsh helps over 10,000 organizations manage and enforce flexible, secure and cost-effective compliance and records retention strategies and mitigate risk.
Event History
As entrepreneurs, we work hard and we play hard. For OEN's 15th Annual OEN Tom Holce Entrepreneurship Awards in 2008 we took the time to have a little extra fun and highlight some of the past winners in our Rogue’s Gallery. Click on the link below to see some of the fun and learn more about some of our shining stars of inspiration.