Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
What a Former-Founder-Turned-VC Looks For · Luma
Liz Wessel has seen both sides of the table. Before becoming a Partner at First Round Capital, she co-founded WayUp at 23, scaled it to 6M+ users, raised $40M, and exited via merger in 2021 — after nearly 8 years as CEO. Before that, she was part of the Product & Brand Marketing team at Google.
How AI is expanding what people do at work | OpenAI
Our new report, Work at the Frontier: How AI is Expanding What People Do at Work, studies this shift. We call the resulting pattern task crossover: work historically associated with one occupation appearing in the AI use of people in another. In our AI Jobs Transition Framework(opens in a new window), we argue that many jobs are likely to reorganize: these are jobs whose day-to-day tasks could change substantially. This report is the first in our new Work at the Frontier series, which explores how AI is changing work in real time.
(2009) Entrepreneur: Portland is one of the best entrepreneurial cities
From the “telling you what you already know” department, Portland is a great place for startups, it seems. No, I’m serious. Don’t believe me? Well, how about Entrepreneur magazine? They’ve named Portland, Oregon, one of the best cities in which to be an entrepreneur, nicknaming the Portland “the cooperator.”
Is there really a global loneliness epidemic? Research reveals a more complex picture
The findings challenge the classic idea that loneliness is simply a private struggle. Instead, they suggest it is also a social condition, influenced by the economic circumstances, institutions and strength of community life.
AI Seed Investors Flock To Cybersecurity
When investors place larger bets at seed, there’s usually at least one of two core reasons. The first is that the founder or founding team is impressive enough that backers are willing to invest primarily on the mission and people. The second is that the startup has demonstrated impressive traction with its earliest efforts.
Open Source Must Be Fun (Or It Will Die) | Mike McQuaid
As I’ve written before, the scarcest resource in open source is not money but the motivation of the maintainers. Sending Homebrew $1000 today doesn’t magically create any more maintainer time (but please donate if you can afford it to fund Homebrew’s infrastructure, stipends, grants and meetups). We all have jobs that aren’t maintaining Homebrew. We receive small amounts of money ($300/month) if we’re actively maintaining Homebrew. This is not a “market hourly rate”.
Google’s AI search is rapidly becoming the default, new data shows | TechCrunch
AI search is rapidly becoming the default, whether users like it or not. In just a year’s time, Google’s AI-generated answers in search, known as AI Overviews, have gone from appearing in 15% of searches to 43%, according to a new report, driving a shift in how web users consume information online.
Hillsboro bans new data centers in surprise city council meeting – oregonlive.com
The Hillsboro City Council unanimously adopted a four-month moratorium on new data centers Monday morning. The council met with just one day’s notice to prevent the tech industry from pre-empting the action by submitting applications ahead of the council vote.
Context Is the Currency – Todd Greco
This reframes everything, including cost. The way to drive cost per outcome down over time is not to wait for cheaper tokens. It is to build richer context, because a well-contextualized agent wastes nothing. And context has a property that time never had: it compounds. Every specification written, every decision recorded, every convention encoded makes the next task faster and more accurate than the last.
