SILICON
FOREST
HUFFINGTON
11.10.13
COURTESY OF PRODUCE ROW
The existence of the competition and the dose of
entrepreneurial energy it has injected into Produce Row
underscores the aggressive role city governments are
increasingly playing in catalyzing the creation of startups
in a bid to generate quality jobs.
cate what element they were discussing, communication proved
frustrating and prone to timeconsuming misunderstanding.
Isolated in their homes, they
lacked the sorts of spontaneous
exchanges that can provoke ideas.
What was supposed to be a shared
creative endeavor often felt like a
futile exercise in logistics.
“I think back, and I won-
der how we were able to get it
done,” says Jonathan Guest, 36,
one of the four ClutchPlay LLC
founders. “It’s so much easier to
be in the same room.”
They are in the same room now
by dint of having won a new competition known as the Startup PDX
Challenge. The brainchild of the
Portland Development Commission
— a quasi-public agency chartered
to attract investment and generate jobs — the contest delivered a
year’s worth of free office space,
Produce
Row, prior to
renovation.
Clutchplay
LLC won one
year in this
office space
through the
S