Silicon Florist links arrangement for March 22, 2022 💐

Start More Stuff

Our national narrative places entrepreneurship out of reach for far too many of us at a time when it’s easier than ever to be an entrepreneur. The U.S. was founded on a culture of starting stuff and we must get back to our entrepreneurial roots. Our economic future is an era of entrepreneurship. Calling all entrepreneurs. Let’s start more stuff.

VCs: This Is Why You’re Not Investing In Black Women, And Here’s How To Change That

Success is success even if it looks different. However, as long as you—the 80 percent of men who make up the funding community—continue to primarily invest in entrepreneurs that look like you, you’ll leave money and profit on the table. On the plus side, the oversight of homogeneous investors opened the door to investors that see the opportunity to invest in Black founders, tapping into the $1.6 trillion Black consumer market.

Enmeshment in Venture

Now that 2021 is behind us, the results are clear: not only did we not move forward, we actually moved backward in many ways. Here are my observations of venture capital’s evolution over the past year…

Curb Events: A curb manager’s best friend

Traditionally, the curb has been thought of as a place to park vehicles; changes in travel patterns over the last couple of years have pushed city stakeholders to rethink the use of the curb and leverage its broader value. With shared mobility programs joining public transit, private motorized and non-motorized vehicles, and pedestrians, the curb has become a hot commodity! Delivery pickup/dropoff, micromobility staging, and outdoor dining are just a few of the possible uses for the curb. Ride Report’s Curb Events tools are a curb manager’s best friend, making it easier than ever to plan and manage curb space.

Observability like air traffic control with Mike Canzoneri of Torch

Welcome to the first in a series of interviews with software and SaaS industry experts on what it is like to build on, and manage the reliability of, cloud hosted third parties. In this series, we are interviewing SREs, Software Engineers, Directors of Engineering, CTOs, and more from companies like Weedmaps, Freshly, Zendesk, Netflix, and Credit Karma. In the resulting blog posts, we will share their opinions, experiences, and advice, in their own words, as we all work to improve the reliability of apps built on the public cloud.

Toronto, the Quietly Booming Tech Town

For all the excitement around places like Austin and Miami, the biggest tech expansion has been in Canada’s largest city.

The Most Important Skill in Startups Isn’t What You Think

If you’re struggling to identify a great idea for a new business, start thinking about emerging technologies and how those technologies are going to change the world. Doing so should point you toward dozens of emerging business opportunities with growing markets and few or no competitors.

2022 TAO Lifetime Achievement Award honoree announced

The Technology Association of Oregon (TAO) announced today the selection of Craig Reinhart of JLL as the Lifetime Achievement Award winner. Reinhart will be recognized as part of the Oregon Technology Awards ceremony, an annual program celebrating excellence and achievement in the region’s technology industry, on Tuesday, May 3rd at the Oregon Convention Center.

23 Tactical Company Building Lessons, Learned From Scaling Stripe & Notion

Cristina Cordova is well-positioned to share advice for both camps. As a repeat early startup employee, she describes her career as being “somewhere in between business and product.” That’s because while she cemented her expertise in business development and partnerships, she’s also been a product marketer in a pinch, managed teams of engineers, led DEI initiatives, and hired everyone from growth PMs to developer advocates. Cordova’s also a seasoned angel investor, and after backing over 50 startups, she’s helped founders work through every thorny challenge of company building.

Meet the winners of the Westside Pitch

The event, held March 10, had six startups vying for more than $7,000 in prize packages. The event drew about 80 people and seemed to meet people’s growing comfort with attending in-person events once again, said organizer Laura Kubisiak, the Westside venture catalyst.

Happy Birthday, Tom McCall

Oregon Governor Tom McCall remains one of the state’s most renowned political figures. His bold achievements set a new standard for the rest of the nation: The Beach Bill and the Bottle Bill, the SB100 land-use law — all of these emerged from the McCall years.