The Silicon Forest had very few big exits in the last decade, but one of them was Saber Corp., a Portland company that contracted with state governments to provide various services, including vehicle registration, driver's licenses, voter registration and unemployment registration.

EDS

, which was then absorbed into HP when that company bought EDS. Saber co-founders Nitin and Karan Khanna

the following year "to pursue some other entrepreneurial opportunities."

So here's what they're doing.

The brothers now run a California-based investment bank called

, catering to startups and small businesses looking to sell their companies for less than $100 million.

Karan Khanna is MergerTech's COO, working now from California. Nitin is CEO, remaining in Portland to be close to family. I met him for coffee to hear how his experience running a software enterprise segued into creating a niche I-bank.

"It looks quite different from the outside," Nitin said, "but I'm a sales and strategy guy."

Essentially, he sees a substantial market for his services, but a niche too small for big investment banks to target.

"At the sub $100 million level, there's no threat," he said.

The basic plan is this: Startups need an investment banker to facilitate sales or new investment.

MergerTech seeks three kinds of clients.

Distressed businesses that need to sell in a hurry to salvage investors' equity.

Growing companies looking to get new investment.

Mature startups looking to exit.

To tap those markets, MergerTech is drafting a network of professionals around the globe to help match buyers and sellers.

It's also compiling a research database on small companies with help from business students around the region. And MergerTech hopes to raise its own private equity fund for when it finds a company it wants an ownership stake in.

MergerTech used to be M&A Forum, a subsidiary of Martin Wolf Securities. Nitin came aboard last fall and spun MergerTech off into a separate business. He said initial results have been good -- the company participated in 10 deals within the first seven months, and has signed up six clients this month.

On the side, Nitin is also helping mentor Portland startups (he's helping out the folks at BlackTonic, Sock It To Me Socks, Vindoshopr and 365me.com, among others) and contributing to efforts to nurture the city's angel investment community.

"Until we get the angel ecosystem here, the VC ecosystem won't show up," he said.

MergerTech is a hugely ambitious undertaking, and even at these comparatively modest dollar amounts (by investment banking standards, anyway) there's risk. The firm is trying to create a market at the same time it's leading it.

If any of that is keeping Nitin up at night, he's not letting on. Here's what he said in an e-mail today:

Nitin's one of the few in Oregon with a recent track record of success in big, fast exits, and he's committed to repeating his success.

"We think we can do with it exactly what we did with Saber," he told me.

Nitin's speaking at 6 p.m.

at a Starve Ups event at NedSpace downtown.