Lisa Flynn, co-founder of RallyCause and founder and CEO of the former whippersnappers studio, gives a presentation at the Tower Theatre in Bend during the 2011 Bend Venture Conference.

Inspired to save and heal her performance quarter horse, Chiron, who was injured in an accident at a barn in Bend, Kelly Barnett developed protective equine boots and wraps.

Her idea worked, and word got out in the local equestrian community after Chiron did well in a competition.

Soon Barnett was inundated with calls for her products, and she realized she had stumbled across a new business.

When selected to present her product idea at an investment forum in Kansas City, Mo., the Bend resident turned to Economic Development for Central Oregon for coaching. It was then, Barnett learned about the entrepreneurial ecosystem of Bend and the various opportunities she had at her fingertips — including the Bend Venture Conference.

Now Barnett’s invention has landed her company, Ideal Equine Gear, among 11 companies scheduled to compete for investment funding at the 10th annual conference on Friday.

Ideal Equine Gear and five other early-stage companies will vie for a $10,000 cash investment in the concept stage, while five others further along in development will compete for an anticipated $250,000 in funding in the launch stage.

Started 10 years ago, the Bend Venture Conference has become the region’s entrepreneurial foundation.

It is now the largest angel conference in the state, and its six launch-stage winners have gone on to raise more than $42 million, in addition to what they received from the conference, and have generated 244 jobs, according to EDCO.

Bend is also now home to a venture capital fund. It offers a business accelerator, FoundersPad, and has hosted two Startup Weekends, where businesses go from idea to startup in a weekend. The third Bend Startup Weekend will be held Friday-Sunday.

The city has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and was ranked 16 out of 384 metropolitan areas in the country for high-tech startup density, in a recent report.

This year’s conference began with 65 applicants — 28 concept-stage companies and 37 launch. And over the past two months companies have been coached, groomed and eliminated after a series of pitches.

After sifting through applications, the list of launch-stage companies was narrowed down to 10, said Ruth Lindley, marketing manager for EDCO, which organizes the conference.

At the start of evaluating the businesses, it’s about who looks best on paper, Lindley said. It’s about providing detail not only about what the company’s plan is, but how the company is going to execute that plan and how attainable it is.

The top 10 gave presentations in person to investors, who voted on the final five that will make their pitches on Friday.

But the vetting did not stop there, she said.

“Due diligence teams made up of those investors were assigned to each of the five companies to validate the company’s claims in their submission,” Lindley wrote in an email. “In the three weeks leading up to the conference, the five finalists receive intense coaching from EDCO and volunteers in multiple sessions.”

The process helped Dan Mendell simplify the message of his company, Syndical, one of the five launch-stage finalists. The Portland company features an online events publishing system.

“As someone who lives and breathes the business, you want to tell people everything about it,” Mendell, the president and CEO, wrote in an email. “But with limited time, you need to really sharpen your focus on the essentials.”

For this next week, he said, the plan is to keep working hard to keep the presentation sharp and concise and to “just (practice) like crazy.”

For those in the concept stage, the path to the BVC has been a little different.

Like the other concept-stage finalists, Barnett began her journey by making a three-minute pitch to a panel of experts in August during Upstart Day.

Twenty-eight companies gave presentations, and each received both oral and written feedback from the panel, Lindley said, regardless of whether or not they were eliminated.

Of the 28, she said, some just had ideas, compared with others that had explored and investigated their ideas. For example, she said, some didn’t do enough research on the competition, while others didn’t figure out what customers would be willing to pay for services.

Next, Barnett and 11 other concept companies tried to sell an audience during an EDCO PubTalk at McMenamins Old St. Francis School in Bend. She was selected to move on, and now she’s preparing for her final pitch at the conference.

“BVC gives me the opportunity to hone the business set up,” she said. “If I win … I can jump a hurdle that I couldn’t otherwise do right now … I can get my proof of concept validated and turned into prototypes, and we can do process modeling for manufacturing.”

Whether or not she wins the prize, she said, the process has helped her build her business.

Between each of the stages, Barnett said, she received coaching, which helped her see the full picture.

“Sometimes as inventors, we can get so focused on what it is we are doing with the product, we can sometimes forget to be an entrepreneur and we let pieces of the business go,” she said. “During the coaching, they’ll say, ‘the product is great, but you need to be able to answer these questions when it comes to the business and these questions when it comes to the investors.’”

For the next week, she also plans to spend some quality time with Chiron.

“Sometimes it’s taking a moment to take a breath and get centered and realize that sometimes what you’re doing is bigger than you,” she said. “I have my horse, so no matter what, I am very grateful that I can see him play in the pasture, be sound, be happy and be healthy.”

Bend Venture Conference competitors

Launch Stage — anticipated $250,000 investment

• Droplr, a Bend company offering an online file-sharing service.

• The Flybook LLC, of Bend, which has developed Web-based reservation and business-management software designed for the outdoor industry.

• MedRock, a Portland company that develops and markets medical devices for the physical therapy market.

• Nouvola, of Portland, which helps small- to medium-sized companies scale their websites for higher traffic.

• Syndical, a Portland company that has created an online events publishing system.

Concept Stage — $10,000 cash investment

• Axis Mundi, a Bend company that seeks to make collapsible temporary housing.

• Ideal Equine Gear, a Bend developer of protective equine boots and wraps.

• Ochoco Arms, a Prineville company with a patented laser-sighting system for firearms.

• Onboard Dynamics, a Bend company developing technology for refueling vehicles with natural gas.

• TurboPup, a La Pine company that makes meal bars for dogs.

• The sixth company will be selected at the unConference on Thursday. The pitches will be from FoundersPad graduates and the winner will be the “wild card” in the concept-stage competition.

Entrepreneurial Weekend

With the 10th annual Bend Venture Conference and the third Bend Startup Weekend both taking place this week, the Bend City Council declared Oct. 17-20 Entrepreneurial Weekend.

For more information about the BVC, visit www.bendvc.com.

To learn more about Startup Weekend — where budding entrepreneurs pitch ideas and launch startup companies in 54 hours — visit http://bend.startupweekend.org.