Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
Women.Money.Power – Portland Tickets, Thursday, Apr 30 from 8:30 am to 1 pm | Eventbrite
Join us this April in Portland for Women. Money. Power. — a gathering designed to celebrate women’s economic influence and create space to learn, connect, and be inspired.
Beaverton chip startup fJscaler raises $7.5M – Portland Business Journal
That means the company’s footprint will grow. “And it will grow in Oregon,” Desai said. “We are 110% committed to Oregon, to the Beaverton area.”
Judge questions Pentagon’s “troubling” Anthropic actions
“I don’t know if it’s murder, but it looks like an attempt to cripple Anthropic,” said U.S. District Judge Rita Lin.
My Prodigal Brainchild – by Neal Stephenson – Graphomane
Reader, I have changed my mind. Twenty years from now, everyone is still going to be staring at handheld rectangles. Or at least that is the case if the only alternative is wearing things on their faces.
Exclusive: Zuckerberg launches Meta Small Business
Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday is launching Meta Small Business, a company-wide priority to support entrepreneurship and drive AI adoption.
Companies Aren’t Ripping Out Business Software for AI. Here’s What They’re Doing Instead. – WSJ
Despite the AI-driven software stock meltdown, America’s largest corporations aren’t ditching their core business software just yet. Instead, they’re using the moment to squeeze better deals from vendors and “vibe-code” smaller apps and software customizations.
Why is big money once again flexing its muscles in Oregon ballot measures? • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Oregon private equity executive John von Schlegell recently filed a barrage of ballot measures designed to imprint his pro-sprawl, anti-tax agenda permanently into the Oregon constitution. His eleven ballot measures run the gamut from taxes to growth boundaries, from education to permitting, from campaign finance to criminal justice.
Ideas to speed up Oregon’s climate reduction efforts prompt pushback from the state’s agriculture sector – OPB
The Oregon Department of Energy’s 48 “gap measures” to help the state meet its carbon reduction goals met questions and criticism from the state’s agriculture board.
What’s Going on with Seed Rounds? — Chris Neumann
While Seed-stage investments have been anchored around the market hypothesis for more than a decade, in the past few months things have shifted considerably. And the reason starts and ends with “AI”.
Kleiner Perkins Raises $3.5B For AI-Focused Funds
Storied venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins announced Tuesday that it has raised $3.5 billion across new funds with a primary focus on artificial intelligence.
What It’s Like to Live in Portland, Oregon – The New York Times
“I think Portland has a P.R. problem,” said Pamela Baker-Miller, owner of Frances May, the boutique she opened 18 years ago in the city’s downtown. “Portland is a really special place to live, and it’s a really amazing place to start a business.”
Portland urged to revive public-private partnerships model – Portland Business Journal
But too often, we assemble one-off teams without shared experience and expect them to deliver complex projects from scratch. That leads to excessive planning and delayed execution. The private sector is brought in too late to shape outcomes, rather than engaged early as a true partner.
Revenue Durability is Failing in the Age of AI
No one really has faith that software (or even AI) revenue is actually durable today. If you want to raise money, get acquired, or one day IPO, then this is the most important question to try to answer.
Why free trials don’t make sense (and what UA tactic to try instead)
Free trials are declining as AI-driven costs, shorter payback expectations, and web funnels push faster monetization. Short trials dominate despite lower conversion. Paid trials and ‘trial qualifier’ events improve signal quality by filtering high-intent users, enabling more effective UA optimization while maintaining sufficient event volume for ad networks.
There are only two paths left for software | Andreessen Horowitz
By the end of next year, everything between those paths of high growth and high profits will look like no-man’s land: growth pressure, persistent dilution, and multiple compression. CEOs today need clear initiatives to drive toward one of these as an output.
Agency
Agency is the ability to hold the entire loop in your head and act on it. What does the user actually need? What should this feel like to use? What’s the fastest way to build it that isn’t embarrassing? How do we know if it worked? A high-agency person can move through that whole sequence without waiting for someone else to hand them the next step.
