Eric Rosenfeld helped build Oregon Venture Fund as a collaborative network rather than a typical top-down fund, bringing in Oregon's own entrepreneurs and tech leaders to help research and advise portfolio companies, and set it up with an annually renewing, subscription-style structure borrowed from Salesforce, reflecting his belief that the fund should be different rather than just compete head-on with bigger firms. He has long argued that Oregonians should invest local the way they shop and eat local, positioning himself as a friendly, on-the-ground connector between local startups and outside investors from the Bay Area and Seattle, and he kept backing companies even during the 2008 credit crunch, when his angel group more than doubled its investment total from the year before.