Silicon Florist links arrangement for September 24, 2025

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

Cultivate Bend to celebrate packaged goods manufacturing with growth summit | The Bulletin

The day-long event is part of the High Desert Innovation Week, a region-wide effort to bring together innovators, startups and growing businesses to share resources in Central Oregon. The keynote speaker will be Mark Maggio, co-founder of Boulder Canyon, a packaged goods brand, who will talk about scaling brands, navigating buy/sell transactions and how to thrive in competitive markets.

The 28 AI tools I wish existed

It’s September 2025. We have Claude Opus 4.1. GPT-5. Nano banana. There has never been a better time in the history of computing to build software. Here are a few ideas I wish existed.

To vibe or not to vibe

When I’m using AI for coding, I find myself constantly making little risk assessments about whether to trust the AI, how much to trust it, and how much work I need to put into the verification of the results. And the more experience I get with using AI, the more honed and intuitive these assessments become.

The Oregon Scorecard – Oregon Business & Industry

So, we bring you the Oregon Scorecard, a collection of information that sheds light on Oregon’s overall economic health and relative competitiveness. Only by considering a wide range of facts and other information can you develop a complete picture of where Oregon excels – and where it falls short.

Tender Loving Empire seeks $1.45M in crowdfunding campaign – Portland Business Journal

Since 2007 Tender Loving Empire, the indie and artist-focused retail shop and record label, has returned more than $20 million back to the 500-plus makers whose products have lined its shelves. Now the couple behind TLE is looking to the community to continue to grow the empire. They are raising money on the crowdfunding website Wefunder with a target of $1.45 million.

Your Phone Plan Is Addictive by Design. This One Pays You to Quit 💥

Dayo Update — My running experiment with the app that pays me to use social media less (spoiler: I’m up $51).

September 2025 Federal Funding News

September is the month we typically work with small businesses pursuing NIH, DOE, NSF, USDA/NIFA and EPA SBIR and/or STTR funding. This year is a little different. NSF is open and accepting proposals until November 5th, 2025, but we are still waiting for the new NIH SBIR omnibus and Department of Energy to publish their solicitations. There are currently no EPA SBIR solicitations open at this time.

Other Oregon startup stories