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

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

Sam Altman says Y Combinator taught him how to govern OpenAI | Fortune

Long before Altman made decisions at the helm of OpenAI, he ran Y Combinator, the influential startup accelerator that has backed thousands of young companies. Unlike running a traditional company, however, Altman couldn’t simply tell the startups YC invested in what to do. “At best you can govern—you don’t get to, like, rule,” Altman told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell in the latest episode of Titans and Disruptors.

You know me. I love an affinity map. It probably has something to do with Platial being one of the first startups I started tracking around here. Or maybe it’s Adam DuVander’s influence. But whatever the case, I do love a good map. So I wanted to share another one I found: Fresh Hop Finder.

One of my biggest pet peeves in the whole “startups being part of popular culture” thing is that the mythology always seems to value raising over revenue — VC rounds over positive EBITDA — even though venture capital is a unique instrument that’s only applicable to a very slim percentage of all of the companies being built around here. That’s why I’m always happy to see folks upending that narrative. Like 90 Days to Cashflow Positive.

If you’ve been around the Portland startup community for any amount of time, Pitch Latino probably needs no introduction. It has become the region’s biggest celebration of Latine entrepreneurs — and branched out to so many locations that the local version is now Pitch Latino Portland. And that’s not the only change. You see, this year, Latino Founders is cranking the show up a notch by bringing the event to a brand new location, the Newmark Theatre.

I absolutely love it when I get the opportunity to collaborate with folks who can bring helpful advice to Portland startups. It’s pretty much why I do what I do. So I’m super happy that we’re getting the opportunity to bring Clarence Bethea to town. But as good as that is… I want to sweeten the offer.

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

A Search-and-Inference Database from Scratch in Pure Zig — Antfly Research

Why we rewrote Antfly’s Go engine in Zig while the startup was still early: first principles, caring about the model instead of the embeddings, TigerBeetle-style simulation testing, and what the rewrite made possible.

I’m glad you asked. Because I can actually answer that question. You see, Bend Venture Conference just announced the early stage candidates for BVC 2026. But don’t get to celebrating just yet. They still have one more hurdle before they can take the main stage.

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

Stripe Hackathon · Luma

We’re teaming up with Stripe for a one-day hackathon where teams build payments-flavored products powered by Claude. Think AI agents that can check out a cart, reconcile an invoice, or route a payout — the kind of thing that’s genuinely hard to build well and genuinely fun to demo.