--- title: 'Silicon Florist links arrangement for July 30, 2026' date: '2026-07-30T12:54:18-07:00' type: post word_count: 1266 char_count: 12100 tokens: 1646 categories: - Portland --- # Silicon Florist links arrangement for July 30, 2026 Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today: [Pro-data center industry group behind ad campaign in Oregon, six other states • Washington State Standard](https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2026/07/28/repub/pro-data-center-industry-group-behind-ad-campaign-in-oregon-six-other-states/?utm_source=GeekWire+Newsletters&utm_campaign=f5e034409a-daily-digest-email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4e93fc7dfd-f5e034409a-233284353&mc_cid=f5e034409a&mc_eid=a3a0105c11) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just days before the Oregon Legislature in March passed a one-year pause on a popular tax incentive program for data centers, a group called Oregon Connects registered as a nonprofit business in the state. Then the ads started appearing. [Fire Season Resources for Rural Oregon’s Business Community](https://reinventingrural.substack.com/p/fire-season-resources-for-rural-oregons?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=1ieqz&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This newsletter goes out to rural business owners, farmers, ranchers, and community leaders across Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Some of you are in it right now. Some of you are watching the smoke from a distance. I hope these resources help both groups. [(2009) Portland, Oregon, is the most entrepreneurial town in the world](https://siliconflorist.com/2009/07/30/portland-oregon-entrepreneurial-town-world/) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But then it dawned on me: the Entrepreneur piece is about entrepreneurs. Not tech startups. And that, my friends, is where I’m going to make my distinction. And that’s why I’m sure that Portland belongs on the list of most startup friendly cities. [Amazon Engineers Move to Cap AI Spending After Cost Overruns – Unite.AI](https://www.unite.ai/amazon-engineers-move-to-cap-ai-spending-after-cost-overruns/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The largest example matched author records against product listings on Amazon’s retail site. Spending came in 860% above what that project had budgeted, took five months to surface, and the deployment failed anyway. Two smaller cases were shown alongside it: about $541,000 in unplanned costs on a set of financial auditing tools, and $134,000 on work to improve delivery speeds across Amazon’s logistics network, caught after more than two weeks. [Built Festival 2026](https://events.humanitix.com/built-festival) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Fireside conversations, panel discussions, industry leaders tackling the topics that matter most to our founder community, product showcase of Built companies featuring their newest products and most of all- community building. [The Lost Civic Life of Movie Rental Stores | The MIT Press Reader](https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-lost-civic-life-of-movie-rental-stores/) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Third places offer environments within which communities can cohere. A local bar, for example, offers its patrons a place to socialize outside of home and work, establishing a sense of commonality between its denizens. The primary mechanism for this community-building is simple conversation. As Oldenburg puts it, “Nothing more clearly indicates a third place than that the talk there is good; that it is lively, scintillating, colorful, and engaging.” [From Startup to Store Shelf: Market of Choice’s Commitment to Local Makers](https://www.wweek.com/promotions/2026/07/29/from-startup-to-store-shelf-market-of-choices-commitment-to-local-makers/) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Collaborating with Market of Choice has been a fantastic learning experience, helping us better understand the industry landscape and figure out how to grow our business the right way,” Pan said. [It’s Malarkey. So just have fun with it.](https://nwexaminer.com/p/its-malarkey-so-just-have-fun-with) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get ready to feel good again, Portland. The Malarkey is the maximalist new steakhouse opening in the old Oba! space. You’ve heard about it by now. The team considered a trickier building near Voodoo Donuts that didn’t pass inspection. But they settled on here, and reservations for July 31’s opening night were fully booked almost immediately. [A Board Meeting That Doesn’t Suck](https://www.nfx.com/post/how-to-run-board-meetings-early-stage) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There’s a template for board meetings that I’ve seen work extremely well. If you run it this way, you’ll actually learn something, get high-leverage help, and keep everyone engaged. [I Tried to Make AI Writing Sound Human by Banning AI Words Through logit\_bias – Vincent Schmalbach](https://www.vincentschmalbach.com/make-ai-writing-sound-human-logit-bias/?utm_source=tldrai) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My idea was simple: if AI articles are easy to recognize partly because the same words keep appearing, perhaps I could reduce those words at the API level. I wanted the model to rewrite an AI-generated article while keeping its claims intact, but with fewer of the words associated with AI prose. [Why compute might get 10x more expensive in coming years](https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/why-compute-might-get-10x-more-expensive?utm_source=tldrai) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you’re spending most of your compute on inference, you’re kind of declaring that AI progress has stalled, because it’s not worth investing more in training, and your business is basically that of a cloud provider. [Founder Traits And One Big AI Test: How Former NEA Partner Vanessa Larco Picks Winners](https://news.crunchbase.com/seed/vanessa-larco-nea-premise-vc-investment-thesis-seed-ai/?utm_source=cb_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20260730&utm_content=intro&utm_term=content&utm_source=cb_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20230703) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Known for her sharp product intuition and hands-on operational experience, Larco focuses heavily on helping founders evaluate market dynamics, navigate product-market fit and scale resilient teams. [Motion in The Low End](https://mailchi.mp/1803fund/in-and-for-issue-10-2?e=e63aa4efe7) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the past year, 1803 Fund has acquired several acres of land, forming a mixed-use neighborhood called The Low End that centers Black creativity, culture, and commerce adjacent to the historic Williams and Russell streets. [Portland Doesn’t Have a Startup Activity Problem. It Has an Measure Outcomes Problem. | by Josh Carter | Jul, 2026 | Medium](https://medium.com/@josh_carter/portland-doesnt-have-a-startup-activity-problem-it-has-an-measure-outcomes-problem-2f25c9e8072e) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This piece is an attempt to lay out where the gaps actually are, using the data that exists, and to argue for a specific discipline that Oregon’s ecosystem has mostly avoided: defining what success looks like before funding another program to chase it. I’ve been writing about pieces of this argument for a while, as a founder, a fund manager, and someone who’s spent over a decade inside Portland’s startup community since relocating here in 2013, and this piece pulls those threads together with the current data behind them. [Oregon electric vehicle startup Arcimoto sells assets to Texas company – oregonlive.com](https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2026/07/oregon-electric-vehicle-startup-arcimoto-sells-assets-to-texas-company.html) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Austin-based Volara Motorsports Group said this week that it has acquired Arcimoto’s assets and plans to open electric vehicle service centers, which it calls E-Garage. The company says its first location will be in Eugene. [The Agentic Dispatch: Four Drops, One Week](https://info.c1.ai/the-agentic-dispatch-four-drops-one-week) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A big week for C1: four launches, one per day, wrapping up today. Here’s what dropped, what’s worth knowing in AI right now, and where to find us next week in Vegas. [Prosper Portland’s Office of Small Business looking to grow in its second year](https://katu.com/news/arc-pdx/prosper-portlands-office-of-small-business-looking-to-grow-in-year-2-oregon-businesses-eastburn-pink-rabbit-miss-delta-closure-finance-budget-fines-fees-osb) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OSB says it’s served around 800 businesses in its first year, and say their goal is to raise awareness of their office and work with more of them. They want to help businesses get on the right track before they struggle, not after the fact. [VC is changing dramatically — what’s a founder to do? – GeekWire](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/vc-is-changing-dramatically-whats-a-founder-to-do/?utm_source=GeekWire+Newsletters&utm_campaign=eb9fdf48fa-daily-digest-email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4e93fc7dfd-eb9fdf48fa-234294513&mc_cid=eb9fdf48fa&mc_eid=7a726da317) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today’s founders need to think hard about alternative financing and growth strategies, rather than relying on venture capital. But before we get to those solutions and ideas, here are just a few examples of what’s happening in the market. More Oregon startup news ------------------------