Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
How I’d answer some of the trickiest questions SF investors ask
I’ve had a tonne of messages from readers of my last post all wanting to know the same thing – so how do you answer those questions?! What are VCs looking for?
Avel Gordly, first Black woman elected to Oregon Senate, dies at 79 • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Avel Gordly, one of Oregon’s most influential civil rights champions and a politician who was often referred to as the “conscience of the state Senate” for her strong moral compass, died at home on Monday. She was 79.
OpenAI’s acquisition of OpenClaw signals the beginning of the end of the ChatGPT era | VentureBeat
The chatbot era may have just received its obituary. Peter Steinberger, the creator of OpenClaw — the open-source AI agent that took the developer world by storm over the past month, raising concerns among enterprise security teams — announced over the weekend that he is joining OpenAI to “work on bringing agents to everyone.”
Experiential Reinforcement Learning
Across sparse-reward control environments and agentic reasoning benchmarks, ERL consistently improves learning efficiency and final performance over strong reinforcement learning baselines, achieving gains of up to +81% in complex multi-step environments and up to +11% in tool-using reasoning tasks.
The Impossible Backhand
AI can get to maybe the 95th or 98th percentile of creating something that looks perfect, but then it isn’t, and if you have deep knowledge you can spot it immediately. The consensus narrative treats this as a temporary limitation. But it might be structural.
I Have Questions… — Chris Neumann
If I get to the end of your deck and haven’t seen any mention of competition, then I have questions.
Biotech Startup M&A Is Reliably Delivering Some Big Exits
Per Crunchbase data, 2025 and 2024 were two of the strongest years on record for biotech M&A. While we’re still below the 2021 peak, we’re also well past the subsequent low point, as charted below.
Preserving The Web Is Not The Problem. Losing It Is. | Techdirt
There is no question that generative AI has changed the landscape of the world wide web. But it is important to be clear about what the Wayback Machine is, and what it is not. The Wayback Machine is built for human readers. We use rate limiting, filtering, and monitoring to prevent abusive access, and we watch for and actively respond to new scraping patterns as they emerge.
GeekWire’s AI summit to feature key leaders from Amazon, Microsoft, and more, on March 24 in Seattle – GeekWire
The event, presented by Accenture, focuses on questions that are top of mind for many right now: What does the rise of AI agents mean for productivity, the future of work, and the way companies and industries operate? We’re bringing together people who can speak to both the big picture and the practical realities of putting AI to work inside organizations.
Call for Startups: Oregon Innovation Showcase
The Oregon Innovation Showcase highlights the region’s most promising early‑stage companies that are ready to step into the spotlight for investors, industry partners, and ecosystem leaders. We’re seeking startups that reflect the momentum and quality of last year’s cohort: founders building real products, gaining early traction, and preparing for meaningful capital raises. Get high visibility exposure exhibiting your startup, and if applicable, a chance to present on stage during the Venture Showcase.
Building on Sand: The Hidden Cost of AI Model Churn
The companies that built AI features as if they were building on a stable API surface are now discovering the cost of that assumption. The ground is moving, and the products built on top of it are moving with it — whether teams are ready or not.
Reality’s Moat — David Beyer
When building is free, most of what we call “moats” dissolve. Scale advantages in commodity features can be replicated in hours. Proprietary datasets built from recordings and logs lose their edge once AI can train on equivalents. Integration complexity gets rebuilt by describing what you need. Network effects around a settled product collapse when switching is free, because the crowd moves.
In Arena Funding Talks, Oregon Officials Are Playing Not to Lose — Oregon Journalism Project
When three struggling governments negotiate with the man who built the nation’s biggest subprime auto lender, taxpayers should get ready to pay.
Why Nvidia Paid $20B for a Small Startup
This deal touched a nerve because it arrived at a moment when the ecosystem feels tense. This wasn’t one of those stories where the ending feels obvious in hindsight. It didn’t arrive through a predictable procedure, and it wasn’t about hype, momentum or timing.
Build Your Own Game Jam 2026 Overnight On-Site Tickets! — Portland Indie Game Squad
This year for Build Your Own Game Jam, we’re hosting an overnight site like we used to before the pandemic! You can set up your station for over 24 hours and sleep over – tickets also give access to food, coffee, and special PIGSquad swag.
Oregon startup news
