Month: May 2024

In case you haven’t been following along with TiE Oregon’s pitch competition strategy this year, let me bring you up to speed. TiE Oregon used to have on big pitch event called Pitch Oregon. And then they added Westside Pitch — which was focused primarily on Washington County startups. Now, they’ve expanded that strategy to have regional competitions. Next up…? The Multnomah and Clark counties competition: Columbia River Pitch.

Remember how I told you that Dave Hersh — founding CEO of Jive Software — published a book…? What’s the matter? Don’t you like to read? Fine. Then maybe getting some of Dave’s valuable insights firsthand would be more palatable to you? Okay then. He’s going to be here in town. And you’re invited. (As long as they still have space.)

I hadn’t really been paying attention. But while I was in the admin panel adding a new feature that folks requested on the Portland Startups Slack, I noticed that there have now been more than 1 million messages sent on our little local community Slack instance. I don’t know how good all of them were. Because a lot of them were mine. But this is more of a quantity over quality post.

You’ll never know if you don’t apply to pitch. And word around the campfire is that there are still slots open for Demolicious June 2024. So why not take the opportunity to stand up in front of folks and tell them about what you’re building…?

I don’t know if you’ve heard but… AI is kind of hot right now. So even in this money-is-expensive, down-economy Portland AI-driven startup Aisles was able to raise $30 million.

Interested in climate issues? Time to get creative. With some of your soon to be friends. Join the next Portland Climate Fresk, Friday, May 24, 2024, at 2:00PM.

Part of me keeps rooting for the underdog to unseat the Demolicious title holder. Part of me keeps hoping that a Demolicious champ will retain the belt. (I’m a Libra. So sue me.) But for now, that last part of me will just have to wait. Because May — like every other month before it in the recorded history of the modern day Demolicious — came with a brand new Demolicious champ: Flat.

What did I just say…? I said, raising $35 million is impressive in any economic environment. Let alone the current economic environment. And now two companies have done exactly that. And it’s being revealed on exactly the same day. Axios revealed that Boulder Care has raised a $35 million Series C, bringing total funding to $85 million.