The Oregon Entrepreneurs Network has selected thirteen “Rogues and Renegades” (aka entrepreneurs) for the 15^th Annual OEN Tom Holce Awards for Entrepreneurial Achievement. Finalists and award winners will be recognized during the event at the Oregon Convention Center on September 18, 2008.

This year’s event theme “Rogues and Renegades” honors the independent spirit of Oregon’s entrepreneurs.

Congratulations to the ten companies and three individuals selected as the finalists for the following categories for the 15^th Annual OEN Tom Holce Awards for Entrepreneurial Achievement!

Development Category

AboutUs, Inc.

Portland, Oregon

CEO: Ray King

AboutUs–Discover, Research and Discuss the Web. AboutUs is a customizable directory of the web that you can participate in. AboutUs offers searchers current and comprehensive website data. Base records are generated algorithmically, wiki and social media technology empowers users to improve it, and a semantic overlay will drive significantly deeper meaning into the raw content. Because AboutUs describes all websites, its potential market is very large. Display advertising and lead generation are anticipated to be our primary sources of revenue. Overall Internet advertising in 2007 was a $21 billion industry which is growing by 26% a year.

ClearEdge Power

Portland, Oregon

CEO: Jon Slangerup

ClearEdge Power is a pioneer and leading provider of ultra-clean and efficient on-site energy generation systems. We manufacture and market the highly efficient CE5, a compact power and heat energy system for use in residential and small commercial buildings. Our corporate headquarters are located in Hillsboro, Oregon with sales offices in northern and southern California. Today, we are positioned at the center of clean energy technology innovation and market adoption and possess extensive knowledge of fuel cells, fuel processing and system integration. We employ a core team of engineers, scientists and veteran business executives who bring world-class experience and expertise to address growing energy demands with new clean technology solutions.

Jama Software

Portland, Oregon

CEO: Eric Winquist

Jama Software helps customers transform raw ideas into innovative products. Self-funded by an entrepreneurial team, Jama has created a simple and elegant application called Contour that delights customers and challenges larger vendors as the innovative newcomer within a $9 billion market. We will grow to over 100 customers this year. Culturally, we strive to build a successful business that makes a positive impact. We tie our marketing to charitable causes, 40% of our staff bikes to work and half of our leadership staff has had a baby in the past six months.

Plas2Fuel Corporation

Chris Ulum

Kelso, WA

Plas2Fuel Corporation is a clean technology company that has developed a unique, patent-pending system which recycles mixed waste plastic into sweet, synthetic crude oil. The company provides a full set of services, including turn-key operations, for clients in the industrial and municipal plastic recycling markets. Plas2Fuel’s total available market, just in the United States, is over 100 billion pounds of plastic, which yields over 250 million barrels of oil per year using our system. The company’s technology addresses a vexing environmental problem while creating clean, sustainable, local energy at extremely attractive profit margins.

Growth Category

Hemcon Medical Technologies, Inc.

Portland, Oregon

John W. Morgan

HemCon Medical Technologies, Inc. is a manufacturer of unique, premium medical devices that leverage both proprietary technology and a demonstrated skill set in research and development. The company’s to-date success is focused in the commercialization of chitosan-based products. With large scale manufacturing capabilities and a deep knowledge base in the complex area of lyophilization, HemCon will continue to rigorously deliver products into qualified markets where the company can offer significant, demonstrable improvements to the current standard of care.

nLight Corporation

Vancouver, WA

Scott Keeney

nLIGHT is a privately held company established in 2000 that develops and manufactures photonics modules for industrial, defense, and medical applications. With state-of-the-art manufacturing in over 100,000 sq. ft. of facilities in Vancouver, WA, Hillsboro, OR, Lohja, Finland and Shanghai, China, nLIGHT is a leader in key growth markets in photonics. nLIGHT has grown an average of 70% per year for the past five years and has been named the fastest growing technology company in the Pacific Northwest in Deloitte and Touche’s Rising Star category in 2005, 2006 and 2007, three years in a row.

Timbercon

Lake Oswego, OR

Eric Weslow

Timbercon, Inc. is a fiber optic products manufacturing company providing an array of connectivity solutions to the telecommunications, networking, data storage, military, medical, industrial and broadcast industries. Product lines include: pre-terminated cable assemblies, high density interconnects, ruggedized loopbacks, distribution cables, fiber management modules, coupler/splitters and polarization maintaining assemblies. In addition to optical test products, standard fiber optic patch cords and attenuated test cables, Timbercon has pioneered multiple new proprietary products, many of which are now considered to be an industry benchmark.

Working Capital Category

ID Experts

Beaverton, OR

John Davidson

ID Experts provides identity theft protection services for individuals, corporations and the public sector. Unlike other identity theft protection service providers that rely solely on credit monitoring, ID Experts takes a uniquely personal approach to identity protection—whether it’s a single individual or family, or up to the largest corporations, government agencies and universities, ID Experts ensures each and every individual receives protection and recovery assistance. Today, ID Experts protects more than 3 million individuals nationwide from identity theft. These customers benefit from ID Experts’ team of experienced identity recovery advocates who have a 100 percent success rate in restoring victims’ identities to pre-theft status.

Pop Art, Inc.

Portland, Oregon

Steve Rosenbaum

Pop Art is a full-service interactive solutions agency. We help companies use the online world to tell their brand story and to engage their customers. Our customers are some of the world's leading companies; these are companies who have the desire to use the web as a competitive advantage — not only as a marketing channel, but also as an operations platform and social network.

PV Powered

Bend, Oregon

Gregg Patterson

Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Bend, Oregon, PV Powered is a remarkable Oregon success story. The company has brought more than 20 UL listed solar power electronics products to market and installed more than 8,000 residential systems across the US. In the last 16 months under the leadership of a new CEO and senior management team, the company has doubled the employee base to more than 55, secured further investments from a loyal group of angel investors, created a compelling and highly disruptive business plan and is preparing to move from the current 13,500 square foot facility to over 100,000 square feet. The company is poised to close its first institutional round, targeting $15M of growth capital to enter the rapidly growing commercial solar market.

Individual Category

Ray King, AboutUs.org

Susan Sokol Blosser, Sokol Blosser

Doug Fieldhouse, Vesta

Finding the right agency partners to help you grow your business is always a little art, a little science. Peter Weiss, from Creative Global Ideas offers up some of the methodologies he espouses as he advises his clients when selecting the agency that's right for them:

"As part of my consulting practice, Creative Global Ideas, I help my clients find the right agency partners to carry out their needs. The six key factors I look for are:

1. Creativity

2. The Response or Proposal

3. The Team

4. Costs

5. Timing

6. Gut Feeling

I weigh each of these factors equally in terms of importance and rate them on a scale of one to five. I usually include one or two company representatives in the search and always make sure that each agency gets a fair and detailed briefing. Let me be more specific on what to look for:

I. Creativity

1. What is their depth? Do they have the ability to develop outstanding creative all the way from the website to the advertising to the collateral? These days all elements of the marketing communications mix must tie together.
2. How flexible are they? Can they solve a variety of challenges or are they just specialists in one area or for one client? Better Creative people tend to work at shops where they are challenged on many levels. Plus, you want the benefit of a wide range of thinking applied to your business, not just one-dimensional, formulaic ideas.
3. What is their expertise? How much experience do they have in the disciplines you need done? For example, not all agencies can develop great websites and not all interactive agencies do great brochures. You can divide the tasks but set your objectives and expectations upfront. Yes, there are great agencies that do it all.
4. How global are they? Do you need expertise beyond Beaverton or the US for that matter? Determine what work and what resources the agency has in the markets you are and will be doing business in. These days, great ideas need to be global given the power of digital marketing.

II. Proposal or Response to Your Questions

1. What is the quality of their response? How much effort was put into the proposal and how professional is it? Judge the output you get as an example of the work you will get. Do you like the creative effort and how they packaged it? I like to see creativity in everything the agency does. They should at least represent themselves well.
2. Did they address the questions? Did you get straight and direct answers to your questions or are they just telling you what they want to say? This shows how well the agency can listen to what you want. Sometimes agencies will just repurpose an existing document and slice it up to answer the questions without really addressing the content you want to know about. To me, this is a basic but often overlooked section.
3. What is the extent of their expertise? Make sure the proposal or response shows competence in the areas important to you. Great examples and work is credible proof for competency.

III. People

A. Who are the people who will be working on your business? Ask for this upfront. Don’t think the agency President will be as involved in your business after the meeting as they are in the pitch process. Does the team have the necessary capability to lead your business and what percentage of time will they spend on your business? You need to be fair but also need to understand what you will be get. Also find out how accessible senior management will be to you after the meeting.

IV. Costs

A.What are the costs involved? Make sure these are within your budget but expect good quality to have a fair cost. Don’t just select an agency based on the lowest costs but at the same time compare them and understand what you are getting. I have found some great values from agencies that provide outstanding quality work at the lowest prices.

V. Timing

A. How long will the deliverables take? Make sure this fits your needs and is time well spent. Good quality work does take time but at the same time you have timetables that need to be met too. Really make sure that the timing is reasonable and will be delivered. Sometimes agencies promise the moon and stars but then don’t deliver. Dig deep and understand the specifics, making sure corners are not being cut, like time needed for review and revisions.

VI. Gut Feeling

A. What does your gut tell you? Who do you see working with and who do you not. Working relationships and your feelings are critical. Don’t choose an agency you can’t respect and won’t enjoy working with. This could be a good tiebreaker if you are stuck.

I hope this helps and by the way, be fair and don’t ask agencies to give you creative ideas for nothing. Try to evaluate agencies based on the above using their past experience and how they would manage your business and projects. It’s fine to get a proposal of how they will work for you and what they will do. If do you need to judge them on the specific creative ideas, agree on fair compensation upfront."

Well said, Peter! A great client/agency relationship can be a HUGE boost to business - when you're ready to make the commitment to a RELATIONSHIP.

Please pardon the delay on the marketing tip toolbox series. Blog export/import issues impacted us but we have it worked out now. So without further ado...

The second in our series of voices from the marketing committee for OEN, here is Leena Faust, client advocate for Chockstone, and a list of cool things she likes online:

"I subscribe to Lifehacker which has an amazing amount of tools and fun, interesting things across the internet – I just downloaded Stylish and now my Google page is dark blue which reduces the glare since I sit next to a window with no blinds. The How-To Geek helps me with Microsoft 2007 (grrr) and other common applications. And when I did a lot of SEO stuff, I subscribed to the Online Marketing Blog.

There is also a site aggregator that I have found useful, check out all the sites under Social Media."

Cheers, and happy hunting!