Month: January 2025

Oregon Startup Center — which you may have encountered under its previous moniker, the Oregon Technology Business Center (OTBC) — has highlighted upcoming change in leadership: current Executive Director Jim McCreight will be stepping down by the end of June 2025. They’re starting a search for new leadership immediately.

I can already see you scrunching up your face. “How can I get my brand in front of a targeted Bluesky audience when Bluesky offers neither ads nor targeting…?” That’s true. But you can still unscrunch your face. Because Portland startup Graze enables that kind of functionality within Bluesky. And they’d love you to help test drive it.

I can’t believe that it’s already time for the first Demolicious of the year. And the first champion to add to the Champion of Champions competition at the end of the year. All of that takes place Thursday, January 23, 2025, at the new UpStart Collective Westside. The event is free to attend.

While we’re lucky to have tons of one-off sort of events for the startups community, it’s rare for us to have a day dedicated to Portland startups. But that’s exactly what’s happening next Thursday, January 23, 2025, on the Portland State University campus. What’s on the docket…? I’m glad you asked.

When the platform you’re targeting is moving fast, you have to move fast, too. So it comes as little surprise to me that Graze is continuing to push the envelope — and share the metrics — on their Bluesky tooling designed to assist with the creation of custom feeds and enable paid placement of content within those feed. (What does surprise me is how good they are at documenting these activities.)

If you were on the fence about attending the Silicon Forest Tech Summit because you weren’t sure you’d have time to make the journey out to Hillsboro, get ready to be happy. The event is 10 days away — and now it’s relocated to Portland. So you should just get off of the fence and go.

While we’re still in the afterglow… Great event last night for the sold out 2025 Kickoff for the Portland startup community. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it out and hang out with folks. It was great to have all of the people and all of the energy around all of the things.

While it’s rare for VC-funded Portland startups to get into the realm of “strategic investors” — those VC funds run by corporate entities that are designed to fund strategic endeavors that benefit both the startup and the corporation — there has been collaboration from time to time with Intel Capital, the capital arm of Intel. Well, amid massive rethinking and restructuring at the company, Intel Capital is being spun out.