Transcript
Rick Turoczy: This Week in Portland startup news… teacher strike impacting a lot of founders who have a school aged children, you’ll meet three new folks from the Portland startup community, lots of questions about getting connected in the community, I’ll be some VCs taking office hours, a Y Combinator alum, found a new podcast you might like. Let’s get into it.
First and foremost, the thing that affecting wetland most and founders currently is the Portland teachers are on strike. They’re in negotiations to get better wages and smaller class sizes and all those kinds of things for their job, which is stressful enough as is. But that ripple effect is a lot of Portland parents now have children at home. And much like in the early days of the pandemic, they are struggling to figure out how to continue pursuing their startup ideas doing their work, while also managing kids.
So CENTRL office, our good friends at CENTRL Office, which is a homegrown co working space that we’ve collaborated with, with PIE… Built has an office at CENTRL Office. Tami Wood, Director of Operations there at CENTRL thought, maybe you need to co work with your kids. So if you’re if you’re stuck at home, your kids are stuck at home, because they’re their teachers are trying to get better working conditions. CENTRL Office has a setup for you. Now, it doesn’t include child care, you’re still in charge of your kid. But it does give you the opportunity to co work with other parents and your kids get to go work with other kids. So if you need a break, need to get out of the house, looking to get some work done. I highly recommend to check out CENTRL office. Obviously I’ll link up that post, just a really nice way to support the community and always appreciate all the things that the central office crew does to support the startup community. So maybe take a look at that.
The big startup story this week is really a combination. It’s obvious. It’s hard to meet people here, you know, there’s no big one networking event where everybody gets together. There’s no big monthly thing there the beginnings, though.
It’s Friday, maybe you’re already thinking about happy hour, it’s been one of those weeks First Friday at Upstart Collective. That’s just a gathering of folks from the startup community, people who work out of that co working space every first Friday, they’re having a happy hour, no agenda, just looking to meet people just looking to connect, make sure and carve out some time at the end of the day or day to swing by that that’s in southeast, pretty close in, in the Olympic Mills building.
And then Michael Richardson has started an ad tech, happy hour, you don’t even need to be interested in ads, or tech, everybody should come hang out at this. So that’s another opportunity for you. That one’s taking place at the lucky lab in northwest. So if you’re closer to Northwest, you know, maybe you’re out in Hillsboro and Beaverton and that’s more accessible for you on a Friday afternoon. Maybe consider swinging by that one and see what’s going on there and meet some more people because meeting people is clearly a problem that we need to solve in the community.
A few other ways that you might consider getting connected with the Portland Community lots of just a most this week is just like, people need want to get connected. Some take very little effort. Others are gonna take a little bit of effort on your part, you know, you gotta gotta give a little get a little. It all works out in the end.
So speaking on the taking a little bit of effort, but I’m really happy to see this gaining some momentum. thanks to Zhou. Ben, Nate is we’re starting to reboot. What Raven Zachary called “slow social networking” on Silicon Florist. And what that means is, there’s a little form, you kind of go in there and you’re like, hey, here’s who I am. Here’s what I’m up to the Hello Portland startup community. This is me. Oh, here’s why I like Portland. Here’s some ways to connect with me. Fill that out. And I’ll publish one a day. Ideally, you’ll get to meet five people a week. I’d love to see your profile in there. And I know people from the community would love to see your profile, but there’s also some other opportunities.
What I did this week was record a new kind of how to video for you trying something new trying to be helpful, that is really designed to say, Hey, you’re new, you’re looking to meet people. How do I do that? I got you. So it gives you three simple ways to connect with people. And kind of one insight on how the Portland startup community works yet another way for you to connect that’s been around for a while.
Portland Startups Slack. I just noticed this week that it now has more than 6500 user profiles on it. And then all 6500 Folks are active. But still, it’s a platform that now has more than 6500. Folks who have signed up for it. It might not all be Portland folks might be folks who are thinking about Portland who want to move to Portland. Everyone smile at somebody who spams the slack. Can we just get out there? Get out the good old in the banhammer. Nope, go away. We don’t need your spammy comments from you. If you’re not on there, you should get on there and come hang out.
National story or probably international global story was a store story I published. linking to an ad for slide report on the current state of early stage VC. That was from Sam Lessin, really good, insightful. worth your time, maybe maybe a weekend read to kind of flip through that it does get deep in some spots. But I feel like it gives you a good perspective on not only some of the things you may be experiencing here in Portland in terms of local venture capital, but also just the ramifications of macro and micro economic trends and what other venture capital folks are seeing in the community. So if VC is of interest to you, if you’re curious about what’s going on, definitely check that out.
Speaking of VCs, let me get the exact names of those folks, for you Rethink Impact, Rogue Women, and Wellington Access Ventures holding office hours on Monday, November 6, again, most of the slots are booked. But that may be something for you to connect with some VCs or get some feedback on your pitch, or ask well, other startup fee questions. It’s getting you connected, basically. And even if you’re not raising money, even if you’re not interested in raising money.
One of the things that I think people don’t necessarily recognize about the venture capital community is they also share a lot of information with one another they traffic information and deal flow, VC folks tend to chat with other VC folks or with other people in the community, or they may have people in their portfolio who they’re like, Hey, I saw this company you should talk to so even if you’re not interested in raising venture capital, even if you can’t say, venture capital doesn’t have to be transactional, you’re just getting connected. They may know some people you need to know. So you might want to take the opportunity to grab a few minutes with one of those, one of those VC firms. So that’s a suggestion for you another way to get you connected.
I always love discovering new companies in the Portland startup community like I try and track a lot of stuff, but I can’t keep track of everything. There was one this week that popped onto my radar to Y Combinator alum named Streamdal. They were doing really well on Product Hunt. It’s pretty challenging to be trending on that platform. But stream doll whose CTO lives here in Portland, seem to be trending all day within the top 10. So that may be a one for you to keep your eye on.
Oh, do you like the podcasts? I mean, maybe you’re listening to this as a podcast. I can’t tell.
If you’re looking for another podcast to listen to Skip Newberry at the Technology Association of Oregon just launched the Techlandia podcast. So that’s going to be covering tech here in the state, targeting interesting people highlighting themes and trends. Yeah, if you liked the podcasts, I suggest you grab that one too, because that should be a quick, quick lesson. keep you up to date on what’s going on kind of like this car is going to be tech from the very, very biggest Intel’s of the world all the way down to the just starting up tech startup like so. really broad swath of technology. There should be some interesting insights. Techlandia hosted by Skip Newberry so that there podcast platform thingamajig that downloads the stuff when it’s there And then you can listen to it.
Yeah. Those are really the big stories from this week. Great to see you. Thanks for swinging by. If there’s something I can answer for you a question about the community comments you have about this format or things you’d like to see or things you’d like to know on a weekly basis. I’m here to please comment.
And if this has been helpful, and you’re like, you know, I don’t mind Rick, hanging out with me and telling me about the Portland startup community, consider subscribing. No pressure. Just you know if this is helpful consider to subscribe the school. I’ll be here. I’ll keep generating this stuff. Hope you have a great November. Hanging in there. Looking forward to running into you or learning more about you and keep up the good work.
