--- title: 'Silicon Florist links arrangement for August 28, 2026' date: '2026-08-28T08:44:03-07:00' type: post word_count: 1260 char_count: 11304 tokens: 1638 categories: - Portland --- # Silicon Florist links arrangement for August 28, 2026 Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today: [AI Builder Series: AI Without the Hype — September 5, 2026](https://www.steamcircuit.com/events/ai-builder-series-ai-without-the-hype-september-5-2026) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Led by Scott Hanselman, this session is practical, grounded, and interactive. Together, participants will explore how to use AI tools in ways that actually save time, reduce repetitive work, and support creativity. The goal is not to chase buzzwords or speculate about AGI. It is to understand what is useful now, what is overhyped, and how to make informed decisions about the tools showing up on our laptops, phones, and in our work. [Startup Spotlight: Skyfarer connects pilots with flight training, aviation services and airplanes in one place – GeekWire](https://www.geekwire.com/2026/startup-spotlight-skyfarer-connects-pilots-with-instructors-mechanics-and-airplanes-in-one-place/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nick Tsang, founder and CEO of Skyfarer, wants to help fix this problem. He sees general aviation as a multibillion-dollar market that’s fragmented at every stage, without the unified online tools other industries take for granted. [Writing with AI – by O’Reilly and Tim O’Reilly](https://oreillyradar.substack.com/p/writing-with-ai) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If AI is a medium, it will take time for its possibilities to unfold, discovery on discovery. In Western painting, think of the progression from the flat, stylized religious art of the Middle Ages to the luminous colors of Giotto, the explosion of technique and realism in the Renaissance, and the many stages since. Greatness in the medium has many faces, not one. Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo are all names to conjure with, but so are the very different visions expressed centuries later by Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, O’Keefe, Kahlo, Frankenthaler, Haring, Banksy. [OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft warn of growing AI cyberattacks](https://www.axios.com/2026/08/27/openai-anthropic-issue-dire-cyber-threat-warning) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and more than 100 other companies warned Thursday that the organizations now only have months to prepare for AI-enabled cyberattacks. [Will the AI boom continue? Forecasting the trajectory of the AI industry](https://forecastingresearch.substack.com/p/will-the-ai-boom-continue-forecasting?utm_source=tldrai) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ These growth curves are extremely steep and—if they continue—OpenAI and Anthropic are set to become two of the largest companies on the planet in terms of revenue within just a few years. That is a big if. [AI and the city – by Marisa Rama – Stripe Economics](https://www.stripeeconomics.com/p/ai-and-the-city?utm_source=tldrai) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We find smaller metro areas like Hinesville, Georgia (population 90,000), Cheyenne, Wyoming (100,000), and Fayetteville, North Carolina (390,000) among the densest hubs for new business formation. Meanwhile, major metro areas that one would expect to be at the core of this surge in new businesses—like New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco—are seeing below-average business formation relative to their sizes. [Sector Snapshot: Space Tech Startup Funding Orbits New Highs ](https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/record-breaking-space-tech-startup-funding-spcx/?utm_source=cb_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20260828&utm_content=intro&utm_term=content&utm_source=cb_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20230703) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So far this year, a record $20.3 billion in global seed- through growth-stage funding has gone to companies in space- and satellite-related sectors, per Crunchbase data. That’s already by far the highest annual tally on record, and we’ve still got four months left in 2026. [On why you should invest in the most expensive YC startups | by Jared Heyman | Aug, 2026 | Medium](https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-why-you-should-invest-in-the-most-expensive-yc-startups-d5edcc9cb684) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today we’ll dive into whether the most expensive YC startups in each batch are worth the premium. [(2017) Remembering Sam Blackman](https://siliconflorist.com/2017/08/28/remembering-sam-blackman/) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sam Blackman was going to be the mayor of Portland. He might have even been governor of Oregon. And potentially a senator. But I was always convinced that he was going to be the mayor. He never told me that he wanted to be. I just knew that someday, he would be. [Why Great Advisors Give Terrible Startup Advice — Feel the Boot](https://www.feeltheboot.com/blog/why-great-advisors-give-terrible-startup-advice) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I’m an angel investor and president of an angel group, and I mostly work with pre-seed startups looking for angel investment. That’s the bias I come from, and most of my videos are aimed at that kind of company. Plenty of what I say applies to any early-stage business, but it’s always that model I have in mind while I’m talking. [Listening to the Market – Omniscient Digital](https://beomniscient.com/blog/listening-to-the-market/?utm_source=tldrfounders) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Personally, I’ve been able to calibrate my market point of view (which is strong) with the “digital watercooler” (conversations happening on LinkedIn, podcasts, and panels), and how that affects the pain points, questions, and needs customers have. I have been able to detect meaningful changes in the market’s understanding of AEO in nearly real time based on the questions and tone of my discovery calls and our client calls. [Audit your Agent files – by Addy Osmani – Elevate](https://addyo.substack.com/p/audit-your-agent-files?utm_source=tldrnewsletter) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TL;DR: Your coding agent’s configuration has a half-life. Models improve, harnesses add capabilities, codebases change, and the instructions we wrote for an older version stay behind. Recent research finds inconsistent value from personalized skills. I now run Claude’s /doctor every few weeks, review memory separately, and ask each instruction to earn its place again. [Small Models Have Arrived](https://calv.info/small-models-have-arrived?utm_source=tldrnewsletter) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think demand for “frontier-level” models is going to keep compounding. Especially for fields that require novel breakthroughs or discovery (engineering, hard science, model training). But I also think the demand for “fast/cheap/good-enough” models is just about to take off. [OpenAI Is the Sole Investor in Its Latest Venture Fund – WSJ](https://www.wsj.com/pro/venture-capital/openai-is-the-sole-investor-in-its-latest-venture-fund-ed1dd447?utm_source=newsletter.strictlyvc.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=svc-beehiiv&_bhlid=b6526d05d44bcfc6297a0232bbd2d47871a875db) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OpenAI is launching a second startup fund—this time pulling from its own balance sheet. [Korea Investment AC Opens Defense Startup Base in Oregon](https://en.sedaily.com/finance/2026/08/28/korea-investment-ac-opens-defense-startup-base-in-oregon) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The base was created as a follow-up to a memorandum of understanding signed in July between Korea Investment AC and the Oregon UAS Accelerator. The aim is to ease the time and cost burdens and information barriers that startups face from a lack of local footing when entering the U.S. market, allowing them to focus on proof-of-concept testing and building local networks. [\#StartupsEverywhere: Indianapolis, Ind. — ENGINE](https://www.engine.is/news/startupseverywhere-indianapolis-ind-relatexr) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The STTR program has been absolutely vital for us. It would have been impossible for us to raise the funds we needed for a clinical trial for what was functionally, at the time, a video game. Our pilot study looked encouraging, but the sample size was only 21, investing in a technology that early would have been illogical to a private investor. 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