Most of the transcript, poorly edited
First and foremost some awful news to share about the Portland Mercado. Even if you don’t listen to anything else in this podcast, please stick around until I can chat with you about that. On the better news front and Portland podcast are now publishes his podcast on YouTube podcasts, which makes it more accessible to even more folks. Lots of predictions from VCs and the like, lots of events coming up a rattle through.
Let’s get into it.
Unfortunately, I have some bad news to share and start the podcast. Our friends at Portland Mercado, which if you’re not familiar with it, is an incubator and community for Latina, Latino, Hispanic food entrepreneurs, unfortunately suffered a tragic fire this week, which destroyed much of the structure that housed the Mercado. Now, it’s also a food cart pod. The food carts were spared, luckily, but the whole thing has been shut down until until it can be made safe. And unfortunately for the food carts. They were powered by the physical structure that burns. So if I’m the one sharing this news with you, I’m sorry, sorry, I have to share it. But the good news is the community still exists. And that’s really the most amazing part about Portland Mercado, they’ve helped so many people. So many amazing folks have worked there and built that organization and helped founders there that I’m sure will recover. And I know that everybody is going to band together like community does, and help the Portland Mercado recover. I realize we’re just coming out of the holidays, you’ve probably done your nonprofit donations just prior to the end of the year. But if if you have the wherewithal to provide some support for the Portland Mercado and and rebuilding that, that amazing community hub for entrepreneurs and startups everywhere. And really the entire community rallied around that hub if you if you can help by donating money time, those kinds of things. I’ll link some stuff up below that will enable you to do that.
So not a great way to start the year. But again, I know the Portland Mercado community will recover from this and I look forward to seeing them in their next iteration. Okay. With that said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just really it’s really upsetting some what let’s get on to other things. That definitely, definitely more uplifting than that tragic news. So biggest story for us this week.
On the positive side, prominent Portland podcaster has been doing a podcast for years and years Scott Hanselman does the podcast Hansel minutes, he revealed that he’s also going to start publishing that on YouTube podcasts. So if you’re one of those folks who gets your podcasts from YouTube, you will now be able to get Hansel minutes there as well. Very techy, very techie podcast. Scott’s are really good at interviews and, and providing insights and and helping people with tech and all kinds of things. So it’s a really it’s a really great podcast. And I’m just I’m excited to see him putting it more places because he’s a, he’s a good podcaster and somebody who I’ve learned a lot from him.
Story I didn’t publish. But Malia Spencer, over at the Portland Business Journal did. This is a podcast exclusive. I’m releasing the names of them and then I’ll write up the blog post. Later companies that have been selected for Pitch Black 2024, which is happening February 7, there are 10 companies pitching we’re just going to read them off. I’m not going to tell you anything about them because I think you should go to the event and see the thunders pitch but you may be able to guess from some of the names the 10 companies are upland Autoworks sunrise books lions speaks Mr. Okay is essentials bloom agency flourish spices and African food pack moto Hollis school Rock Ridge and the ABC Travel network. Now the interesting part about this list is those aren’t all Portland companies. Seven of those companies are Portland companies. One of them is from Salem, Oregon, and two of them are from Oakland, California. So making the trip out. Hope to see you there. I’ll definitely be there. Again, congrats to Stephen Green on on the turnout and the applications and and thank you to the selection committee for going through the more than 200 applications to pick these 10 companies to pitch their pitch black
Calagator’s got some new life to it. So we’re seeing lots of people posting stuff on Calagator we’re seeing lots of events starting to happen. So I thought it might be worthwhile to just kind of run through the list of events that are occurring over you know, there’s it’s First Friday. So if you’re listening to this early, and it’s still Friday afternoon, the folks at upstart collective of course have First Friday, as they do the first Friday of every month around five o’clock. Let me give you some events. With a little more. Heads up. I’m going to read them to you because I don’t want to miss anything. And obviously, not top of my game after that Mercado news.
Beginning of the year, people really like to look forward. So they’ll make predictions about things and stuff. And nobody likes to make predictions better than Vc, folks. So there are a number of articles about VC predictions that I shared. One was from Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures. One was from Pacific Northwest venture capitalists. And then there are friends at the PBJ also shared some articles. So that’s that’s it. I’ll try and keep you posted on what’s going on. Now. I won’t try. I’ll keep you posted on what’s going on with Portland Mercado and ways that you can help. I would not be surprised to see more fundraisers happening, events or calls to action.
Happy New Year. I hope you got some downtime over the break. Glad you’re back. Glad you’re raring to get going in 2024. I’m excited for 2024 and I look forward to sharing all those stories with you throughout the coming year. Hang in there. Thank you so much for listening. And until we get the chance to hang out again. Please keep up the good work.
