Salesforce.com to hire hundreds at Portland office

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Seattle has experienced a boom in new engineering and development offices from Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Facebook, Zynga, Splunk and eBay. Now, the Portland area is getting in on the action. Mike Rogoway of The Oregonian reports that Salesforce.com has chosen the Rose City for a new office, with plans to hire hundreds… Read More…

Four minutes on the train with … Portland startup guru Rick Turoczy of PIE

Rick Turoczy on board the train to B.C.

Editor’s note: Team GeekWire participated in the Geeks on a Train voyage between Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. Tuesday night as part of the GROW conference, taking place this week in Vancouver. We chatted with folks along the way for short four minute interviews, talking about a variety of tech topics. In this installment, we… Read More…

From Seattle to Portland, BoltBus feels like a beta

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I was only ten minutes into my BoltBus trip to Portland for the annual convention of the National Puzzlers’ League (the world’s oldest puzzling organization) when I was pretty sure I didn’t want to ride BoltBus again. I’m disappointed because I’d really been looking forward to the ride, hoping it would be a good way… Read More…

Vizify turns your ‘ugly’ social media pages into a hip presence

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The way Vizify CEO Todd Silverstein sees it, social media pages are “cluttered, ugly and noisy.” In other words, the layout and design of most pages just don’t make you look good. Vizify today is setting out to change that, launching a new service that sucks in your profile pages from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and… Read More…

Cloudability raises $8.7M to ID spikes in cloud spending

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The Foundry Group has led an $8.7 million series A financing round in Cloudability, a Portland upstart that helps companies get a better handle on how much they are spending across various cloud computing services. Launched last November, the free service is now used by over 3,000 people, including customers such as OpenSesame, Slideshare and… Read More…

Dream of the 90s is alive in Portland: Cvent buys mobile app maker CrowdCompass

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CrowdCompass, a Portland startup whose mobile apps are used to power events, including the 2012 Seattle Science Festival and the Lions Club 95th International Convention, has been acquired for $10 million by Mclean, Virginia-based Cvent. The acquisition follows Cvent’s recent purchase of Seed Labs, which develops apps for concerts, festivals and sporting events. Founded in 2009… Read More…

Get your democracy on: Chirpify launches campaign donations via Twitter

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Portland-based Chirpify is helping this year’s presidential candidates raise funds by allowing users to donate to either Obama or Romney’s campaigns via Twitter. The Twitter-based commerce platform will allow users to give money to either candidate via its new in-stream Twitter donation platform, launching today. Chirpify also reports that at least 25 other U.S. senators… Read More…

Meet the 9 startup grads from the Portland Seed Fund

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I don’t get as much time as I’d like to peruse the Portland startup scene. But there’s a heck of a lot of interesting stuff happening along the Willamette, and as you can well imagine I’m not talking about the Timbers. I’ll stack up Seattle’s soccer and startup prowess against Portland’s any day. But it’s worth… Read More…

As sales soar, Elemental raises $13M to help big media deliver video to multiple screens

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Elemental Technologies CEO Sam Blackman wasn’t looking for cash. After all, more than half of the money from the company’s last round is still parked in the bank. But when you’ve got a business that’s nearly tripling revenues and operating in the super hot arena of mobile video processing, venture capitalists have the tendency to hover…. Read More…

Chirpify lands $1.3 million to sell music and concert tickets through Twitter

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Twitter is great for sharing content. But when it comes to actually conducting commerce, the fast-growing social networking service leaves something to be desired. Portland’s Chirpify wants to solve that problem, and it just landed $1.3 million in a first round of funding from a group of angel investors that includes BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu;… Read More…