Month: October 2026

In two weeks, we’ll be on Election Day for the 2026 midterms. All of which will decide governors, city councilors, and the balance of power at the federal level. There’s a lot on the line. And a lot to track. Which is why I’m really happy that our friends at Graze have built a way to monitor the Bluesky chatter. Meet Election Night 2026.

Last week was a tragic week in Bend, Oregon. And that tragedy will have lasting impact on the community and the folks that call Bend home. At the same time, many of your peers happened to be in town for the annual Bend Venture Conference, the largest and longest running early stage funding conference in the Pacific Northwest. The event continued as best as it could. And several founders walked away with funding.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Z School is (back) in session! – by Dr. Astrid J. Scholz

“Capitalizing Your (Social) Business” addresses some key underlying issues across all these questions, and provides entrepreneurs with reliable, easy to digest information about how to think about capital, how to get their business ready for it, how to find investors, and how to structure an investment.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

Oregon startup funding drops to $640.9M in first nine months – Portland Business Journal

For the first three quarters, $537.4 million was invested in the Portland metro across 63 deals. That compares to $660 million invested in the same time frame last year, across 84 deals.

Looking to connect with community…? There are a wealth of options to connect with startup and tech type, this week. And every other week. But I’m only going to list this week.

Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:

AI Portland goes to Oregon State | AI Portland

Thank you to everyone at OSU. Every single person made us feel welcome. We felt special, we learned a ton, and we had a great time. Thank you to Burt, Rachel, and Shelly for making this happen and wrangling our groups all day, and to Kagan Tumer; Forrest Masters, Kearney Dean of Engineering; Shawn Donkin, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Agricultural Sciences; our panelists; and every researcher who walked us through their work.

You already met the 17 startups in the Oregon UAS Accelerator’s Fall 2026 cohort back in August. Nine are from Oregon. The rest are from Washington, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, and South Korea. And now it’s time to watch them pitch. But recognizing that the jaunt out to Pendleton can be a bit of a haul, they’re hosting this one in Portland. (It’s by invitation though. So you’ll have to get permission to attend.)

It’s always a good sign when out of town VCs swing by Portland. That’s why I was happy to see that Andrew Chan, founder and managing partner of Atas VC, is bringing “The Road Show” to Portland on Friday, October 23, from 9:00 to 11:00 AM PT. You can request to join. But you can’t just show up.