Month: October 2024

First there was the West Side Pitch. Then the Columbia Pitch. Now, TiE Oregon completes the trifecta with the Clackamas County Pitch competition. But what’s a pitch competition without startups pitching…?

Another day, another interesting moment for Oregon’s Agility Robotics. This — ahem — time, the company’s bipedal robot Digit is the cover model for the TIME magazine “Best inventions of 2024” issue. (Also making the cut was Portland’s Keen with its Targhee IV hiking boot.)

Lots of investment in Oregon State University as of late. Both on the private side — through NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang and Lori Mills Huang — and now through public funds like the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps Hub grant.

It’s been a minute since I’ve felt that “Portland startup serendipity.” While it used to be a regular occurence in the before times — where everyone seems to be talking about the exact same startup at the exact same time — it’s become less common in the last few years. But an experience this week has me hoping that maybe it’s on the rebound. And all of that centers around Portland startup Trunknode.

What if you could chat with your codebase…? You know, along the lines of “I think I used this term somewhere” or “Who all has been contributing to this repository lately?” Or maybe just helping you better understand the code — that at one point you confidently understood but now can no longer make sense of — without having to read through hours of documentation. Whatever the case, Salal is there to help you chat with your Github repositories.

It’s never too early to be thinking about next year. So if you’re working on a startup that would benefit from taking the stage at SXSW in March 2025, you’re going to want to get your application for SXSW Pitch 2025 submitted soon. Like really soon. They’re due November 3, 2024.

I was happy to see that this conversation at WSJ Tech Live with Agility Robotics CEO Peggy Johnson was not held behind a paywall. In it, she discusses Agility Robotics’ flagship product Digit — but not its actual price tag.

I wanted to highlight this one — even though it’s stuck behind a paywall — on the chance that you happen to subscribe to the Portland Business Journal. It’s a great read. (And the PBJ does the best job of covering the Portland startup community from a journalistic standpoint.)

While startups are great, we don’t have great startups without education and inspiration for the up-and-coming entrepreneurs in our community. Which is a why I’m a huge fan of programs like Oregon MESA, a program that “equips teachers to help underserved middle and high school students excel in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) through hands-on invention education.” And now that program is even more accessible — because they’re expanding.