--- title: 'Silicon Florist links arrangement for October 19, 2026' date: '2026-10-19T11:23:26-07:00' type: post word_count: 1534 char_count: 14417 tokens: 1995 categories: - Portland --- # Silicon Florist links arrangement for October 19, 2026 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](https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2026/10/16/oregon-vc-investment-slows-q3.html) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. [The Booming Portland Economic Sector No One Talks About? Music Equipment.](https://www.wweek.com/culture/2026/10/17/the-booming-portland-economic-sector-no-one-talks-about-music-equipment/?utm_source=Master+Audience&utm_campaign=02be9282a5-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_10_13_08_06&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-02be9282a5-87983696&mc_cid=02be9282a5&mc_eid=a0f38241c7) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A 2023 study published by Portland State University estimated that Oregon’s concentration of music instrument and gear manufacturers is double the national norm. Narrowing to the Portland metro area, the industry’s concentration is six times the national average, according to 2026 research by Music Craft Northwest, a music equipment industry advocacy group. Its findings identified over 130 independent instrument and gear makers in Portland and Southwest Washington, including synthesizer and electronics builders, luthiers, and drum, brass and microphone manufacturers. [Oregon governor candidates on small business support – Portland Business Journal](https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2026/10/16/kotek-drazan-on-supporting-oregon-startups-in-2027.html) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Given the impact on the regional economy, I circled back to the candidates and asked them to share, in 300 words or fewer, how they would support Oregon small businesses and startups. Here’s what they had to say… [Regularly Revisit the Ideal Customer Profile – David Cummings on Startups](https://davidcummings.org/2026/10/17/regularly-revisit-the-ideal-customer-profile/) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Entrepreneurs would do well to sharpen their ideal customer profile and stay laser focused on the long-term mission while constantly asking the question: Does this potential new customer help us achieve our goals? [(2010) City of Portland: Calling all Androids! Well, at least these specific models of Android devices.](https://siliconflorist.com/2010/10/19/city-portland-calling-androids-specific-models-android-devices/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, the City of Portland has been working on those other platforms and devices. And now, they’re ready to test an app for the open source Android operating system. (Or maybe not so “open.”) Got an Android device? Want to help the City test its app? Right this way. [Cybersecurity Jobs Report, 2026 through September | CyberSN](https://cybersn.com/resources/reports/cybersecurity-jobs-report) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Every number here counts job postings: what employers asked for, not jobs or people. United States only, with duplicate listings removed at the source. One dot is 200 postings. The CyberSN taxonomy defines 45 cybersecurity functional roles. Reading the ten leadership roles as one CISO area gives 36 areas, 33 of which have a posting series here. [Data Centers Have a New PR Plan: Your Kid’s Field Trip | WIRED](https://www.wired.com/story/data-center-industry-is-trying-to-woo-kids/) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amid a wave of backlash, some industry-friendly groups are employing creative and time-tested strategies to woo the youth. [\[2610.18861\] Hybrid Reasoning Agents](https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.18861) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- These designs preserve tool-integrated agentic capabilities while making latent thoughts directly inspectable. Building on this architecture, we further develop dedicated post-training algorithms for hybrid reasoning: HybridSFT stabilizes tool-integrated hybrid generation by teaching the backbone to coordinate with HybridLink, then HybridRL scales reasoning by learning when to think in latent space and when to act through text. [If you don’t run your own LLM proxy, how the fuck do you even know whats going on?](https://jrdsgl.com/if-you-dont-run-your-own-llm-proxy-how-the-fuck-do-you-even-know-whats-going-on/) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Own your infrastructure, your application visibility, data pathing, and storage. I do this at home because it’s fun and it’s how I like to learn. I do this at work because I’m not doing my job right if I don’t. I may never fully understand how the fuck a large language model works well enough to white board it in an interview. But I can wrassle it down and make sure it’s instrumented while serving inference. [This geothermal startup produced a tiny bit of power… | Canary Media](https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/geothermal/geothermal-startup-power-seafloor-drilling) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Endurance Energy tested its novel underwater geothermal tech off the coast of Oregon. The firm has raised $63 million for its ​“eyebrow-raising” approach. [Deepfake of Washington County, Oregon, Candidate Goes Viral Nationwide — Oregon Journalism Project](https://www.oregonjournalismproject.org/deepfake-of-washington-county-oregon-candidate-goes-viral-nationwide) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fai, who lives in Aloha, is running against fellow Commissioner Pam Treece in the Nov. 3 election to become chair of the Washington County Board of Commissioners, which oversees the county’s $2 billion annual budget. Her race has already endured one bizarre turn of events last month, when then-Chair Kathryn Harrington resigned her position six days after flipping her middle finger at Fai during a board meeting. [Portland & Public School Closures](https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/ORPORTLAND_ENT/bulletins/42f7722) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Projections are only a glimpse into a possible future—our decisions matter now more than ever. Economically thriving, affordable, opportunity-rich cities grow, attract families, and make it possible to raise children. Economically thriving cities are forced to make fewer painful choices like the ones our community now faces. [Consumer sentiment slides in September amid high gas prices – Portland Business Journal](https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2026/10/19/consumer-sentiment-slide-mcsi-morning-consult.html?utm_source=st&utm_medium=en&utm_campaign=me&utm_content=PO&ana=e_PO_me&j=47987618&senddate=2026-10-19&utm_term=ep1&empos=p1) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Portland metro area has consistently sat near the bottom of the index, and it fell farther last month, sliding 80 to 79.2. That score is lower than all but 11 of the metros in the survey. [How employment is changing at Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/research/employment-at-anthropic) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How has AI restructured work and employment at Anthropic? As a company at the frontier of AI adoption, Anthropic could be a leading indicator of how AI will shift work organization, hiring, and labor demand across the economy. [The 2026 Portland Fermentation Festival](https://www.portlandfermentationfestival.com/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20261019_Newsletter_Portland&utm_term=Portland_Daily) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sample fermented foods and beverages, get tips and recipes from professional and amateur makers. Categories include: Pickled Vegetables – Kraut – Meat / Fish Liquid – Dairy – Solid Dairy – Liquid: Non-alcohol / Alcohol – Soy Ferments (Tempeh, Natto, Miso) and Other! [Weekly Review: Where the Work Moved – by Sam Keen](https://writing.alteredcraft.com/p/weekly-review-where-the-work-moved?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=5059820&post_id=221023791&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ieqz&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello, and welcome to Altered Craft’s weekly AI review for developers. Thanks for reading, and for passing it along to your teams. This week’s pieces keep landing on one question: once agents write the code, where does the slow part go? Anthropic rebuilt code review and replaced Git to keep pace, decision models take on the small yes/no calls, and the news weighs what each agent loop costs before closing on Brooks’s Law. [Valuations Need a Correction – by Nnamdi Iregbulem](https://whoisnnamdi.substack.com/p/valuations-need-a-correction?utm_source=tldrfounders) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These misleading metrics dominate startup headlines and public conversation. They lead us astray in our efforts to understand the state of the venture market, and anyone using these numbers as a benchmark pays a price for it: founders pricing rounds based on peers’ valuations, investors citing “comps,” the LP marking their book. Worse, this misconception can mask deep structural problems. [My old job feels very distant now](https://www.pinecoder.dev/blog/2026-10-15/my-old-job-is-distant/?utm_source=tldrnewsletter) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I can hardly remember first experiencing ChatGPT. Its become so infused into my professional life, that going back to that first moment, or moments, is difficult. Instead a blur of a few moments. At some point, I realized it was a better Google. It was very similar to when Stackoverflow took off, and how Google search results for coding topics went from being useless to useful. Absence of results indicating a “you are holding it wrong” moment. I remember toying with it, and then remember Bryan nagging me “did you ask ChatGPT?” and being constantly annoyed. Until I wasn’t, and that became my default starting point. [Hacktoberfest Hack Day Portland x Portland AI Devs · Luma](https://luma.com/1zwqvzab) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join us for Hacktoberfest Hack Day Portland x Portland AI Devs — a one-day, in-person community hack day focused on learning, collaboration, and open-source contribution, part of Major League Hacking’s Hacktoberfest. 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