Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
The 25 Restaurants That Made Portland | Portland Monthly
Over the past quarter century, Portland has been an unexpected center of this revolution, which democratized what a “good” restaurant was and turned the notion of dining out from date nights and special occasions into an entire way of life.
Fran Sans Essay — Emily Sneddon
Fran Sans comes in three styles: Solid, Tile, and Panel, each building in visual complexity. The decision to include variations, particularly the Solid style, was inspired by my time working at Christopher Doyle & Co. There, we worked with Bell Shakespeare, Australia’s national theatre company dedicated to the works of William Shakespeare. The equity of the Bell Shakespeare brand lies in its typography, which is a beautiful custom typeface called Hotspur, designed and produced by none other than Dave Foster.
How LLM Inference Works
When you enter a prompt into an LLM, the model converts your text into numbers, processes them, and returns a response one token at a time. In this article, we go through the journey of LLM inference and see how it works.
Agent Design Is Still Hard | Armin Ronacher’s Thoughts and Writings
TL;DR: Building agents is still messy. SDK abstractions break once you hit real tool use. Caching works better when you manage it yourself, but differs between models. Reinforcement ends up doing more heavy lifting than expected, and failures need strict isolation to avoid derailing the loop.
AI is Rewiring the Economy from cheap goods to cheap services
AI will force us to reconsider commerce, consumerism and the norms of our economy. We will enter a world where consumers buy less stuff, but with much higher conversion. Middle-income consumer populations will have less disposable income as their jobs come under pressure from AI. Meaning consumerism ceases to be the driver of economic growth.
The Product-Market Fit Treadmill: Why every AI company is sprinting just to stay in place
PMF used to be something companies would hit, maintain, and scale. You’d reach PMF, ride it for a few years, then invest in the next horizon when competitors or markets shifted. That era is dead.
Boom, bubble, bust, boom. Why should AI be different? | annotated by Ben
All this means two things to us: 1)The AI revolution will indeed be one of the biggest technology shifts in history. It will spark a generation of innovations that we can’t yet even imagine. 2) It’s going to take way longer to see those changes than we think it’s going to take right now.
Opinion | From Apple to Meta: How Silicon Valley Lost Its Spine – The New York Times
The answer is simple, if dispiriting: For tech companies, courage doesn’t scale.
State economist gives insight into Oregon’s slowing economic reality • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Economic policy expert John Tapogna said Oregon’s policies are outdated for the challenges the state faces today.
Get ready for Small Business Saturday!
Small Business Saturday is fast approaching! This annual event is a fantastic opportunity to support small businesses in our community—and to drive traffic to your own small business as well. This year’s Small Business Saturday will take place on Saturday, November 29.
AI Portland Co-Working Day · Luma
Whether you’re working on a business plan, creative ideas, or just need a change of scenery, this is a fantastic opportunity to meet and network with others, share experiences, and gain inspiration in a collaborative environment.
More Oregon startup stories
