There’s been a lot written about Portland’s ability to lure talented folks from all over the country. Richard Florida is probably the best known author on this subject, and he’s given our fair city high marks in terms of its ability to attract these innovative people – he dubs them the Creative Class – to the shores of the Willamette River. Portland also happens to have relatively affordable housing, great public transit and delicious local food. These socio-geographical advantages make Portland a great place to start a company.

Along these lines, one of the great aspects of working at a startup (well, a funded startup anyway) is that you get to hire people you like to work with. But, this benefit is a double-edged sword: not only do these colleagues have to be a pleasure to work with in a high-pressure, results-oriented environment, they also need to be far more productive than the average worker. A startup is in the unique position of spending significant investor capital to build a product that competes with well-established firms (with a much lower cost of capital!). The only way that the formula works is if the employee population far out-produces larger companies: making the right decisions faster, anticipating market directions sooner, and executing on product development plans on time. There is not much margin for error and finding these kinds of people takes an extraordinary amount of searching.