Steven Boal, a Silicon Valley tech executive, is the new interim CEO of CashStar in Portland

Steven Boal was already a digital revolutionary when he came up with the idea for CashStar.

Having disrupted the coupon world as CEO of Coupons.com, he had the idea for a company that would do the same thing to the gift card industry.

Today, CashStar employs more than 80 people; has nearly 300 clients, including Starbucks, Best Buy, Home Depot and Williams-Sonoma; and has attracted more than $30 million in venture capital. All from its headquarters in Portland.

Being based in Maine was not the original plan.

About five and a half years ago, not long after coming up with the idea for CashStar, Boal met David Stone and, impressed with his experience in the payment industry, hired him to launch CashStar.

Boal assumed Stone, who lived in Maine, would move to California and set up shop in Silicon Valley, where Coupons.com is headquartered in Mountain View. He was wrong.

“[Stone] convinced me that Maine was the place to be for this, and he was absolutely right,” Boal told me Friday. “Fast forward [five years] and CashStar is the absolute leader in the space. … It’s a trailblazer when it comes to the digitization of the gift card industry.”

Stone recently resigned as the company’s CEO. Both Stone and Boal, who serves as chairman of CashStar’s board, say it was a mutual decision.

Boal, in the meantime, has stepped into the role of interim CEO for the Portland-based company. I had the opportunity on Friday to speak with Boal via telephone about his plans for CashStar, Portland’s startup scene and whether it’s catching the eye of more Silicon Valley companies.

First things first: Will CashStar remain in Portland?

Any tech company in Maine that receives venture capital from outside the state could be in danger of being forced to relocate, as that investment can come with strings attached. But Boal said CashStar is safe.

“I can say that what started in Maine will stay in Maine. I can say that with absolute certainty,” he told me. “I’ve become a real fan of Portland, and the center of gravity for the company will stay exactly where it is.”

Boal’s not against the idea of having other offices, though. CashStar already has a small office in San Francisco, he points out.

He said he’s been very impressed with the local team assembled in Portland.

“I don’t see any reason why we don’t continue to build and grow in Portland itself. We’re attracting people from Boston, we’re attracting people from all over the place,” he said.

CashStar, and its targeted market, is primed for growth, he said.

“The time is right for CashStar to scale its business, continue to drive adoption in the marketplace, and go from a small- to medium-sized company to a medium-sized big company,” Boal said, “and sometimes that requires a different style of management.”

Stone himself told me earlier this month that he prefers launching startups and pursuing early, rapid growth. Once a company gets to a certain size, it’s a different ballgame, one Stone said he was happy to pass off to someone else with more experience growing large companies.

Boal has that experience at Coupons.com, where he remains CEO. He’s grown that company over 15 years from a three-person startup to a 500-person company operating in more than 13 countries.

CashStar could be that big, Boal said. The gift card industry is an “unlimited market” as the push towards mobile payments continues to gain traction, he said. CashStar is in a perfect position to take advantage of that market potential.

“We’re at the very beginning stages of a complete transformation from physical cards to digital,” Boal said. “And like the coupons industry and what we’ve done at Coupons.com, what Wikipedia has done to encyclopedias, what Craigslist has done to classifieds — all of those marketplaces were completely transformed. And CashStar is a perfect example of an enormous market that will be completely transformed from physical cards to digital over the course of the next several years.”

To remain a market leader and continue pushing the gift card marketplace toward digitization, a slight shift in CashStar’s strategy will be required, Boal said.

“Small companies tend to spend a lot of time selling future products to future clients,” Boal said.

That’s been CashStar’s focus for the first five years of its existence.

“CashStar is now in a market position where it will be focusing on selling existing products to future clients, and future products to existing clients,” Boal said. “That’s really the primary difference in focus of the business going forward.”

What those future products might be Boal won’t say. “I can tell you we have some really exciting stuff in the pipeline,” is all he would offer.

Asked if Portland has a chance of attracting other satellite offices for Silicon Valley companies — companies like Coupons.com, for example — Boal couldn’t say. He personally was surprised to discover that Portland has a great pool of digital payment and creative talent.

But “given there aren’t many high growth technology companies in Maine… if I was to put a Coupons.com office there, there’d be poaching back and forth.”

And though he has come to really enjoy Maine, Boal doesn’t see relocating here any time soon.

After all, Boal is still only interim CEO of CashStar. I asked if there’s a chance he’d assume the role on a permanent basis.

“It’s a very active dialogue with the board and existing management team,” he said. “Stay tuned on that front, but I’m enjoying the role right now.”

Want to connect? Hit me up on Twitter at @whit_richardson

Roughly 260 people are expected to attend the event, which will feature entrepreneurs from 17 Maine startups who are all recent graduates of the Top Gun program. The entrepreneurs will pitch their business plans to an impressive group of successful entrepreneurs, angel investors and venture capitalists.

If you’re not familiar with the Top Gun program, it’s a 16-week course that helps mentor entrepreneurs and give them the skills, knowledge and connections necessary to launch and grow a successful business. It began at USM’s Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development, but this is the second year it’s expanded statewide through collaborations with the University of Maine’s Target Technology Center and the Foster Center for Student Innovation.

On Wednesday, entrepreneurs will pitch the panel as if they were pitching to investors.

“Not everyone is looking for money, some are early-stage and some are looking for people to join their team,” Susan Ruhlin of MCED wrote in an email. “For many participants the event is about exposure and practice for the eventual VC meeting.”

The 17 participating companies are based throughout the state, from York to Isle au Haut, but they are split into two classes: Bangor and Portland.

“Maine is experiencing a resurgence in entrepreneurship,” Don Gooding, MCED’s executive director, said in a statement. “Maine’s new breed of innovators are high-growth entrepreneurs who continually demonstrate excellence in their commitment to building world-class companies across the state.”

Here’s the list of the companies that will be participating on Wednesday night:

The Bangor Class

• Double Blue Sports Analytics – Dan Kerluke
• Black Dinah Chocolates – Steve Shaffer
• The Armaid Company – Terry Cross
• Activas Diagnostics, LLC – Dr. Marie Hayes
• Flourometrics – Jim Killarney & John Ahern

The Portland Class

• Black Lobster Academy – James Mahoney
• Chimani – Kerry Gallivan
• Cloud 9 – Gordon Monk
• FlowFold – Charles Friedman
• LifeKite – Jasa Porciello
• Tide Creative – J Sandifer
• Maine Mead Works – Ben Alexander
• MiFILTER.com – Khristopher Lalemand
• Mobile Magic – Rocco Sbardella
• My Medical Best Friend – Kathy Fries
• PJ Coeur – Pamela Saunders
• Rohrer Technologies – John Rohrer

The panel these entrepreneurs will be pitching to is equally impressive. It includes Ralph Harding, director of private equity at Spinnaker Trust, an investment firm in Portland; Emily Reycroft, managing director of Blackstone’s hedge fund solutions group; Terry Waters, CEO of Boston-based Yankee 451 Group LLC; Chris Emmons, CEO of Gorham Savings Bank; and Bill Williamson, Maine state president for Bank of America.

The Top Gun program is supported by the Blackstone Accelerates Growth initiative, the Maine Technology Institute and the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development.

The Top Gun Showcase Event begin at 5 p.m. on Wed., May 22, at USM’s Hannaford Hall.

The real Portland was beat out only by Denver and that other city on the other coast that borrowed our name.

Travel + Leisure cited Portland’s “idyllic” nature and long history in the microbrewing arena. The two Portland breweries the magazine mentions are Shipyard Brewing Co. and Allagash Brewing Co., which also happen to be the two largest breweries in the state. It mentions that Allagash’s brewery tour is ranked one of the best by TripAdvisor.

The magazine also calls out one of the newest installments in Portland’s craft beer scene.

“To glimpse the city’s craft-drink future,” the magazine blurb reads, “check out In’finiti, a brewpub on the waterfront that also makes its own distilled liquors.”

Though Infiniti hasn’t started selling its own liquors yet, I will vouch for its beers.

The tidal energy project developed by Portland-based Ocean Renewable Power Co is featured on the cover of Popular Science’s June issue.

ORPC installed the tidal energy generator, known as TideGen, on the bottom of Cobscook Bay in 2012, and made history in September when for the first time in the western hemisphere, electricity flowed from an ocean-based turbine to the electricity grid.

The June issue of Popular Science’s cover story is on American energy independence, and features write-ups on several projects in the solar, waste and wind areas.

It’s short (five sentences) article on ORPC’s TideGen notes that ”tidal currents are among the most predictable energy sources on Earth.” It says TideGen “can produce up to 150 kW, or enough electricity to power 25 homes, but ORPC plans to add 5 megawatts of capacity within three to five years.”

ORPC and its innovation has certainly placed Maine on the map when it comes to the renewable energy arena.

Here’s a BDN file photo of a yet-to-be-installed TideGen unit from July 2012.

A yet-to-be-installed Ocean Renewable Power Co. underwater TideGen turbine in Eastport, Maine, on Monday, July 23, 2012.

The event is part meet-and-greet, part lobbying effort and part trade show. Different businesses show up with their collapsible trade show booths while legislators, chamber executives and administration officials (there were six commissioners who attended the event) get up to speak about the importance of Maine business.

Businesses participating included Bath Iron Works (Team Blue Shirts), Texas Instruments, New Balance, Kaplan University and Ocean Properties.

“It’s a simple concept but it has rewarding results,” Dana Connors, the state’s chamber CEO, told me. “It takes the day in which we concentrate on bringing businesses to Augsuta to talk about the issues that are important to them and to us as a business community.”

Not much news happens at Business Day, but it’s a good chance to catch up with people about the issues they’re following.

Above all things, Connors believes the budget is the single most important issue being debated in Augusta. And within the budget, the issue of revenue sharing with municipalities is the sticking point.

“The question is how do you replace this $200 million element in the budget, what’s the offsetting means to that and when you listen closely — you hear a few talking about more spending cuts, but you also hear a lot talking about revenue increases, and that to me will be the debate that will take us beyond adjournment, and how long it takes to resolve that budget issue is the $64,000 question at the moment.”

Frank McGinty, MaineHealth’s executive vice president and treasurer, told me the issue he’s talking about during his day at the Statehouse is (not surprisingly) the governor’s efforts to reimburse the hospitals the $400 million they’re owed for providing Medicaid services.

McGinty also shared a few interesting thoughts. As Maine hospitals see falling patient volumes and therefore falling revenue (see my article on Maine Medical Center’s $13.4 million shortfall), the goal will be to expand market share.

However, Maine hospitals aren’t the only health care organizations dealing with this issue. He’s confident that in less than five years we’ll see Boston hospitals enter the Maine market with brick-and-mortar physician practices and compete head-to-head with the existing health care organizations. (Tufts Medical Center in Boston has already made inroads in Maine via telemedicine.)

Anne Gauthier is manager of public relations at Texas Instruments, which employs roughly 500 people at its semiconductor manufacturing facility in South Portland.

Interestingly, the facility is the only one the company operates in the county that isn’t in Texas, Gauthier told me.

I also got to see first hand what is actually produced within its walls. I’m not sure what most people think about when they hear the word ‘semiconductor,’ but I picture all those little box-shaped things on the green motherboards. That’s not what gets produced at TI’s South Portland facility. Instead, it manufactures what look like circular mirrors, which if you look closely has a sheet with hundreds of little semiconductors, or thousands depending on the type of chip, which will get shipped to its production facilities in Southeast Asia where they’ll be cut out and included in those box-like things you see on a motherboard.

I’ll add a photo when I can get it off my phone. I’m writing this from the basement of the state office building, where there’s no cell phone service.

Slow Money Maine, if you’re not aware, is a loose network of individuals and organizations that help facilitate the flow of capital (both financial and human) into home-grown food and agricultural businesses throughout the state. Companies such as Maine Grains, which operates a grist mill in Skowhegan, and MOOMilk, a group of organic dairy farmers in Maine, have both received investments from members of Slow Money Maine.

If you’re interested in learning more about the group and investing in Maine’s home-grown ag businesses, look out for my feature article that will be published in the next week.

John Lee Dumas, founder and host of Entrepreneur On Fire, is a Maine native

John Lee Dumas is the founder and host of Entrepreneur On Fire, one of the top-ranked business podcasts on iTunes.

He’s also a Maine native and current resident of Portland. Before launching Entrepreneur On Fire in September 2012, John was a commercial real estate broker for NAI The Dunham Group in the Portland.

Entrepreneur On Fire is a daily podcast in which John interviews a successful entrepreneur about their journey, how they’ve found success at what they’re doing and what lessons they’ve learned.

By providing consistent and quality content, John has in eight months grown his show to the point where it generates more than 200,000 unique downloads a month from 145 countries.

As of Friday, he has posted 202 interviews. He’s interviewed such celebrity entrepreneurs as Seth Godin, Tim Ferris and Guy Kawasaki, as well as dozens of other inspiring entrepreneurs.

In my interview with John, which is about 30 minutes long, we discuss his military background, how he successfully became a full-time podcast producer, and how he manages to post an interview each weekday without burning out. He also shares his “success quote” and other tips for Maine entrepreneurs.

Unfortunately, my reason for interviewing John on Friday is not just because he’s an awesome guy (which he is) — it’s because Maine is losing him to California as of this week.

While John is a big cheerleader for Maine and Portland, life’s twists and turns (in this case a girl) is leading him to San Diego, where he’ll continue to pump out quality interviews for Entrepreneur On Fire. Maine’s business community will miss him.

A note on the audio: Soundcloud allows you to stream and listen to the interview right from here (click the orange “play” button), or you can download it as an mp3 file (click the little black arrow pointing downward) and listen to it on your mobile device as you would any other podcast.

Enjoy.

U.S. Sen. Susan Collins wants to help the country’s small brewers brew more beer.

Apparently, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is a fan of craft beer.

She has written a bill that would reduce the excise tax small breweries must pay on each barrel they produce. U.S. Sen. Angus King, eager to demonstrate his craft beer credentials as well, has signed on as a co-sponsor.

Currently, federal law requires small brewers (defined as those that produce fewer than 2 million barrels a year) to pay an excise tax of $7 per barrel. A barrel equals roughly 31 gallons of beer. Breweries that produce more than 2 million barrels a year currently pay an excise tax of $18 per barrel.

Two million barrels is still a very large amount. Maine’s largest brewery, Shipyard Brewing Co. in Portland, produces roughly 150,000 barrels a year. The state is currently home to 36 breweries, with more in the planning stages.

The two-million-barrel threshold and tax rate for brewers has not been updated since its creation in 1976, according to a press release from Sen. Collins’ office. In that time, annual production at the country’s breweries has more than doubled, from 45 million barrels to 105 million barrels, the release said.

Sen. Collins’ bill, known as the Small BREW Act, would change the definition of small brewer to one that produces up to 6 million barrels a year, and reduce the applicable excise tax to just $3.50 on the first 60,000 barrels and $16 on additional barrels below 2 million per year.

There is also a bill of the same title in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The senator is unveiling the legislation on the eve of American Craft Beer Week, which begins on May 13.

“Maine is home to dozens of unique craft breweries and brewpubs that invigorate our economy by providing more than 1,000 jobs and drawing countless tourists into our state,” Collins said in a statement. “In meetings with brewers across Maine, they always make clear to me how federal tax policy affects their businesses. This bill, which I support, would help reduce the tax burden placed on many small brewers across our country, allowing them to thrive, create jobs, and further grow our economy.”

Not to mention, brew more beer.

Daniel Kleban, president of the Maine Brewers’ Guild and owner of Maine Beer Co. in Freeport, is an obvious supporter of the bill.

That story may sound familiar to folks who have been around a while. For those who haven’t, I think a little historical context is in order.

The last time Berkshire Hathaway bought a Maine shoe business was in 1993 — and the business was Dexter Shoe.

At the time, Dexter Shoe, which Harold Alfond founded in 1957, employed 1,600 Mainers at retail stores and manufacturing facilities in Dexter, Skowhegan, Milo and Newport. Alfond sold the company to Berkshire Hathaway for $419 million, according to the Bangor Daily News’ archives.

Warren Buffett, known for his sage investments, had this to say at the time:

“Dexter Shoe Co. is exactly the type of business Berkshire Hathaway admires,” Buffett said in a prepared statement quoted by the BDN at the time. “It has a long profitable history, (an) enduring franchise and superb management. Dexter will continue to operate as it has in the past, under its existing management.”

Of course, that’s not what happened. Beginning in 1998, Dexter began shedding jobs, a bit at a time, citing global competition. Then, beginning in 1999, the company began to shutter its manufacturing facilities: first Milo, then Newport, followed by Skowhegan.

A week after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 Dexter Shoe announced it was closing its final manufacturing facility in Maine, the one located in its namesake town of Dexter.

Buffett came to regret his purchase of Dexter Shoe, calling it in 2008 “the worst deal that I’ve made.”

In the 1960s and 70s, the shoe industry employed roughly 30,000 people in Maine. By the time Dexter Shoe shut its doors in 2001, that employment figure had dropped to 3,300, according to the Maine Center for Workforce Research & Information. Today, that figure is roughly 1,300.

I recount the downfall of Dexter Shoe to add an historical angle to Berkshire Hathaway’s participation in the shoe manufacturing business in Maine, not to suggest that Highland Shoe Co., which was acquired this week by Justin Brands, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, faces the same fate.

After all, it’s a different time. People and companies seem to be placing greater value on products made in the U.S.A., which seems to be the strategy behind Justin Brands’ acquisition.

Here’s what Randy Watson, CEO of Justin Brands, had to say about the acquisition of Highland Shoe: “Planting new roots in a market distinctively rich in America’s footwear heritage aligns with our ongoing commitment to domestic manufacturing.”

The shoe business in Maine may never return to its heyday, but that doesn’t mean a smaller, more vibrant industry can’t thrive here.

After all, there still aren’t many things more American than a hand-stitched shoe from Maine.

The Maine Angels, a group of angel investors, were one of the Top 10 most active angel investor groups in the country last year. The group, which has 51 members, invested a record $3.39 million in 21 early-stage companies in 2012. Pictured here are Don Gooding (left), the group’s vice chair, and Sandra Stone, the group’s chair.

The Maine Angels, a group of individual (or “angel”) investors who pool their capital and expertise to fund early-stage companies, recently joined similar groups from such vaunted startup communities as Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York City, on a list of the most active angel investor groups in the country.

In 2012, the Maine Angels, which has 51 members, invested just shy of $3.4 million in 21 separate deals, enough to break the group’s previous annual record and to place it #10 on a list of the Top 10 most active angel investing groups in the country.

The list is included in the 2012 Halo Report, a national survey of angel investing activity published last month by the Angel Resource Institute, Silicon Valley Bank and CB Insights. The report is based on 783 deals totaling $1.1 billion dollars invested.

“It’s extremely gratifying to see Maine Angels receive national recognition for our active participation in the Maine and broader New England entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Don Gooding, vice chair of the group and executive director of the Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development, told me in an email. “If anyone had any doubts before about our organization actively funding companies, those should be put to rest now. And it’s likely to turn some heads around the country and make them wonder: ‘What’s going on in Maine?’”

We may not have Silicon Valley shaking in its shoes, but it’s a good start.

For more on the Maine Angels record-breaking year, read my article from Feb. 15: “Maine Angels set mark for helping companies take flight, but fear falling investments in 2013.”

For entrepreneurs hoping to raise funds through angel investors, visit the Maine Angels website.