Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
The Myth of the Magical Money Fairies — Chris Neumann
There are a lot of myths and misconceptions that exist around the world when it comes to Silicon Valley. In my experience, no topic is more misunderstood (and, frankly, misrepresented) than fundraising.
Business Oregon Awards Grants to Organizations Assisting Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs
$4.5 million will be awarded to 28 technical assistance organizations statewide
SNAP Meals: Where To Eat, No Questions Asked, During the Suspension of SNAP – Bridgetown Bites
We’ve put together a list of places—50 businesses making up 84 locations, at the writing of this roundup—where people can access food to eat while SNAP benefits are unfunded starting next month.
Delivery Is a Visibility Problem – Ron Bronson
Watching the World Series reminded me that every organization is just a dugout full of decisions waiting to be made. Some nights you win because you guessed right. Most nights you win because the people closest to the play were trusted to call it.
ConductorOne Recognized as SINET16 Innovator for Advancing AI-Native Identity Security
ConductorOne, the AI-native identity security platform, has been named a 2025 SINET16 Innovator, recognized as one of the sixteen most innovative and compelling cybersecurity technologies of the year.
Beyond Standard LLMs – by Sebastian Raschka, PhD
I hope this article is still useful as an introduction to all the interesting LLM alternatives that emerged in recent years.
On the ‘new’ Y Combinator. Over the last few years, Y Combinator… | by Jared Heyman | Nov, 2025 | Medium
Over the last few years, Y Combinator has gone through two major transformations at the same time: the AI revolution & Garry Tan returning to YC as President & CEO. These changes have had a huge impact on the profile of YC startups and founders, which will be the topic of this post.
When the Music’s Over: Founder Life Immediately After Failure — Charlie O’Donnell – Coach, Writer, VC
Your investors will survive. Their kids will still go to college. Your employees will find other jobs. You might have disappointed some people — but that’s because they were rooting for you.
The Only Thing That Matters – Commoncog
If your thesis cannot fit into one page, then it’s not worth doing. Most things should be done for simple, understandable reasons. Otherwise they should not be done at all. Investments tend to fall into this category. Deals also.
What if we are the bubble?
The bigger, more pernicious bubble may turn out to be human labor itself.
Tech Sparks with Rose City Techies, Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 5:30 PM | Meetup
Join us for an exciting evening of rapid-fire inspiration with Rose City Techies at the most beautiful co-working space in all of Portland, Kiln. At Tech Sparks, local innovators, developers, designers, founders, and creators will each have 10–15 minutes to share their tech-related stories, ideas, experiments, and insights. No slides required (But, you can if you’d like) — just short, powerful talks designed to spark conversation and connection.
Northwest Museum of Cartoon Arts Set to Open This Month
Portland is known as a hub for the comics industry, as the home of Dark Horse Comics, Oni Press and dozens of nationally and internationally known artists. Now, that community has its own new hub with the opening this month of the Northwest Museum of Cartoon Arts at 322 NW 8th Ave.
🎧 What Jason Fried Learned from 26 Years of Building Great Products
Fried is the cofounder and CEO of 37signals, the makers of product management tool Basecamp and web application framework Ruby on Rails, and you can see his obsession with product reflected back by his loyal users. In this episode of AI & I, Dan Shipper and Fried talk about everything he’s learned about building something whole, from the way he designs software to his philosophy around running a company.
The Grid Can’t Keep Up With AI, But Startups Are Primed To Help
Investment dollars are flowing to modernize the existing grid and mitigate vulnerabilities to ensure that grid physical assets are sufficiently resilient to withstand the strains of increased energy demand and extreme weather. Fortunately, a host of companies are innovating in this critical space to address these challenges.
Move in to the neighborhood
With so many users, the health of conversations becomes so important. Bluesky is testing some new changes to improve the health of conversations online, including concepts of social proximity and toxicity detection.
More Portland startup stories
