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

RIP software hackathons. Long live the hardware hackathon.

For this reason, the focus of hackathons has completely shifted away from typing code with aching fingers and zero sleep, to thinking of the system as a whole (not a very unique opinion now, I know) and iterating on intricacies of implementation with radical refactors has become a trivial task. This leaves free mental RAM to actually faff with hardware and how it interfaces with the physical world.

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

It Takes a Valley by Anika Horn — Kickstarter

It Takes a Valley tells these practitioners’ stories and documents the patterns underneath them. It’s written for people who are already doing the work; by centering over 50 stories of individual ecosystem builders, it’s also written by practitioners in a way – not as an outsider’s analysis of what ecosystem builders should do differently, but as a grassroots perspective from those who have been building ecosystems for years – from Puerto Rico to Nebraska, from Ecuador to Australia.

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

Founders share VC horror stories, and some are naming names | TechCrunch

Not everyone had bad experiences to report. Some founders said they’ve never had anything but great experiences with VCs, with a few even sharing love stories about specific investors. Yes, most VCs are hardworking, genuinely try to be helpful, and don’t take naps during meetings. But poor experiences are so common that Pincus exclaimed, “I f*cking love this moment, when founders no longer have to be afraid to call out VCs for dumb behavior.”

Now, connecting Expensify to ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, OpenClaw, and any other MCP-compatible client you happen to be using is easy. All thanks to the new Expensify MCP. No CSV exports. No custom scripts. Just ask your AI agent what you spent on travel last month — or which expense reports are waiting for your approval — and get a real-time answer from your actual Expensify account.

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

When AI builds itself

Taken far enough, and given enough compute, that trend points to an AI system capable of fully autonomously designing and developing its own successor. This is called recursive self-improvement. We are not there yet, and recursive self-improvement is not inevitable. But it could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for.

If there’s one thing the Portland Business Journal knows, it’s lists. They’ve got a whole book of them. And every single year, they refresh all of those lists. And while some simply perturb me — like the best restaurants list — others are well worth watching. Like who’s growing the fastest. And this year…? It’s Portland startup Hydrolix.