By Oregon Small Business Association

Businessweek wrote about Portland’s innovative idea to attract new talent. The CEOs of 11 of Portland’s startup tech companies have launched a novel and promising venture: joining forces to recruit new talent into the city instead of poaching software engineers from each other. To kick off the campaign, the group filmed a video called TechTown Portland, a high-speed tour of their offices and employee amenities. The film, viewed on Vimeo, is shown at corporate recruiting events. Each company contributed $2000 and the Portland Development Commission gave $18,000 and facilitated the shoot. The coalition plans to create an online shared job board and may also host recruiting events. The TechTown companies had 110 openings for technical positions as of early June.

New tech companies are not the only ones who appreciate the Portland scene. Mozilla, New Relic and Acquia have signed leases for bigger offices this past year. Salesforce.com and Oracle have pledged the creation of 335 new jobs in exchange for state subsidies. Venture capitalists have taken notice of Oregon as well. For the first time since 1993, Oregon garnered more investment capital than Washington, receiving $146 million in the 1st quarter, 2013 compared with $100 million for our neighbor to the north.