To all you entrepreneurs who stuck your neck out, we salute you- three minutes is brutal but you all handled it well. Those of you who are applying for Portland Seed Fund: Don’t forget our Jan. 9 2012 deadline (click Apply). Earlier applications have advantage, so don’t delay!

First up:
Tues. Dec. 6, 4:30-6:30pm
PSU Business Accelerator (PSBA)\
First Floor
2828 SW Corbett Ave. (corner of SW Corbett and Meade)
Portland, 97201

Use these:

http://psba.pdx.edu/drivingdirections

We will be scheduling several other appearances around town to meet you in the next few weeks. Watch the blog for details.

Held in Portland, Oregon, today’s Demo Day gives each company the chance to pitch to a broad field of angel investors and venture capitalists.  Each company received an initial $25,000 investment from the Fund, with an option for this amount to grow.  Demo Day will be held at Ziba Design and is open to VCs and angel investors to hear pitches from the fund companies.

Each company gained tremendous traction in just 90 days. Not only from the strong mentors that were brought in, but from each other. The climate was ripe in Portland to launch mentor-led investing.  This was an experienced bunch. It was so much fun to watch them feeding off of each other, giving not only positive feedback, but tough feedback too. We look forward to watching them all succeed.

These hot new startup technology companies (and one high-tech gear company) include:

4-Tell is unique in that it launched in 2009 and is experiencing impressive growth already, but still looking for additional funding, as well as mentoring in order to grow this e-commerce recommendation software even further. With a functionality that is Amazon.com-esque, with “people who bought this also bought…” its target market is storefronts that are far smaller than Amazon. They are helping companies boost their e-commerce sales by steering customers to products they might like in addition to what they set out to buy. 4-Tell’s business customers report sales increases of 10 to 25 percent by using the constantly updated software.  With almost 100 business customers so far, 4-Tell growing 25 percent month over month and having trouble handling all the demand. 4-Tell won $120,000 at the Gorge Angel Investors Network Competition last year, and has received generous angel funding, in addition to the money from the Portland Seed Fund.

Audioname, headed by entrepreneur Sheetal Dube, enables people to record their name in their own voice and add it to their email signature and social profiles. An interesting point is that there are 7 billion people on the planet with names, and this will help them learn how to pronounce each others name and build better relationships. It not only will help bridge cultural differences, but also provide high value to direct marketers, sales professionals and anyone who needs to pronounce an unfamiliar name. The concept had immediate success in April 2011 when Audioname won the top prize at Portland’s start-up weekend. After that, Sheetal quit her job, and started pursuing Audioname full-time. Audioname also recently won a $10k grant for the concept stage category at the Bend Venture Conference.

Comic Rocket mixes Portland’s love of technology and comics. Founders Tim Shields and Andy Grossberg will soon be launching the next generation digital reader for back-issue comic books with plans to dramatically increase comic readership.  Starting as an interactive Facebook App, users will not only read new and old comics online, but will see what their friends like and receive customized recommendations. Comic Rocket leverages deep experience in the comics space with over 30+ years in the comic book and gaming industries.

Geoloqi  co-founders Amber Case and Aaron Parecki have a shared obsession for location tracking. Their cutting-edge product offers an API and mobile applications that lets developers easily build location-based apps and bring large datasets to life. Users can choose to subscribe to apps built on the platform such as privately sharing their location with loved ones or sending location-based reminders. Still in beta, the product just launched a Wikipedia layer that, when turned on, will send push notifications to your phone about notable Wikipedia articles around you. Geoloqi raised $300,000 from local Portland investors, in addition to the $25,000 they received from Portland Seed Fund.

Hively, launched by technology veterans, Jason Lander and Ross Barbieri, Hively connects businesses with their customers by helping them gather ongoing, real time customer feedback in a fun and engaging way. Hively is finding a niche by creating a simple method for gathering and measuring customer satisfaction. Customers can rate every experience they have by simply clicking a rating option — a smiley face for good customer service and a frown for poor. Hively also includes a scoring and employee ranking system in order to reward teams for providing excellent customer service. The company launched in September 2011 and already has over 50 customers, in multiple industries.

Homeschool Snowboarding, the only non-tech company backed by Portland Seed Fund is run by Daniel Clancy, formerly a designer with Columbia Sportswear grew up as a surfer in Hawaii, but has has been boarding in the Pacific Northwest for over 15 years.  With co-founder Jevan Lautz, the company designs and manufactures the most breathable activewear apparel available today. Homeschool has a full-line of base layer, middle wear and outerwear made from activated carbon from coconut shells, which provides greater surface area — and thus better breathability — than any other technology.

LaunchSide  connects companies to new customers online. they solve the problem that many companies, especially innovative ones, really struggle with — how to be “found” when customers don’t know to search for you yet.  Initially focused on helping find early beta users, they are now moving into offering services for companies struggling with the transition form early adopters to mass market users. The founding team has more than 20 years combined in web-based customer acquisition applications.

Vizify, co-founded by Todd Silverstein, Jeff Cutler-Stamm and Eli Tucker, previously all with Monsoon, helps you create a great online impression by building a highly visual and interactive profile of you using the fragments of your life contained in the online services you already use such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. Vizify has been simultaneously participating in both the Portland Seed Fund and TechStars (Seattle).

Portland is a great place to start and grow a company – the talent, the money available, the people invested in growing the entrepreneurial ecosystem. It has been interesting to see with open source, the cloud, application development, etc., that it takes far less money to do far more. We can’t wait to watch these eight companies succeed. We’re proud of each and every one of them!

– Angela Jackson and Jim Huston, Co-managers of Portland Seed Fund

But on Aristotle’s view, the lives of individual human beings are invariably linked together in a social context. In the Peri PoliV (Politics) he speculated about the origins of the state, described and assessed the relative merits of various types of government, and listed the obligations of the individual citizen. He may also have been the author of a model PoliteiaV Aqhnawn (Constitution of Athens), in which the abstract notion of constitutional government is applied to the concrete life of a particular society.

384—322 , Greek philosopher, b. Stagira. He is sometimes called the Stagirite.

Aristotle’s father, Nicomachus, was a noted physician. Aristotle studied (367—347 ) under Plato at the Academy and there wrote many dialogues that were praised for their eloquence. Only fragments of these dialogues are extant. He tutored (342—c.339 ) Alexander the Great at the Macedonian court, left to live in Stagira, and then returned to Athens. In 335 he opened a school in the Lyceum; some distinguished members of the Academy followed him. His practice of lecturing in the Lyceum’s portico, or covered walking place (peripatos), gave his school the name Peripatetic. During the anti-Macedonian agitation after Alexander’s death, Aristotle fled in 323 to Chalcis, where he died.

Aristotle’s extant writings consist largely of his written versions of his lectures; some passages appear to be interpolations of notes made by his students; the texts were edited and given their present form by Andronicus of Rhodes in the 1st cent. Chief among them are the Organum, consisting of six treatises on logic; Physics; Metaphysics; De Anima [on the soul]; Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics; De Poetica [poetics]; Rhetoric; and a series of works on biology and physics. In the late 19th cent. his Constitution of Athens, an account of Athenian government, was found.

By 335 BC he had returned to Athens, establishing his own school there known as the Lyceum. Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stageira, who bore him a son whom he named after his father, Nicomachus. According to the Suda, he also had an eromenos, Palaephatus of Abydus.

It is during this period in Athens from 335 to 323 BC when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his works. Aristotle wrote many dialogues, only fragments of which survived. The works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for widespread publication, as they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students. His most important treatises include Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, De Anima (On the Soul) and Poetics.

Aristotle not only studied almost every subject possible at the time, but made significant contributions to most of them. In physical science, Aristotle studied anatomy, astronomy, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology. In philosophy, he wrote on aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, economics, psychology, rhetoric and theology. He also studied education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works constitute a virtual encyclopedia of Greek knowledge. It has been suggested that Aristotle was probably the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.

Near the end of Alexander’s life, Alexander began to suspect plots against himself, and threatened Aristotle in letters. Aristotle had made no secret of his contempt for Alexander’s pretense of divinity, and the king had executed Aristotle’s grandnephew Callisthenes as a traitor. A widespread tradition in antiquity suspected Aristotle of playing a role in Alexander’s death, but there is little evidence for this.