Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
City of Industry: Portland, Oregon–Number one large metro in new manufacturing firms – City Observatory
The Portland metropolitan area, with 2.47 manufacturing firms under five years of age per 10,000 population is number one. It outranks San Jose and Austin (high tech powerhouses), Houston and Nashville (sunbelt boom-towns) and regional rivals, like Seattle. Phoenix is often cited as an exemplar of economic development, but Portland generates almost twice as many new manufacturing firms per 10,000 population as Phoenix (1.31). The median value for these 50 large metro areas, (1.45 local manufacturing firms ages 5 and under per 10,000 residents) is shown as a red dashed line).
TEDxPortland co-founder unveils sneaker museum plans – oregonlive.com
“There’s a lot of big swings that will transform our city over the next 10 years,” Rae said in an interview after the event. “And our little sneaker project is just one part of the story. It’s not a silver bullet. It’s not going to save downtown. It’s not going to save our city. It’s going to help with the reframing of the identity of our city.”
EOU students win awards for their business ideas | East Oregonian
The Rural Engagement and Vitality Center announced Eastern Oregon University students Indy Gauthier and Jacob Sanchez took home first place for their digestive supplement concept. The pair won $500 for their efforts.
Bigger checks, fewer bets: Seattle startup deal count drops to lowest level since 2020 – GeekWire
The deal count was the lowest since mid-2020, continuing a trend of venture capital concentrating into fewer, larger rounds, with a disproportionate share of the funding going into a smaller handful of promising startups, many of them in artificial intelligence.
These 3 Charts Show How Venture Capital Has Concentrated At The Top In 2026
Q1 2026 marked an all-time quarterly high for venture investment, thanks to the biggest funding deal ever for a private company. But those milestones mask a different reality for many startups on the ground: While more money than ever is being invested in the private markets, that’s thanks to larger checks, not more of them.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation lose antitrust trial in New York | AP News
The ruling, in a lawsuit brought by dozens of states, won’t immediately bring relief for concertgoers who have long complained about high ticket prices. But it could cost Live Nation hundreds of millions of dollars and perhaps force the company to sell some of its concert venues when the judge hands out penalties later.
We Don’t Really Know How A.I. Works. That’s a Problem. – The New York Times
For us to trust it on certain subjects, researchers in the growing field of interpretability might need to learn how to open the black box of its brain.
Republican Candidates for Governor Raise Millions
Dudley, best known for his time as a Portland Trail Blazer and his 2010 bid for Oregon governor, has raised the most: $2,214,530 from 269 contributions. But nearly half of his haul—$1 million—came from Nike co-founder Phil Knight. (In the last governor’s race, Knight gave $3.75 million to unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson and $1.5 million to the Republican nominee, Christine Drazan.)
As renaissance fairs become big business, can they retain their counterculture roots?
Renaissance fairs were originally conceived as a creative refuge for artists sidelined by political repression during the Red Scare. Now, they sit at an uneasy crossroads between countercultural expression and commercial spectacle. Having grown into a nationwide industry with tiered tickets, branded merchandise and multimillion dollar valuations, the fairs can easily be seen as an offshoot of a corporate theme park.
The Complete Guide to Claude Code: CLAUDE.md | by zhaozhiming | Mar, 2026 | AI Advances
A comprehensive guide to the CLAUDE.md file in Claude Code, including how it is loaded, how to write it, best practices, and how it compares with similar files in other AI coding tools
Oregon has a clear roadmap to a more affordable, reliable energy future. Will we take it? • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Oregon is clearly at an energy crossroads: Energy demand is surging, utility bills are rising and wildfires and extreme weather — exacerbated by the climate crisis — are becoming both more common and more damaging.
The Other Side of the Table: What Eight Years as a Founder Taught Rob About Investing
There’s a particular kind of investor who has sat where the founder sits. Who has raised the round, managed the board, made payroll in a month where the math didn’t quite work, and felt the specific loneliness of being the person everyone else in the company looks to when things get uncertain. These investors see differently — not because they’re smarter, but because they’ve been on the receiving end of the exact decisions they now get to make.
Anthropic loses Claude Code trust in black-box fight
The claim was not that Claude felt off after a bad afternoon. It was that the tool had started reading less code before editing it, stopping earlier, looping more often, and requiring more human correction in complex engineering work. Within two weeks, the complaint had become a broader accusation: Anthropic had nerfed Claude.
Portland leads U.S. in manufacturing startup rate per capita – Portland Business Journal
The report landed on the heels of a City Club presentation by Oregon State Economist Carl Riccadonna that surmised the state isn’t in a recession. Oregon’s latest monthly employment report indicates that the manufacturing sector lost 100 jobs between January and February.
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