Month: April 2025

It’s not often that a Portland startup gets recognized by the Oregon Book Awards, but this week, that’s exactly what happened. A Kids Co. — which started as A Kids Book About and was eventually acquired by DK — and its founder Jelani Memory were selected as the 2025 recipient of the The Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

PDX Startup Week Preview + New Workshops, Events, and Resources!

Every other Friday, we’ve been gathering founders here in our space to informally chat and network. I love learning about all the cool things Portland area founders are working on. It gets my mind racing – trying to figure out ways we can help them.   The best thing, though, is seeing founders connecting and helping each other. Its definitely a startup thing to want to help other founders — but Portlanders take offering to help to the next level.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Oregon Startup Conference 2025: Where Innovation Meets Community Tickets, Fri, Jun 20, 2025 at 10:00 AM | Eventbrite

Get ready for a high-energy, one-day experience spotlighting Oregon’s brightest entrepreneurs and early-stage startups. The Oregon Startup Conference is more than a pitch event—it’s a celebration of bold ideas, community-driven innovation, and the power of entrepreneurship to shape the future of our region.

As someone with more than 30 years of history with this place — Portland has been my home for three decades, but I had visited often prior to that — I’m among the worst offenders when it comes to “getting nostalgic” about Portlandy things. But I always appreciate when folks shake me out of that “Remember when…” stupor and bring me back to reality. Which is why I loved this post from Angel Medina.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Trade-offs to Investing Regionally  — Oregon Venture Fund

Since its founding in 2007, Oregon Venture Fund has limited its investments to startups with a presence in Oregon and Southern Washington. More specifically, our criteria is – at minimum – at least one founder or key leader should have a primary residence in our region.

I can remember last year somebody making the claim that there wasn’t enough VC in the Pacific Northwest. Well, that seems to be changing. And our neighbors to the north seem to be doing more than their fair share in activating more venture capital for investing in the startups being built in our region. The latest? Fortson.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

ChEmpower Secures $18.7M to Advance Abrasive-Free Planarization in Chip Manufacturing

ChEmpower, a semiconductor materials company providing polish pads and chemical solutions for planarization, announced it has raised $18.7M in Series A funding. The funding will help scale its technology for advanced chip manufacturing and packaging. The funding round was co-led by M Ventures and Rhapsody Venture Partners. New and existing investors Intel Capital, Pangaea Ventures, Foothill Ventures, In-Q-Tel (IQT), and TEL Venture Capital also participated in the funding.