Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
120 years ago, Portland hosted a ‘World’s Fair’ that changed everything (then disappeared) – OPB
Though it took place 120 years ago, photographs and memorabilia from the Lewis and Clark Exposition still fascinate, with images showing a temporary city of ornate buildings and thoroughfares surrounding a lake. Today, it is all long gone.
The Three Ways I Work With LLMs
After years of building with LLMs—most recently the systems that let Cora triage emails by importance and draft replies intelligently—I’ve distilled my coding approach to three core patterns, each optimized for a different kind of cognitive load. These three workflows got me from grumbling about AI gurus on X to shipping features before lunch.
2025 Oregon Angel Food Winner Announced – Oregon Entrepreneurs Network
This year’s OregonAF investee is Functional Botanicals. The Ashland-based company crafts a luxury, dry face wipe using a combination of essential oils and pressed biodegradable bamboo. Cassandra Davis, founder, pitched at the event while her partner cheered from the audience after traveling from Southern Oregon for the event.
State lawmakers push back on federal proposal to limit AI regulation | StateScoop
The lawmakers argue that the decade-long moratorium would hinder their ability to protect residents from AI-related harms, such as deepfake scams, algorithmic discrimination and job displacement.
TechCrunch exits Europe: ‘It’s a gut punch to the ecosystem’ | Sifted
European startups are mourning TechCrunch’s withdrawal from the region after the leading industry outlet quietly shut down local operations, with many long-serving staff made redundant.
Here’s the startups that won OregonAF, Westside Pitch – Portland Business Journal
Tens of thousands of dollars were awarded to entrepreneurs in a pair of annual startup events in the past month.
Tiny Awards
Each year we ask the online world to nominate their favourite creative, non-commercial website built in the past 12 months. A panel of selected expert judges drawn from across the wide world of web-based creativity then pick their favourites. Finally, the entire web then votes upon this list to pick its favourite. The winner, as chosen by public vote, wins a small prize and a small handmade trophy (and we hopefully give an even smaller prize to each nominee).
The Startup Debt Dilemma: When Leverage Helps And When It Hurts
The fundamental requirement for any loan is repayment. That hinges on predictable, recurring revenue, not projections, not pending contracts. Debt is best served when your cash flow is consistent and your unit economics are proven.
What Portland Loses if the 118-Year-old Rose Festival Ends
The problems are myriad, but they boil down to this: The Rose Festival is a three-week festival of mostly free events with only one meaningful economic engine, CityFair.
You should be vibe coding for GTM – by Alex Shartsis
AI coding means building your own tools from scratch. It’s much bigger – people have built actual web products. A React website. A Python scraper. You don’t even need to know what coding language React uses to do this (and I’m not gonna tell you!).
VCs Are Funding Two Things Right Now – by Jeff Becker
TLDR: Over the last year, the venture industry has stratified into AI and DeepTech with 66% of all VC dollars deployed evenly into both. Everything else is down 63%.
Product Velocity
Product velocity is how fast your rocket is going. The faster you make product velocity, the more value you provide users, the more users on the margin you’ll be able to attract, and the more word of mouth from users that already love your product.
More Portland startup news
