Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
What’s Wrong With This Idea? | Jake Worth
One of my favorite questions is: “What’s wrong with this idea?” It drives the conversation away from why the idea is great, and toward finding its flaws. That is invaluable in technology.
GLM-5: From Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering
We are launching GLM-5, targeting complex systems engineering and long-horizon agentic tasks. Scaling is still one of the most important ways to improve the intelligence efficiency of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Compared to GLM-4.5, GLM-5 scales from 355B parameters (32B active) to 744B parameters (40B active), and increases pre-training data from 23T to 28.5T tokens. GLM-5 also integrates DeepSeek Sparse Attention (DSA), significantly reducing deployment cost while preserving long-context capacity.
JOBS Act could make small, important changes for Oregon economy • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Known as the Jobs, Opportunity, Build-ready Sites (JOBS) Act, SB 1586 would make a small number of important changes to tax and land-use policy. It would expand eligibility for state research and development tax credits to clean tech and life sciences businesses as well as those in advanced manufacturing and semiconductor production.
Clawdbot and Moltbook are a False Alarm – For Now
OpenClaw as it exists today does not live up to the hype. But it does provide a peek at what may be coming. Things are moving quickly, and today’s mirage may be tomorrow’s reality.
The AI pricing and monetization playbook – Bessemer Venture Partners
An early primer on how founders and AI product leaders capture value in a world where every token has a cost, and every customer expects exponential outcomes.
From AI Hype To AI Math: The Market Just Changed The Rules
If the market is questioning AI overfunding at Microsoft, Oracle and the very center of the AI ecosystem, no one else gets a free pass.
On Leadership in the AI Era – by Maximillian Kirchoff
Leadership isn’t about authority. It’s about connection, understanding, getting into “the work” yourself, and inspiring people to become their best selves.
Something Big Is Happening — matt shumer
Here’s the thing nobody outside of tech quite understands yet: the reason so many people in the industry are sounding the alarm right now is because this already happened to us. We’re not making predictions. We’re telling you what already occurred in our own jobs, and warning you that you’re next.
Moats in the Age of AI
It’s now cheaper to rebuild from scratch in a modern language with an order of magnitude fewer lines of code, using a stack that’s native to the LLM’s training data and easy for it to traverse. What was an asset four years ago is now dead weight.
The Opening, Midgame and Endgame in Startups | Sequoia Capital
What is so incredible about the best companies, and the best founders, is that they appear to be playing the opening, midgame and endgame simultaneously.
Oregon Entrepreneurs Network Announces 2026 Board of Directors – Oregon Entrepreneurs Network
OEN is proud to welcome the new directors while retaining the majority of current members following a year of financial stabilization and rapid membership growth. This year’s board recruitment process focused on expanding industry representation and geographic reach, adding directors with investor experience and including leaders based in Ridgefield, Washington and Hood River, Oregon.
Oregon’s Economy Has Lagged for Decades. Some Blame a Shrinking Workforce and Too Much Red Tape — Oregon Journalism Project
The state needs to focus on supporting its “homegrown industries,” McMullen says. After Phil Knight co-founded Nike in Oregon, its success brought in other companies and services, he says.
Seattle: A Model for Low-Sprawl Urban Growth | Sightline Institute
The city of Seattle’s recent update to its long-term growth plan doubles down and expands on the strategies that have driven urban population growth, vastly reducing the zoning limitations on new housing construction. Dan Keshet, an Austin housing advocate and co-founder of Texans for Housing, says that Seattle may now be “the large city outside Houston with the most legal runway for growth in the US.”i
Oregon scrambles to address competitiveness crisis – Portland Business Journal
Kotek’s intensified focus on the business climate comes at a time of sluggish growth in population and wages. The state’s unemployment rate rose to 5.2% in December from a post-pandemic low of 3.6% in May 2023. Oregon slid in the CNBC ranking from 17th in 2017 and plummeted to 35th in the Tax Foundation’s competitiveness rankings from eighth in 2020. Oregon is also one of 22 state economies that are in or near recession, according to a November report from the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
