Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
New Census Data Shows Oregon Is Losing Residents in Their Prime Earning Years — Oregon Journalism Project
“A lot of what I’ve seen in terms of the dynamics and population really do have to do with affordability,” says former state economist Mark McMullen, now with the Common Sense Institute Oregon. “The places people are moving to are much less expensive than where they’re moving from.”
The Oregon Disconnect: How SB 1507 Impacts Private Companies
When federal and state rules no longer align, planning becomes more nuanced. Exit events, capital expenditures, and ownership transitions now require a dual-lens analysis.
Social media court ruling: reckoning for Big Tech? | The Week
Critics are calling this “Big Tech’s Big Tobacco moment”, a reference to how cigarette makers in the 1990s had to overhaul their businesses after courts ruled that their products were addictive and harmful.
Cameras have quietly appeared in thousands of US cities – now, their integration with AI is sounding alarms
These camera-based systems capture the license plate data of passing vehicles, along with images of the vehicle and time stamps. More recently, these systems are using artificial intelligence to create a vast, searchable database that can be integrated with other law enforcement data repositories.
Oregon business leaders urge Gov. Kotek to think bigger with prosperity council effort • Oregon Capital Chronicle
“If Oregon responds incrementally, the state risks drifting into a prolonged period of modest growth, fiscal constraint, and diminished national relevance. If it responds decisively, it can renew its economic model for a slower growing, more competitive nation,” the letter reads. “The work of the prosperity council should aim unmistakably at the latter outcome.”
What do frontier AI companies’ job postings reveal about their plans?
And those posts contain clues about what products a company is developing, who it hopes to sell them to, and which bottlenecks it sees coming. A posting for a “Camera ISP Software Engineer” suggests a device with a camera. A search for “Forward Deployed Engineers” hints at the challenges of deploying AI inside companies. A cluster of roles mentioning robotics implies ambitions well beyond chatbots.
Oregon food industry launches Food Forward initiative – Portland Business Journal
The elements are here, proponents say. Oregon is home to industry-leading national brands including Tillamook County Creamery Association and Bob’s Red Mill. Few places can match the breadth of Oregon’s agriculture sector, which includes hazelnuts, pears, grapes, cattle ranches and dairy farms, salmon and crab fisheries, all of which support award‑winning restaurants, wineries and craft brewers.
Oregon isn’t just losing businesses, it’s losing their growth – Axios Portland
The big picture: Several state, industry and academic reports detail how competitive incentives, aggressive recruitment and more direct engagement from elected leaders in other states are shaping where Oregon-grown companies go next.
AI Companies Are Building for the Wrong Users
If you’re reading this blog, you’re almost certainly deep in the AI bubble. You’ve probably used Claude Code or Cursor to build something from scratch on a weekend and told everyone you know about it. You’ve definitely seen the LinkedIn posts — the ones breathlessly explaining that a repo with Claude Code skills for go-to-market is going to revolutionize the way you do sales. We get it.
Avoiding The Eye of Sauron – by Evan Tana
In Lord of the Rings, the Eye of Sauron is an all-seeing force. Once it fixes on you, there’s nowhere to hide. Today, the foundation model labs are starting to feel the same way and the line of sight is only getting bigger.
What about juniors? – Marc’s Blog
The real good news here is that software engineering is more powerful than ever before, and seems set to become even more powerful. The economic and societal opportunity represented by software is greater than ever before. Junior software engineers who are comfortable expanding their scope shouldn’t, in my opinion, worry about their careers.
We need better stories about the future. – by Ashley Mayer
The only way these figures make sense is to insist that the world is on the verge of profound change. Investors need to believe that nearly everything about how we live and work will be upended, and that the value in this new paradigm will be captured by these businesses.
Teaching an AI Agent to Make Beautiful Charts | Dr. Randal S. Olson
Most AI-generated charts look generic because nothing stops them from being generic. This series takes a different approach: an AI agent builds each visualization from scratch, then revises it until it passes the Tufte Test, a quality standard built on Edward Tufte’s principles for clear, effective charts. The posts below track that progress, one chart at a time.
Business Oregon RFP 10-Year Innovation Plan – Portland Business Journal
This work is intended as a check-in at the half-way mark of the plan, said Business Oregon spokesperson Amber Nabors. It is also meant to acknowledge economic changes that have occurred since the plan was adopted.
Startup Corvallis (Food/drink/networking get together), Wed, Apr 1, 2026, 6:30 PM | Meetup
Startup Corvallis is all about meeting new and known innovators, talking about our projects, what we need, and what’s new from the universities, OSU/UO/PSU to the cities (PDX to EUG) and the many connected organizations that are part of our ecosystem.
The Stoic Startup: Building Unbreakable Companies from the Inside Out, Wed, Apr 1, 2026, 5:00 PM | Meetup
Enter the Stoic Startup. Instead of optimizing for external validation, these companies are engineered for internal excellence. They cultivate virtue as their core operating system, creating organizations that don’t just weather disruption—they get stronger because of it.
ICEout.tech
This cannot continue, and we know the tech industry can make a difference. When Trump threatened to send the national guard to San Francisco in October, tech industry leaders called the White House. It worked: Trump backed down.
