Business as Usual: Tech Association of Oregon

Transcription: 

Okay, good afternoon, everyone. Audrey Russo here president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council always happy to be here. And today is no exception, really excited to have a conversation with my guest and a colleague. And I'll introduce Skip Newbery in just a moment. Thank you go out to Huntington bank for, for their belief in us right at the onset of COVID. And always through every experiment that we have. And they've been good partners through the entire pandemic and beyond. So if you don't know them, get to know them. also want to give a shout out to Jonathan kersting. He's joining us as always, he's Vice President of Marketing and media, and storytelling. And he will be he's joining us to make sure that we're paying attention to the chat and facilitating a conversation, we've muted you. And we've done that on purpose. And I will apologize in advance because of my dogs. And hopefully, they won't misbehave today. And we also are using this as an opportunity not to share your your wares and sell your services, but really just as an opportunity to do a dive with our guests. So we love Portland. Portland loves Pittsburgh, there's lots of commonalities in both of the cities, and there's lots of differences. So the only way that we can be prosperous in Pittsburgh is to have relationships outside of Pittsburgh, because that's what matters. And that's what makes it work. The Technology Association of Oregon is what who we are going to be talking to the CEO, and that skip Newbery who I've known for a few years. And he's been doing some tremendous work in Portland. And I think it's important for us to know what's happening outside of Pittsburgh. So I'm going to introduce skip Newbery friend and colleague and someone who's stirring up good trouble in the state of Oregon, and based out of Portland. So I want to thank you for taking the time with us today. And hopefully, some of our people who are listening will see that the importance of building these kinds of relationships. So what would be really great is for you to talk about skip, sort of like who has skipped the man and then we're going to, how did you get into this job? How did you get to Portland, and let's talk about a little bit, we'll talk a little bit about techna. And just sort of the relationships there as well. So let's talk about skip the man.

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. And always enjoy opportunities to kind of share best practices and talk about what's going on in our respective regions. I'll also, you know, take take note of your, your requirement that I not pitch any of your members on how great it is to be in Portland, Oregon, so so no selling of our wares. Or Oh, you

can you're allowed. Yeah, let's see how good you are. All right. You are.

Yeah, so a little bit about about me. Let's see, I'm originally from the northeast. So from Connecticut, and in Boston, spent some time there early. My career was originally an attorney did corporate and IP work? Yeah, recovering attorney, shocking.

I've never heard that, okay.

And then ended up with a company that was entering kind of a growth stage after an early startup run. And they needed some corporate upkeep and some cleanup. And we ended up launching a company that we spun out, I ended up running that that brought me West, as did my current wife, who was from Bend, Oregon. And we met at law school,

huh?

Yeah, so she gave me the ultimatum. And that coincided with an opportunity to open a bay area office. So I convinced the team in Boston, I could do it from Portland. And that was in 2005, that I made the trip out and was the first one of those people who was traveling a ton for work. And never really spent a lot of time in Portland the first couple years, and then I started to look around and I was like, wow, this place has a lot of really interesting raw materials of what you consider to be a tech hub. And, and couldn't help but observing that, you know, the right kind of dots being connected, the place could really kind of explode in a good way. And, and so I had an opportunity after getting involved in a couple different startups and kind of going through the ups and downs of those some more successful than others had a chance to join the City of Portland, where I was serving as an economic development advisor to the mayor. This was in Oh 811 so during the last recession, and had a chance to contribute to the development of software and tech strategy for the region. And during that time, helped launch the Portland Seed Fund, which was a public private seed funds. One of the first of its kind in terms of that structure in the US did some stuff around open data. Following on data.gov, during the Obama administration, and then also some work around procurement reform, and looking at some different ways to kind of incentivize open source software development within the city, along those lines. And so that got me on the radar of what was then the software association of Oregon. And the board of directors said, Hey, would you ever consider a nonprofit turnaround? I said, No, at first zero nonprofit experience. And eventually I said, Yes. And the rest is history. That was almost nine years ago. So I've been doing this work ever since.

That's great. So you also were the past chair of techna? Can you just talk about that? so people know how we all have that kind of relationship with this technical organization?

Yes. So technology councils in North America. It's an international group that kind of knits together all the regional independent tech associations across the US and Canada. And it's a great way for us to kind of share best practices, do common projects collaborate on policy. And I know that when I first took this job, I was given advice from my counterpart in Seattle at the time, who said, this is a weird occupation. It's unlike anything you've ever done. And there's a lot of great people doing this. So no, no sense reinventing the wheel. join this organization, learn what people who have come before you are doing, and take their ideas, and then adopt them for your own market. So Tech has been really great over the years, I think it's got a ton of upside and unrealized potential still, especially as we think about multi state policy issues and collaboration there. And a lot of politics being grassroots and local. techno really serves the local regions and exists to strengthen them. And there's some real power in that model.

That's great. No, you did a really good job sort of pulling that together. So thank you for your leadership over and above just doing your daily work. And so let's, let's talk about Portland, let's talk about the tech scene in Portland, give us some of the snapshots of you know, however you slice the data, or however you want to talk about it.

Yeah, yeah. So we're, we're much smaller than Seattle, but growing. And that's been true for the last I'd say decade or so. I'm very much a b2b SaaS software hub. In more recent years, it used to be that we were known as silicon forest, mainly because of the presence of Intel one of the largest facilities in the world there about 22,000 employees. And then of course, their entire supplier network, mainly based around semiconductors and devices. And then in the I would say, last probably 15 years, it shifted to more embedded software, open source software, then mobile took off. And then now we've got a lot of different types of diversity as a relates to software less so on the consumer side, more so b2b. And, you know, you have New Relic, you know, with their engineering headquarters there. And navex Global, very large ethics compliance software company, a lot of these companies are not like national brands that you you know, have, but they're quite large and, and kind of under the radar. And then we have a lot of startups. So there's a lot of dynamism in the market. One criticism is that we have a lot of early stage companies get acquired too early. But what that has resulted in in at least the last eight years or so is a lot more investment from larger companies that have served as go to market partners for those startups that are now pumping more resources into these RND hubs that exists in the areas we have a lot of product, a lot of a lot of r&d and engineering, which has been an element of resilience that we've enjoyed in this latest downturn, because people are investing in product and doubling down on that during the COVID. situation.

Right. And so what about health care? What about innovation in healthcare? Are you seeing that because most cities now that's their number one employer? So what are you seeing there? Yeah,

I would say that, in terms of the healthcare sector, we take a broad view of it. And so we actually look at like the fact that Nike is headquartered there, and Adidas North America and the athletic and outdoor industry. And a lot of what they're focused on is preventative health and wellness. And then we have a lot of hospital systems that are quite large. And so we do a lot of work with their product and innovation and digital teams there because a lot of their focus is really around sort of the consumerization of health care, if you will, and how do you engage consumers on a day to day basis? Well, Nike and Adidas do that really well. And so there's this cross pollination and convergence happening in the local market, and we're seeing a ton of startup activity around digital health companies. There's also Oregon Health and Science University. Which is really benefited from investments from Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, as well as bird oil, the founder of Columbia Sportswear focused on cancer research. And so it's created a whole set of sort of big data related companies AI and ml on the software side of things. So that's an area that's like our I think it's our number two employer healthcare is outside of the public sector in the state. And that's, that's a growth area for us for sure.

And so, you know, it's interesting, because Pittsburgh, we have some similarities, because we are mostly b2b. And we do a lot of amazing work that's not necessarily sexy, or namebrand. We've had a proliferation of autonomy and robots, which I don't know, because that's in Portland or not, but we definitely have a deep footprint there. Are you seeing with the overly particularly over these last nine months? Are you seeing movement of people that are moving to Portland in the same pattern, that that has been occurring over the last five

years, some some changes there. So historically, we've been sort of a net importer of highly educated people from all over the rest of the US. And we don't have a tier one research university that we enjoy, we have some smaller ones, some kind of punch above their weight and narrow areas like Oregon, Oregon State University is really good and robotics, but small by comparison to anything that Pittsburgh is doing. And, and so what we're seeing is, there's been a bit of a drop off some cooling, if you will, since March in interest in Portland, from some folks, in terms of it's not the same acceleration or growth year over year in terms of people moving to Portland, it's slowed a bit, it's not negative, but it's definitely slowed a bit. And I think part of that's COVID a big part of it is also the perception of Portland since protests and some of the unrest that occurred this summer.

Okay, I didn't even think about that. That's true. And so the, the what percentage, do you know what percentage of the workforce is actually working in tech or tech related? Yeah, so

it's actually a small percentage. It's it's single digits. So we're not even double digits in terms of the sort of overall employment in the state. huge contribution to GDP, though, like, massive. And so in terms of productivity, it's incredibly efficient as a sector. And we also pay a ton in taxes. Like, compared to Arizona, the tech industry in Portland pays almost double. Wow.

Okay, so. So, yeah, I mean, that's probably where the similarity stopped then, right? Not just not just the weather, etc. So sort of the, the actual demographic is very, very different. You have a lot of outdoor activities, and you've got a lot of tie to that. So I would imagine there is a proliferation of innovation going on there. And you also have some companies that are more in the newer economy, that that are that have massive presence there. So we're, we're sort of at the inverse of that, right? Because you have a lot of the older industry that sitting here too, but there still are a lot of common their commonalities in terms of the issues. One of the biggest issues that in terms of Oregon, that that the tech council works on, like in terms of advocacy and public policy, and then we can talk about, you know, the the technical role.

Yeah, so one of the biggest issues of working on the last couple years is data privacy. And I think that's pretty consistent in most states, like, like California and other states. Oregon's Attorney General's looking at ccpa out of California, the failed Washington bill, didn't quite get across the finish line last session, and trying to see timing wise, what makes the most sense. So about a week ago, she decided 2022 is when she's going to look towards some comprehensive legislation, which could allow for Washington to go first and then Oregon to follow suit and either align or improve upon it. Most states including Oregon, recognize ccpa and California has some some flaws. And so we don't want to replicate that wholesale. But in the lack of with the lack of federal guidance or legislation, I think states feel compelled politically to do something. And so we'll be also involved with a contact racing effort, smaller bill in 2021. related to data privacy, I serve on a data privacy taskforce that the ag put together about two years ago and we're continuing to be working on these two pieces of legislation. Apart from that we've been involved in some stuff this past summer. That kind of brings us a little bit far afield from where we've typically operated in terms of policy. And one area that's kind of interesting is we had a number of members in the Portland area really feel like they had had to do something relative to their employee resource groups that were black. And so with their black employees, they said, Hey, you know, we're feeling unsafe. There's a legitimate issue with respect to how police have treated us and sort of what's going on downtown with some of the protests, and even in our neighborhoods, and so the, the companies and their exacts, instead of doing a top down sort of approach to policy, what they did was they essentially said, okay, to the employee resource groups, what would you recommend we do, what position would you recommend we take, and over the course of a weekend, we ended up with about 40 or so companies kind of coming in under the to umbrella where we worked really over 48 hours to craft a series of letters to federal, state and local officials, that were capturing as much as possible the recommendations of the employee resource group, so we had to look for some areas of collaboration or sort of synergy across all the different companies groups, and then consolidate that into a letter that the companies could get behind. And remarkably came together. And so we were able to submit this letter. They called for police reform and, and it was something that I think caught a lot of elected officials somewhat by surprise, which, you know, having an industry sector step up, and the way we did, it added an unusual voice to who are primarily just the, you know, typical advocates, advocacy groups. And, and so that was, I think, an interesting sort of effort. From my standpoint, having done advocacy for a long time. Now, in this role, it was the first time I can honestly say that companies really flipped the model and looked at sort of this emerging stakeholder capitalism framework, which is that execs really need to be thinking about how they're relating to their employees, and also to their customers in the broader public. And so there's much more porousness there and much more influence that some of these groups have on decisions of the C suite.

Wow, that's and you did that all in the summer during COVID. Yep. And right after the murder of George Floyd, right, boy. So that, um, I think there's a question here from someone. Oh, it's wonderful. That bill is saying it's wonderful. Thank you. Great advocacy. So are there any other trends that you've seen? both positive and negative during COVID? Yeah,

I would say that one thing we've seen is, you know, apart from the protests, there have been other examples of kind of government either not doing enough or kind of doing the wrong thing, quote, unquote, as it relates to cultivating a more of a business friendly environments here in the state, I wouldn't say that Oregon necessarily has a reputation elsewhere in the country is like the business friendliest place, right. To begin with. And so what we've seen now is that with COVID, there's been in some parts some more attention to economic development issues, and how do we come come out of this with a strong recovery. But on the other hand, you look at some of the legislation that's been passed by elected officials this year even attempted to be passed. And it shows the opposite. So we have a metro regional government that tried to pass a wage tax on businesses and then exempted itself from from its application, it was one of the first ballot measures that was actually defeated. In the last, like 1015 years, I mean, that's how bad it had to be. Usually, our ballot initiatives, no matter how crazy they are passed, and this one was, you know, handily defeated. But that was one example. And then we also had some efforts around facial recognition bans at the City of Portland level, which, you know, we ended up staying neutral on, because the idea of banning, you know, facial recognition for a short period of time, essentially a moratorium in effect, fine. That's, that's a reasonable effort, as long as we have some clear sort of guidelines around sort of what testing is going to occur in the interim. And then like how, how things could potentially be implemented, if certain criteria are met. So a lot of that wasn't defined and still needs to be defined. And I think one of the issues there was that if the main concern is how data is used, take the time to regulate how data is used, not the technology itself, because facial recognition technology is one among dozens of technologies that can be used to collect data. And that data can be used in a variety of different ways. So it was a little bit opportunistic. Not necessarily is quote unquote serious policy effort. And so there was some concern around that as well and how Portland was perceived in terms of anti tech as a result, but we're working with the city now, which is largely new city council in place to as of November to try and figure out what's the best approach forward with regard to data governance and data privacy and much more measured approach?

Yeah, that's good. That's good stuff. We, we had to work really hard here to make sure that people weren't being left behind, particularly as schools closed, and massive, we got massive attention on our food shortage, people who don't have access to food, so we really got involved early on to try to make sure that people had access to the internet, who to, etc. So I didn't know if you were struggling with similar issues. Yeah,

digital divide has come up as well. We've a great organization locally that we partner with called free geek. And I know they have chapters or variations in a variety of cities. And what they do is they they take devices from a donation standpoint, and they also train people to fix them. And and then get them into the hands of folks who need those devices, computers, etc. mobile devices. And, and that's been really helpful in terms of doing donations, and then getting those to schools or school districts that are in need. A big one has been connectivity, as well. So it's devices, it's networks, like broadband and wireless. And then it's also the training because often people haven't had to rely on the internet to the extent that, you know, they now do and COVID for government services, job opportunities, education, health. So there's also this training element. And it's it's proved to be a pretty vexing issue. I think that requires a lot more resources than elected officials anticipated.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's, let's switch for a second and talk about economic development. And for venture capital, for example, you have you talked about a proliferation of startups, and you know, in an array of areas, particularly, you know, b2b and, and, and SAS, but tell us about investment. How has that been going? Is it?

Yeah, I would say that, like, when I first started this work, we were, that was our number one issue, like, oh, Oregon, we're a flyover state was the term used, like ABCs are flying from like Silicon Valley to Seattle, and back again, and forgetting about Oregon, I would say that changed about 10 years ago, and the last five years, it's been really great for the most part. We are seeing, though, that there's been some drying up of an abundance of capital, the early stages. And so as we see this huge growth in startup activity, like since February, we had a record year at the association where we added 178 new member companies year to date. And a good portion of those were startups. And so this explosion of startup activity is awesome on the one hand, but then we're seeing it kind of converge with this trend of well, it's raining dollars in Austin and in Salt Lake, but in Portland, not so much. And so that poses a bit of an issue, especially as these companies get into 2021. And their cash starts to you know, dry up the runway is not as long. So we're watching that really closely. And series A dollars and later are generally there. We're seeing a lot of interest still from VCs and other funds around the country in Portland. But there's a little bit of a cooling. I mean, we're hearing some some conversations in recent conversations with investors that, like how business friendly is it really there? And how much does the public sector have its act together? And frankly, with an early stage company, you're putting risk capital to work? The last thing you need is more risk that's outside of your control, like, are they going to pass some other crazy piece of legislation or a tax that's going to help hurt us, you know, in recruiting talent, and that's a legitimate concern right now.

Yeah, I mean, that's fair. We're hearing that in second, what we would call second tier cities as well. Yep. And the tell us though, you have Nike and Intel, which which I'm very envious of. And just because of not just because of their work, but you know, the beetus, the b2c piece of it, what what impact do they actually have on the economy? And in terms of even investors and incubators? Yeah,

I would say that, on the one hand, and both companies have been doing quite a bit when it comes to diversifying their workforces, and this is over many years, like pre pre June and pre George Floyd. And, and so what what's interesting is their major brands, they can recruit and attract talent from all over the world. And that's been something that our region has really benefited from, is that awareness and the sexiness of those two companies, right? They can bring in people and oftentimes people are like, okay, you know, this has been fun at large Company two to three years in, I love the region want to stay on the lookout for an interesting startup or growth stage company. And so it's been a great source of talent for a lot of the emerging companies in the region. And so in a sense, it's served as in many respects, what tier one research universities do for other markets where they're bringing in talent from all over the world. Some of these larger, sexier companies have done the same for Oregon.

Right, like what we have going on, right. But people come from all over the world, but we're still at the federal level very active in terms of the immigration issues, and changes that have happened over time. And that that affects our region, as well, because people want to stay and then they can do barriers. So what are you doing to attract talent? What's your message to the world?

Yeah. So one is, we have geographic proximity, which is interesting, we're still relatively inexpensive compared to Seattle, the Bay Area, LA. So if you want to be on the west coast, it's a nice place to be. There's an abundance of quality of life amenities as well. And I think access to environmental assets has been a real boon to folks, especially during COVID. So we're still seeing a big in migration from California. And other other points in the West. Talking to our local utility CIO, he said that they're seeing a ton of new housing starts as well in the area, which is good. But it's a lot of people who are coming in as x Pat's, having either made money or working remotely for other companies, which is kind of good. But then when you think about, you know, from an economic development strategy standpoint, for a long time companies have been investing where the talent is concentrating, and where the talent is going to just great, but I think in this remote work environment, as more companies can hire people and leave them wherever they are, what does that mean for an economic development strategy for a region? I think it opens a lot of interesting questions.

And and that's what we grapple with now. I mean, we've we've had our growth and our surge and our GDP contribution in terms of tech as large as well as the as the number of jobs, but now is how do you make it a destination where people really want to live, and Portland has access to a lot of beautiful amenities and a lot of outdoor culture. So one would think that that would be attractive so I'm always interested in trying to understand what a place like Portland is actually doing. Yeah,

I mean, really, it's it's it's working in partnership with our travel agencies to promote the area and the quality of life. And now our our challenges and association is how do we promote kind of the business successes alongside that to get them as more well known, like zoom infos IPO in the region? This summer was huge for us. It was a really, really great sort of marker if you will, but Bend Oregon is booming right now. And it's becoming this like new boulder with people coming in from all over, especially California, though. Wow.

Yeah. Beautiful. They're beautiful. They're so yeah. And Bill Fraser saying he just talked to someone in Bend because the people emigrating there Zoomers, that's because the way that I look at our relationship scamp is that there are people in Pittsburgh who probably want to reach out to customers that are in Portland, and, or in anywhere in Oregon. And I would encourage anyone to look at the, you know, the association that skip leads, because it's all of Oregon. It's not just Portland, even though its base there, and see if there are ways that we could leverage, you know, those relationships. They're a membership organization just like us, but they're partners. And they're, they're very committed to building the ecosystem. And you've been a great leader, skip when it comes to your role at Tech month, and at the national level, and the issues that address all of us at the federal level, because we can't forget that.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And you know, you were one of the first people that I met early on that your wisdom. Remember, we had a walk at one of the SEO retreats where you're like, here's everything you need to know. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, I probably would say something a little different these days. Right. Now, it's good to see your face. You know, I love Portland. I think that you know, COVID has definitely given Portland some different kind of exposure. But, you know, we're all in this in many ways together, and the talent issues that you face or talent issues that we face as well. And people come in pairs as you well know. So sometimes it's even trickier to figure that stuff out. But we both Live in beautiful regions of the world. And there's lots to do. So my hat's off if anyone wants to reach out to skip, he's really easy to find. And, you know, we put his website up out there. And hopefully we can figure out some ways that we can continue to collaborate. It's not that far, even though it seems like it is. I don't even think we did. We taught them to we ever have a direct flight to Portland? Yeah, like to Seattle? Seattle. Right? We took it. It was fun. And you took it

to Portland hang out with you. That would be awesome.

Oh, we need to work on that direct flight.

How far is the drive to Portland from Seattle?

It's about three hours.

It's about three hours. It's a three hour drive. Okay. 3535

minute flight.

Right. But I mean, it's an it's a nice, easy three hour drive. And then where else are close to bend? And where else Vancouver?

Yeah. And even the Bay Area. I mean, a lot of people live in Portland and commute to the Bay Area. It's about an hour and 25 minute flight.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's Yeah, someone else is saying people in western New York call folks who visit there from Pittsburgh. MACC ears. Do you know what that means? Jonathan? What was that? Because Berger say we come up here.

I

am amazed. Thank you so much for that wisdom, skep. I hope you stay safe as Portland shut down for us. Yes,

we're in a four, four week. Pause right now.

You're at a four week pause. So that means you will be safe and your people are working remotely and hopefully you'll have a break for Thanksgiving.

Yes. And Happy Thanksgiving to everyone on this call in Pittsburgh as well. Okay.

Well, thank you. It was great seeing you skip.

Likewise, everyone.

We won't be back until Monday. We're taking Tuesday.

Come back with city

wrap on Tuesday. We're taking a long break everyone. This is the longest we've ever had. So thanks for everyone for joining us. Thank you Skip Newberry again, who joined us from Portland and everyone stay safe. stay far away. And just realize one day we will see light at the end of this. So thanks again. Take care you guys

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