Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
Why Bootstrapped Businesses Are More Relevant Than Ever
For entrepreneurs without the luxury of risk capital, product-market fit can’t be an odyssey. It has to be a starting point. Much of the global economy has been built this way. The path may take longer than the VC “go big or go home” approach, but many small companies scale into middle market businesses, and a few of the best find their way to market leadership, even in tech. Consider Atlassian and Basecamp. For every VC-backed startup, there are hundreds of bootstrapped founders building profitable businesses without any outside investment.
The choices we make about AI now are critical
The transition to the AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. Right now, we are not preparing adequately for that transition. If the world takes the right steps, AI will be a force for good and leave everyone better off.
AI Is a Harsh Mistress: On Anima Machina, Herd Acceptance, and the Politics of Conscious Machines – Communications of the ACM
Much of today’s discourse on AI consciousness rests not on empirical evidence but on functionalism recast as technological destiny. The argument runs that if cognition can be decomposed into attention, memory, and prediction, then implementing these functions in silicon will inevitably yield consciousness. This leap, from modeling to being, is philosophical sleight of hand disguised as scientific progress.
Sector Snapshot: Legal Tech Funding Down Slightly From All-Time High
It’s been a rapid progression to get here. In the past two years, venture investors have poured more than $7 billion into legal and legal tech startups, most with an AI focus. Funding to the space hit a record level last year, with $4.6 billion invested, per Crunchbase data. So far this year, legal tech startups have pulled in more than $2.2 billion.
In Year 10, Converge 45 Sets a New Course
The citywide arts triennial takes over Portland this weekend, and it looks a lot different this time around.
Getting Started With Agents · A 6-Class Live Workshop
The memory that resets, the instructions you give again, the sense that everyone else has figured out something you can’t quite see yet. The gap is not a skill you’re missing. It’s a system you don’t have. I spent 2,000 hours building the one that runs my business. In six live classes, I hand it to you. The system gets smarter, and so do you.
Everyone Can Build Now. What Makes You Special?
Being able to build quickly is becoming less of a competitive advantage when so many more people can do it. The advantage is shifting toward insight, distribution, customer understanding, execution, and identifying overlooked problems. However, with more people entering the arena to compete, more mediocre ideas will flood it too.
Max Mullen on when to take advice from your investors
Max Mullen co-founded Instacart in 2012 with Apoorva Mehta and Brandon Leonardo. Recently he stepped back from his day-to-day role at the company to invest in early-stage founders full time. Max sat down before an audience of speedrun founders with a16z’s Fareed Mosavat, who Max once hired as a product leader at Instacart. The conversation covered which advice founders should take, which to ignore, and what he tells every co-founder who isn’t the CEO.
Discovery Meetings Playbook
Founders have a natural proclivity to show up and give demos: “Let me show you our cool software!” But demos and presentations come later. First, we need to establish whether this organization has the need we solve, whether they’re aware of it, and whether they’ve prioritized solving it.
You need to find product-market fit again (sorry)
It came from a simple reality no company can escape: the product-market fit game never really ends. Whether it’s frontier labs attacking your territory, or the hundreds of scrappy two-person teams determined to build “[Your App] for 2026”, now is the time disrupt yourself.
Apple Holds Farewell Party for Tim Cook as Ternus Prepares to Take Over – MacRumors
Tim Cook will step down as Apple’s CEO on Tuesday, September 1, and ahead of that date, Apple hosted a farewell party for him. According to The Information, the party took place on August 23, just a day before Cook celebrated his 15th anniversary as Apple CEO.
Flipboard acquires Portland startup Graze in bid to ‘re-orient the attention economy’ – GeekWire
Portland-based social media startup Graze is joining Flipboard in a strategic acquisition aimed at expanding open social protocols and giving users control over their own content algorithms.
Where Agents Actually Pay Off: Four Tests for Finding AI Use Cases, Tue, Sep 22, 2026, 6:00 PM | Meetup
Join Firsthand’s applied AI lead, Chen Chen, for a practical session on finding the agent projects actually worth building in your business. Everyone is being told to put AI agents to work. Almost nobody can tell you where to point one, and that’s not a technology problem. You’ll learn four tests you can run on your own operation to find where an agent would genuinely earn its keep, and where it wouldn’t.
US seizes domains of Chinese botnet used to hack NASA, Justice Department, and the Senate | TechCrunch
According to the Justice Department’s statement on Wednesday, the seizures of the botnet’s domains deny the operators access to the platforms. The botnet was allegedly used by the Chinese government to break into computers across the United States, including systems at hospitals, defense contractors, and several federal government departments.
Wave energy site opens in Oregon, but no energy devices have arrived as developers face federal delays – OPB
Companies can now bring wave energy technologies off the coast of Oregon to PacWave South to test their ability to generate power in the open ocean and deliver it to the local grid. The goal is to advance an industry that’s still in its infancy but has enormous potential for cleanly generating large amounts of electricity.
(2015) Looking for a nibble of food and tech? Maybe you should check out Food Bytes
One of the things about Portland that can be frustrating is that there are all of these awesome creative people. But they’re kind of stuck in these random constricted silos. That rarely crossover. That’s why I love it when people work to break down those silos. Like tech crossover artists. Like Food Bytes.
