Scott Swanson
A nearly overflow crowd turned out Thursday, April 20, for a RAIN MeetUp at Sugar Vibes donut shop.
The turnout of nearly 30 packed the dining area of the shop as Venture Catalyst Caroline Cummings explained the resources offered by RAIN, which stands for Regional Accelerator and Innovation Network.
“We had 27 people attend,” Cummings said later. “That’s the highest attendance for any MeetUps I’ve hosted in any of the other small communities in the RAIN four-county region.”
RAIN is focused on stimulating and supporting entrepreneurship in the southern Willamette Valley and the Mid-Coast region. It provides a network of investors and mentors, based in Corvallis and Eugene, to help people start successful businesses, Cummings said.
“Part of the RAIN model is that you can’t do it alone,” she said, adding that RAIN works with local universities and colleges, high schools, and those offering financial backing and expertise in bolstering entrepreneurship.
Cummings told the crowd that entrepreneurship involves both success and failure, referencing her own experience as a new arrival in Eugene from Philadelphia in 2006. She said she and another woman founded a start-up that essentially was what Pinterest is now, raising $650,000 from the community – a record amount for their type of business, she was told.
It failed in 2008 when the recession arrived, but investors were impressed enough that they pledged further support and when she started a second business, a company that offered mobile marketing for real estate agents, she was able to sell it in 13 months and today it employs 70 people.
She said three elements are necessary for a successful business: people, a program and capital.
RAIN’s regional accelerators, in Eugene and Corvallis, and pre-accelerators along the coast in Florence and Newport, provide entrepreneurial development programs to help prospective business founders learn what they need to know to be successful.
RAIN also connects entrepreneurs to mentors, coaches, guides, investors and facilitators, who can help growing companies be successful and sometimes even join the team, she said.
It also provides opportunities for “angel investors” and venture capital providers to fund business start-ups.
Participants in Thursday’s meeting included a producer of agricultural tools for small farms, a recent retiree from Boeing, a retired businesswoman with broad local and international experience, a local Realtor, a pharmaceutical products entrepreneur, an individual looking to build his landscape maintenance business, business assistance program representatives from Linn-Benton Community College and the Oregon Cascade West Council of Governments, and a variety of established local business owners.
Also present at the MeetUp were City Manager Ray Towry and City Councilwoman Susan Coleman, and state Rep. Sherrie Sprenger, who last year personally organized a similar meeting between local business people and state agencies tasked with aiding small businesses.
Towry, who was a director of the Grant County Economic Development Council in Ephrata, Wash. before coming to Sweet Home earlier this year, said RAIN can help local businesses.
Towry said entrepreneurship, along with business recruitment, comprise the two main elements of economic development.
Entrepreneurship, he said, is a “much more tangible” enterprise than trying to lure established companies to a particular location, which usually does not have a high success rate.
RAIN, he said, provides help most entrepreneurs need – knowledge, funding, low-interest loans.
“RAIN brings a lot to the table.”
He noted that the majority of the crowd at the MeetUp were not entreprenuers, but he said the people there represented available resources for local existing or would-be businesses.
“We have people who want to help businesses,” Towry said. “Our local businesses have to understand that help is out there.”