Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community

I know I’ve been asking a lot of you lately. Surveys. Feedback forms. Attending things and stuff. Admittedly, I feel guilty. You’re already overly busy. But sometimes being a founder means figuring out how to effectively carve out time to address critical issues. No matter how busy you are. So that’s why I’m shoving that guilt way down and asking you to take this one: All Raise — led by Portland’s own Paige Hendrix Buckner — is running their annual community survey. And this year, the stakes feel different.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Women.Money.Power – Portland Tickets, Thursday, Apr 30 from 8:30 am to 1 pm | Eventbrite

Join us this April in Portland for Women. Money. Power. — a gathering designed to celebrate women’s economic influence and create space to learn, connect, and be inspired.

I complained about the whole QSBS stuff in my own way. And I provided a very subjective perspective to the Oregon Prosperity Council. But someone finally did the math on SB 1507, the Oregon bill that disentangles Qualified Small Business Stock tax shelters from the federal tax law and establishes a 9.9% tax on QSBS returns. And — shocker — the numbers are worse than I thought.

Okay, procrastinator pants. I told you. But you’ve been pushing snooze on that task for a couple of weeks. So now I’m giving you the last minute warning. The Oregon Startup Center is accepting applications for the 2026 Beaverton Startup Challenge. And the deadline is this Friday, March 27, 2026.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Put Claude to work on your computer | Claude

In Claude Cowork and Claude Code, Claude can use your computer to point, click, and complete tasks. Dispatch lets you assign them from your phone.

Thanks for putting up with my constant cajoling on the Oregon Governor’s Prosperity Council survey. I hope you got the chance to respond. Admittedly, I didn’t want to jaundice your response with my response. But now that the submissions have closed I wanted to share what I submitted. Again, my response was very myopically focused on the Portland startup community, as is my wont. I’m sure there were a wide variety of opinions and topic submitted. And I look forward to what the Prosperity Council does with all of this feedback.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

You Are Not Your Job

These statements feel like facts, but they’re fictions we’ve constructed and believed so thoroughly that we can’t separate them from our actual selves. Our ability to believe our own stories is called the secret of our species’ success. Collectively we use our stories to build societies, culture, religion — on our own, we use our labor to build identity.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Why Tech Bros Are Now Obsessed with Taste | The New Yorker

For tech bros, the word seems to have a pragmatic function. By their definition, taste is inherently profitable; it is the ability to discern what will make the most money, whether by choosing your next big software concept or by convincing users that your product is necessary. “The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it,” Graham wrote in an essay from 2002, which he referenced in his recent post.