About SmartForest

SmartForest Team

SmartForest Ventures makes seed stage and first round investments in the best and brightest new technology companies in the Pacific Northwest and the Bay Area. A unique combination of early-stage venture capital fund and accelerator, SmartForest develops successful, fast-growth companies by providing capital, as well as expertise and mentoring. Our objective is to nurture the ideas of innovative, high-tech entrepreneurs and accelerate their development by offering much more than just a check.

Based in Portland, Oregon, SmartForest's two partners are Debi Coleman and Hugh Mackworth in Portland, OR and Tom Toy and Huoy-Ming Yeh in Menlo Park, CA. The first fund was started in July 2000 with capital from both individual and institutional investors, including the Oregon Growth Account, a public investment fund formed from lottery revenues to develop startup businesses and venture capital in Oregon. The original SmartForest combined forces with PacRim Venture Partners in 2004 after working together for many years. We are licensed as a Small Business Investment Corporation (SBIC) bringing total investment funds to $100M. As our portfolio companies grow and require more capital, SmartForest will continue to invest and connect these companies to our network of co-investment partners in Portland, Seattle, and Silicon Valley as well as connections to our limited partners and advisors, such as Madrona Venture Group, IBM, Silicon Valley Bank and others.

We are active investors and provide our portfolio companies with advice, mentoring, networking opportunities, business services, and even office space as needed.

SmartForest Civic Involvement