Moving Forward in Oregon
As you might expect, all thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own and don't reflect any position of my employer and company, Urban Airship.
It's been about sixteen months since four of us met at Bailey's Taproom and decided to go forward with Urban Airship. We had no runway and no idea if what we were going to do was going to work. We've proven the business, have hit a lot of major milestones, talk to an absurd number of mobile devices, are making some amazing technology, and have built an incredible team. All this happened during one of the worst economic depressions.
One of my cofounders Adam and myself had been laid off. We were on unemployment, which was enough to live on, but required us to be constantly looking for jobs. One of our friends, Jason, then told us about a program that's administered by the state called the Self Employment Assistance Program. The program is simple: you receive your unemployment benefits but, instead of job seeking, you work on starting your business.
Without this program, Urban Airship would in no way be where we're at now. It allowed us to focus full time on getting up and running. Without it, in those early days we would have had to do consulting or other distractions just to keep personally afloat. The business was doing great, and when the SEA ended after six months, we were able to keep going. It was, however, crucial in those early days that we focus everything we had on the company. Without the assistance of the SEA, we could not have done that.
After bootstrapping and proving the business, we received funding from True Ventures in February. We immediately started hiring. We're up to around fifteen people now and looking for more.
We're bringing money into Oregon. We're bringing jobs to Oregon. And we couldn't have done it without the SEA. It's an incredible resource and if you're unemployed and thinking about starting something new, I strongly recommend taking a look at it. Not every state does it, but yours might. I'm incredibly grateful that Oregon does.
This is where I start ranting about Oregon and politics.
Working in Oregon has a lot of advantages. Great culture, low cost living, a thriving creative environment and astonishing natural beauty all together in one place? Yes please. Oregon still has issues, however. We have lots of unemployment and people are looking at cutting basic services, like education, to help the state's financial issues. This concerns me greatly. If people are leaving because they can't find jobs, or because the state can't provide good enough education, then our talent pool is threatened and it becomes more and more difficult to grow successfully.
As a cofounder of a growing small business that's bringing jobs into Oregon, the choice is clear. We need strong leaders. We need a strong business environment and a healthy habitat for growing companies, like ours. We need to be able to easily bring in jobs, and employees, into the state, and we need to encourage more entrepreneurship and help get more small businesses off the ground. That's why I'm voting for John Kitzhaber, and why I'm encouraging you to take a look as well. Check out his closing statement from the recent debate, as it expresses perfectly why I think he's the right choice:
There's no question for me that John Kitzhaber should be our next governor. I believe he's the candidate with the experience and values to help businesses like ours get off the ground and thrive.
In the video above, Kitzhaber says that Oregon's best days are still ahead. It's a sentiment that I strongly agree with, and I feel the same way about the company I helped start. I hope you'll join me this November in helping make Oregon become an even better place to start, and grow, a company.