Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
2026 Oregon Competitiveness Summit & Gubernatorial Candidate Forum – Portland Business Journal
Join Oregon Business & Industry and the Portland Business Journal for a gubernatorial candidate forum and business roundtable session that will address the major economic and competitiveness issues facing our business community.
Staying in the game – Toni.org
And the network keeps expanding as more apps launch. Thanks to our standard.site integration, Bluesky users can now read articles, blog posts, and newsletters from across Atmosphere-powered apps like Leaflet, Offprint, and pckt. We will add more ways to highlight and integrate new apps as they launch. A few that recently caught my eye: Skysquare, Gifthood, Roomy, Mu, co/core, and Standard Reader. Those are all from just the last few weeks, a snapshot of the breadth of innovation happening in the Atmosphere.
Own the Data Loop – by Sabrina Albert and Vivek Ramaswami
We fully agree that data capitalism (or the data flywheel) is the correct approach, and we take that a layer deeper. While enterprise buyers should be protecting their operating intelligence from vendors, AI-native companies can build defensibility in the first place by embracing data capitalism. How? Not by avoiding frontier models, but by treating them as a rented engine underneath a data loop the company owns outright: one that compounds with every interaction and survives no matter which model wins this quarter.
PIGSquad’s Will Lewis | CreativeMornings/Portland, OR
Hi, I’m Will! I’m the Founder & President of the Portland Indie Game Squad, a 501(c)(3) community platform that helps folks of all demographics and skillsets make games together! I recently directed PIGCON, a Portland Indie Game Convention led by my vision of helping people share their creative projects and experiences in a safe, encouraging, collaborative environment accented by industry connections and learning activities.
Most regional startup ecosystems are built around programs. Buffalo is starting to be built around conditions.
The question is whether the ecosystem’s design is sophisticated enough to convert those assets into compounding outcomes, or whether it will optimize for the metrics that look good in press releases from Empire State Development. Based on the evidence of the past several years, the answer is trending in the right direction. The work isn’t done but then, it never is.
Oregon falls to 42nd in CNBC rankings of best places for business – Portland Business Journal
Oregon slid once again in CNBC’s rankings of America’s Top States for Business, landing at No. 42 on this year’s list. The state has plummeted 25 places from 17th since 2017.
Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats – The New York Times
The statement, titled “We Must Act Now,” was signed by nearly 200 people, including 15 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of two of the leading A.I. labs, Open AI and Anthropic. Other notable signatories include Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic; Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google; and Vinod Khosla, a prominent venture capitalist.
Intel to invest €5bn in Irish plant as AI chip demand surges
Intel will invest €5bn to expand semiconductor manufacturing in Ireland as the US chipmaker seeks to grow production of processors used in AI systems, in a boost for Europe’s ambitions to build a stronger chip industry.
(2020) Travel back to the earliest days of Puppet with founder Luke Kanies
Origin stories. They tend to be the thing of myth. Glossed over and hazy. Usurped by unnecessarily hyperbolic embellishment. All to accentuate the drama. But leave it to Luke Kanies, founder of the company that would eventually become Portland’s Puppet, to take a different direction. To share a borderline gonzo origin story.
The ‘absolute magic’ of Morse code that still connects people globally
While the technology may seem rudimentary, the community behind it continues to find ways to connect with people, one series of dots and dashes at a time.
How to read more books
I want to explain to you here what I did to become a prolific reader, and what I learned in the process, so that, with a bit of effort, you can do it too. I promise, it will be worth it.
10 Startup Lies I Had to Unlearn the Hard Way | by Shray Talks | Jul, 2026 | Medium
What surprised me the most was that every costly mistake I made began as a perfectly reasonable assumption. I was not making irrational decisions. I was making decisions based on beliefs that felt true because they matched everything I had experienced before becoming a founder. The market slowly dismantled those beliefs one by one, and every lesson came with a cost.
Oregon business closures outnumber openings — and the gap is growing – oregonlive.com
Oregon businesses are shutting down faster than new ones are opening, according to the latest federal and state data. That’s a marked departure from historical trends and another signal of how the regional economy has faltered in the years after the pandemic.
The Future Worth Building Is Human – Thinking Machines Lab
Artificial intelligence can do more every day, but deciding what it should do is up to us: individuals, organizations, humanity as a whole. These decisions require knowledge and judgment that people acquire through continuous contact with the work, increasingly done alongside AI. Shaping the goals of advanced intelligence is also a continuous process of feedback, learning, and realignment.
THE B2B STANDARD (v1) – by Rob Snyder
Here is the standard – what “good” looks like – for a sales-led B2B startup. The standard applies if you’re selling enterprise or SMB, AI or SaaS. It applies before you have hired in sales and after you’ve hired in sales. It applies from the moment you have an idea – not “when the product is ready.”
Memetic transfer
In the last two decades, the internet has amplified this transfer by a few orders of magnitude. This is how my uncle who can’t read and lives in a mud house knows about mr. beast. this is significant because this was only made possible by the memetic transfer across states, countries, languages and rivalries.
How Oregon’s state agencies adopted drones over the last decade • Oregon Capital Chronicle
From zero registered devices in 2013 to hundreds in the skies today, public agencies say drones save money and keep staff safe
Early signs suggest Oregon governor’s race is competitive – OPB
The poll of 600 Oregon voters in late June showed 48% favored Drazan, 44% favored Kotek and 6% were undecided, according to high-level results released by the campaign. The final 2% either refused to answer or indicated support for a third party.
D4D Hackathon lays foundation for defense AI ecosystem in APAC – The Korea Times
Supporty and Kestrel also received special awards linked to an Oregon-based UAS accelerator program in the United States. Organizations from Oregon are scheduled to visit Korea on July 14 to sign a memorandum of understanding, marking the first case in Korea in which a domestic hackathon resulted in a direct U.S. market entry.
I built a business I hated. Here’s how I didn’t see it coming.
Are you building something designed for who you actually are? Or are you building something designed to prove a point to people who may not even be paying attention anymore? What would you build if you stopped trying to win something and started asking what’s actually true about you?
Expensify Launches Consolidated Travel Billing to Simplify How Companies Pay for Business Travel
“Central billing cards have long been the default solution for companies that don’t want to distribute corporate cards to employees, but they often introduce new challenges around reconciliation, visibility, and administration,” said Ryan Schaffer, CFO of Expensify. “With consolidated travel billing, we’ve reimagined central billing for modern travel programs, giving companies the convenience of centralized payment with a much simpler management experience. For travel managers, it’s a better way to pay for business travel.”
StrateSea Technology: Building the Intelligent Brain for Autonomous Subsea Operations – Elevate Capital
StrateSea grew out of the intersection of my career in oceanography, AI, and building technology inside large organizations. I had spent years working with complex sensor data and later leading teams focused on making advanced analytics useful and accessible to real users.
Summer BBQ for SIM PDX Women: Connections Beyond the Workplace, Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 3:30 PM | Meetup
This family-friendly gathering is all about building meaningful connections, strengthening our community, and enjoying time together in a relaxed summer setting. Enjoy great food, refreshing drinks, lawn games, networking, and plenty of time to connect outside the office. This is a relaxed celebration of community, conversation, and the relationships that make this network so special.
8-6-26 Accelerate Biotech Happy Hour » Calagator: Portland’s Tech Calendar
Come meet fellow innovators, entrepreneurs, and industry professionals, share ideas, and build relationships that help strengthen our growing bioscience ecosystem.
Table of Experts: Oregon businesses must embrace the AI revolution – Portland Business Journal
They spoke with Guillermo Christensen, K&L Gates National Security, AI and Cybersecurity partner and Co-Chair of the AI Solutions Group; Megan Notarte, Cloud Four partner/vice president and AI Portland cofounder; and Rep. Daniel Nguyen, chair of the Oregon House Committee on Economic Development, Small Business & Trade and Bambuza founder. Here are their insights.
More Oregon startup news
