Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
The Startup Winter Is Always Coming
This optimism bias is natural. Nobody likes to imagine frostbite while basking in warmth. Yet the denial comes at the worst cost when the cold sets in: layoffs, shutdowns, or fire-sales at fractions of peak valuations.
VisCardia raises $9.5M funding round to advance clinical trials – Portland Business Journal
Beaverton-based VisCardia, which developed a novel therapy for heart failure, has raised $9.5 million of a $40 million funding round, according to a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
AskNicely co-founder back with AI performance review startup – Portland Business Journal
The idea is to replace the long process of surveys and reports used in 360-degree employee performance reviews with a quicker process that can happen regularly and feels like “a personal AI executive coach.” These quick bursts of feedback can occur more than the traditional once-a-year performance review.
Seattle VC firm Founders’ Co-op raises $50M for new fund to back more Pacific Northwest founders – GeekWire
The new fund will go to about 30 companies. Average initial checks will range from $1 million to $1.5 million. The firm aims for 10% ownership at the first investment. It does not invest in specific verticals, instead placing more weight on entrepreneurs.
From the Edge to the Embedding: Open Source in Action, Thu, Nov 6, 2025, 5:00 PM | Meetup
Who Should Attend: Platform engineers, SREs, DevOps, app/platform teams, OSS maintainers, and anyone curious about Kubernetes, supply chain security, observability, eBPF/WASM, finops, or AI for infra/devex.
Common Crawl Is Doing the AI Industry’s Dirty Work – The Atlantic
Common Crawl claims to provide a public benefit, but it lies to publishers about its activities.
What Happened When Small-Town America Became Data Center, U.S.A. – WSJ
Her hometown in northeast Oregon was not long ago known for a former chemical-weapons depot nearby, a state prison on the city’s outskirts and the strip clubs once dotting its main drag. But a growing fleet of Amazon data centers has turned the region around Umatilla into an unlikely nerve center for one of the most expensive infrastructure build-outs in U.S. history.
Kevin Rose’s simple test for AI hardware — would you want to punch someone in the face who’s wearing it? | TechCrunch
It’s a typically candid assessment from the veteran investor, and one born from watching the current wave of AI hardware startups repeat mistakes he’s seen before. Rose, a general partner at True Ventures and early investor in Peloton, Ring, and Fitbit, has largely avoided the AI hardware gold rush that’s consumed Silicon Valley. While other VCs rush to fund the next smart glasses or AI pendant, Rose is taking a decidedly different approach.
The Great Decoupling of Labor and Capital
Today’s megacap tech companies all exhibit a common characteristics: their growth is pretty much decoupled from their headcount. Intuitively, this might not be a news to anyone, but when I sat down and carefully jotted the numbers, the extent of the decoupling even before Generative AI truly came to the scene was a bit astonishing to me.
An individual can change an organization | notes.eatonphil.com
Drew had no special position. We all had the same title, “Developer”. But he argued so persuasively and so doggedly even when the entire organization seemed against him and somehow he eventually transformed the entire engineering organization.
AI’s Dial-Up Era – by Nowfal – Wreflection
We’re in 1995 again. This time with Artificial Intelligence.
Sentry’s Path to Product-Market Fit — A High School Dropout Turned an Open-Source Project into a $3B Company
From Burger King shifts to a billion-dollar business, Sentry co-founder and CPO David Cramer shares his lessons for early stage founders.
PDX Code & Coffee @ DeadStock Beaverton, Mon, Nov 10, 2025, 9:00 AM | Meetup
Code and Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session. Drink some coffee, bring your laptop, and have engaging conversations. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, share your knowledge, and possibly collaborate on side projects, online courses, or even your day-to-day work tasks.
Expensify Launches First Hybrid “Contextual” AI Expense Agent
Expensify (Nasdaq: EXFY), the easiest way to manage expenses, corporate cards, and travel, today announced the next evolution of Concierge, its embedded support system, now transformed into a full-service expense agent. Combining cutting-edge AI with round-the-clock human expertise, Concierge helps members save time and money by managing expenses through chat, email, and text.
Founder-focused Workshop: Finding & Proving Founder–Market Fit · Zoom · Luma
When investors back pre-seed startups, the biggest signal they look for isn’t just market size or technology — it’s you. Founder–market fit is about the unique connection between a founder and the problem they’re solving.
Seattle hiring AI officer to guide how the tech can improve city processes, partnerships and more – GeekWire
The City of Seattle is interviewing candidates for a City AI Officer position to lead how artificial intelligence is utilized across departments and offices.
How I visited the most digitally advanced country and what Oregon can learn from them
In Estonia, I got a behind-the-scenes look at how the government and the private sector can harness technology to improve public trust, streamline bureaucracy, and prepare citizens for an AI-driven future. Estonia’s example offers Oregon valuable lessons in how collaboration, adaptability, and digital trust can transform not just systems, but society itself.
Powell says that, unlike the dotcom boom, AI spending isn’t a bubble: ‘I won’t go into particular names, but they actually have earnings’ | Fortune
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell doesn’t think the AI boom is another dotcom bubble. In fact, he made that distinction explicit on Wednesday, arguing that the current wave of artificial intelligence investment is grounded in profit-making firms and real economic activity rather than speculative exuberance.
More Portland startup stories
