Vancouver technology startup Trek Global sees a big niche in helping small businesses manage inventory and recordkeeping using cloud-based services, and it believes it has the products to fill that niche.
Trek Global’s challenge is to get the word out to prospective customers so that it can stay ahead of competition in the fast-evolving world of cloud data storage and management. It believes that nearly half of all companies will move to what is called cloud Enterprise Resource Planning software in the next five years, and hopes for huge growth from its revenue of $1.2 million in 2013.
That’s why the company, with 12 U.S. employees, including seven based in Vancouver, pitched to the Oregon Entrepreneur Network’s Angel Oregon fund for investment funding for marketing and promotions. The company is a semifinalist in the rigorous competition, and on Monday it will learn whether it will be one of three companies headed into a final round in the competition. Winners in the Angel Oregon spring contest typically receive investments of $200,000 to $300,000.
“Our product is ready to go. We just need for people to hear about us,” said Joel Stangeland, Trek Global’s CEO.
Stangeland, 45, is a Vancouver native and Evergreen High School graduate. He spent time working for various technology companies on the East Coast and California but returned to his hometown four years ago with business partner Joel Hoffman to launch Trek Global.
“I could see these was a deep need that wasn’t being served,” he said.
That market need, he says, is for cloud-based data management tools for midsize companies that are too large for QuickBook tools but too small to afford the services of companies such as SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. Trek Global offers comprehensive warehouse and distribution management for data and a flexible pricing structure.
Trek Global’s target market for those services are companies earning $2 million to $100 million a year, Stangeland said. He cites a recent analysis predicting that 45 percent of companies will be moving to cloud-based data services in the next five years, creating a $24 billion industry.
The company so far has invested $6.5 million in its launch, and it draws revenue from 16 customers, Stangeland said.
Lauren Wallace, chair of this year’s Angel Oregon competition, said the initial list of 57 applications was narrowed to 25 in a first cut in January, and then trimmed further to 12 companies following peer review. Those companies make three-minute pitches to an investor panel, which narrowed to the present five semifinalists. The companies received professional assistance in refining their pitched in advance of Monday’s event, when each will make a 10-minute pitch and respond to questions.
A winner will be chosen on April 7, and that company will be featured at the Oregon Entrepreneur Network’s Angel region Spring 2014 Showcase at the Sentinel Hotel (formerly The Governor) in Portland.
Now it its ninth year, the Angel Oregon competition typically draws most heavily from Portland and its Oregon suburbs. While Clark County has its share of entrepreneurial startups, the county’s emerging businesses are sometimes overlooked by Angel investors in Portland and in more distant Seattle, Wallace said. For entrepreneurs, Clark County “is a hard place to raise money,” she said.
Other finalists, all from Oregon, are Arria Live Media of Hillsboro, a maker of intelligent professional audio systems; Energy Storage Systems Inc. of Portland, developer of a safe, cost-effective, reliable and environmentally friendly all-iron flow battery technology; HoneyComb Corp. of Wilsonville, maker of drones that can be used to make farming more efficient and productive; and Nouvola of Portland, maker of a “disruptive performance analytics solution to help applications scale in the cloud.”
