Todd, from Sales and Marketing, took the following pics during last Wednesday's trek down to Cubespace (in Portland, Oregon) where I presented 'The Art of Ware-as-a-Service' to the XP user group.

We unfortunately learned that Cubespace is in dire straits, but an initiative is underway here to help them keep going.

The presentation could not have been more timely given the circumstances. Many gifted Portland entrepreneurs are laying low under the premise that venture capital will somehow rebound; but reality could not be any further from this illusion.

SaaS business models allow software developers to launch companies now with almost no capital. Sure, the economy will rebound, but it's not likely to be in tech. Software is pervasive and is used in all aspects of the economy today and there are literally thousands of opportunities available in the long tail.

If you have a passion for developing software, then platforms like EC2 and Force.com are available to build companies that can quickly scale to $1M-$5M per year. This is markedly less than the $100M VC's are looking for, but those opportunities are few and far between. Better to spend your time pitching to potential customers than VCs.

Maybe the term "start-up" carries too many overly ambitious connotations to be used anymore. Not sure what to call it, but the time is definitely right for lot's of small software companies to emerge in the cloud, and Portland has the talent to be at the forefront of this effort.