Transcript
Rick Turoczy: Ready for a weekly recap of everything that’s happening in the Portland startup community? Good, because that’s why I’m here. I’m glad our interests are aligned.
Okay, welcome back. Rick Turoczy, here to bring you the latest on the Portland startup community. Let’s start with the top story.
Discogs. Now, many of you may not realize that one of the largest music databases in the world is headquartered right here in the Portland area. It started as a side project years and years ago, but it’s kept going strong, has developed a huge community has even become an E commerce site for people to sell and trade. Interesting music. It’s been getting a little bit of heat lately, because it’s been changing the rates. And in percentages, it’s charging people for using the service.
It recently had a big write up in The Verge mostly wanted to share it because I don’t think most folks realize that Discogs is headquartered here. It’s kinda like Digital Trends or Panic, like companies you may have heard of, but you didn’t realize they were in Portland.
Bright MD, an early player in the telehealth, digital healthcare space, which rose to even more prominence during the pandemic is in talks to be acquired by Cigna. As a massive health care company. I don’t have any numbers to report on the acquisition. But m&a activity is always a compelling way to exit in the Portland startup community, so I hope it works out. For everyone involved in a positive way,
You may notice that I’ve started to add more videos to silicon florist. It’s really because I feel like we’re getting so much negativity about Portland recently that as I come across things that are positive about Portland or remind you why you live in Portland, and why you like Portland, I’m linking those things up. So it should pop up. Right here.
I’m going to keep it as a playlist, you can subscribe to that playlist. But when I find good things about Portland reminders about why you love living here, I’ll make sure and add it to that playlist.
This one from the Portland Startup Slack. If you’re not subscribed to that Slack, I’ll link it up down below. It’s a community slack that allows people to chat with others from the Community Connect, stay up to date on those kinds of things. So if you’re new to Portland, or new to the Portland startup community, maybe consider joining the Portland startup slack so that you can get in touch with more people pretty valuable resource I’m on there all day, every day.
Big news from Radious. Full disclosure radius is a PIE alum and I am the co founder and general manager of PIE. The big news from radius this week is they’ve expanded to the Bay Area. Now radius started here in Portland, they had expanded to Milwaukee Wisconsin, now, they’re they’re moving into the Bay Area with their offering. If you’re not familiar with radius, it’s very similar to that Airbnb concept. Only with radius, you’re renting temporary space to work.
Maybe you need more space, maybe you need somewhere creative. Maybe you’re just looking for somewhere in the neighborhood so you can get out of your home office. That’s what Radious is here for you can rent office space by the day, and it’s not really even office space. It’s like cool, funky workspace. Let’s not say office space, let’s say workspace. It’s workspace. And you know, like an Airbnb, like some people put a lot of effort into making it a really compelling workspace. So if you’re looking for workspace and Portland, Milwaukee, and now the Bay Area.
Let’s say you’re down there meeting with VCs or something and you need somewhere to camp out in between those meetings. Or maybe you want to invite the VCs to meet you at the radius space, check out the site, look some space and go hang out and get some work done.
Have you missed Dragon’s Lair? This weekend? Just quick reminder, you know, for those who liked playing on the Atari or ColecoVision, or early NES or those kinds of things. It is Portland Retro Gaming Expo this weekend, which is our annual gathering of all the old school of video games.
I like Retro Gaming Expo. It’s cool to get to play like the old games. They have both old consoles, as well as upright, classic video games like Pac-Man and Dig Dug and Mario Brothers and that kind of stuff that you can play for free. All it costs is the price of admission and waiting in line or putting your quarters up or whatever until you have time to play that game that somebody else may be playing.
Rose City Games. A video game producer and creator here in town. Again, full disclosure Another pylon, they’re hosting an after party that will feature some of their games, panic game, as well as some other games locally. So if you’re going to retro gaming expo, consider hitting up the Red City Games after party or maybe just go to the rest of the games after party. I don’t know.
Your weekend’s basically planned now. You’re welcome.
4K4Community Fun Run took place this week. I don’t really have any footage from it. But I, based on the weather, I’m assuming it was pretty wet. And I will make sure to give you a reminder for the next 4k for a community. I really like them. And then the Field Day, folks who are organizing that. So I want to make sure you’re in the loop on that. And it’s a great excuse to get together with other people from the community and a healthy way to do it.
If you’re thinking about podcasting, you’re like watching this and you’re like, if he can do it. Pretty much anybody can do it. But maybe you don’t know where to start, or you’re kind of confused. Or you could use some expert advice.
Upstart Collective is hosting an event in the coming weeks that is focused on podcasting, and they’ll have a lot of people with podcasting expertise that can help you. I’ll link that up down below. I believe it’s not till late October. So you got some time to register. But I just wanted you to have that on your radar. In case podcasting is interesting to you.
Oh, here’s another one. Portland Startups Slack oriented as well. So long, long ago, there used to be this event called Beer and Blog. Beer and Blog originally started as just a group of us who used to meet to like work on our WordPress instance. And, you know, talk about blogging share tips and tricks and those kinds of things.
And, well it started as a handful of people like more and more people started showing up every week. Eventually, it became this big thing that was a great place to meet people from the community. Or maybe if you were visiting Portland, we’d always be like, make sure and stay Friday afternoon so that you can go to beer and blog. And you’ll get connected with all the people in the startup community. Now. On the Portland startup slack, there’s a channel called #social_beer, which was really designed initially, for folks to discuss craft brews, or brew pubs in town, that kind of thing as a way to create social connection among the users of the PDX. Startup Slack.
What has happened now is one of the folks in social beer, Devin Gaffney, has been kind enough to now organize in real life meetups with the social beer group. So in an effort to help that I’ve repurposed one of our meetup groups for social beer. So even if you’re not on the Portland startup slack, you can register for that group. And we’ll keep you in the loop when they have social beer gatherings.
Okay, cool. So that’s it for this week.
So we had a Radious in the Bay Area. We had Bright MD getting acquired. We had Discogs, dealing with the management of a community and E commerce and those kinds of things, which can be challenging. And 4K4Community fun run.
Next week, of course, has Bend Venture Conference and the Built Festival down in Bend, I’m headed down to bend so maybe we’ll maybe we’ll get some footage of stuff happening down there.
Hello, Bend folks, if you’re tuning in. Thanks as always for hosting Bend Venture Conference like you have for the past 20 years. Alright. Well, I mean, that’s about all I’ve got for this week.
Hopefully, this was helpful, in keeping you up to date on what’s happening in the Portland startup community. Make sure you feel connected with your peers and the community in general.
Cool.
Well, I hope you have a good week next week. If you’re traveling to Bend, safe travels. If you’re traveling elsewhere. Maybe like the Bay Area, consider maybe booking a Radious space. And I look forward to regaling you with stories of a trip to Bend next week.
All right. Cool. Hang in there. It’s good to see you.
Keep up the good work.
