Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
The Internet I Grew Up With Doesn’t Exist Anymore – cleberg.net
Once upon a time, the internet didn’t even exist. When it did, the internet was a place. It was a place you went. You selectively chose to visit the internet, based on your own free will.
The AI jobs debate just got messier | TechCrunch
The report found that companies spending heavily on AI are growing headcount faster, even in the entry-level roles that many fear are doomed. According to the report, “high-intensity adopters” — firms that spend on average $30 per employee per month on AI in the first three months — saw headcount increase 10.2%.
Ignore 90% of AI — A Defensive Field Guide for Small Business Owners — Signal + Noise
The AI market is noisy by design — every vendor wants urgency, every headline wants fear, every demo wants you to confuse possibility with priority. This is a filter for owners who need leverage, not another sales call.
Trump drops restrictions on Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models | TechCrunch
The U.S. has lifted a requirement that Anthropic obtain a license before exporting its Mythos and Fable models abroad, a requirement that effectively cut off public access to what are widely considered the most advanced AI models released to date.
The ‘Father of the Internet’ is finally retiring | TechCrunch
Vinton Cerf will step down from his role as Google’s chief internet evangelist next week, marking the conclusion of one of the most influential careers in technology history.
Why I Stopped Arguing With People | A Geek’s Page
Over the years I’ve slowly stopped arguing. Not because I stopped caring about being right, but because I finally understood what an argument actually is, and what it can and cannot do. Here is what changed my mind.
The best startup pitch deck ever built
What does the perfect pitch deck look like? To answer that question, we selected the absolute best slides from our slide library, OpenDeck, and combined them to create “the best pitch deck ever”.
Airport Overhaul Is Officially Complete
The maze of construction walls have officially lifted and the next iteration of Portland International Airport is complete. After 11 years of planning and phased construction, the Port of Portland wrapped up Oregon’s largest public infrastructure project to date on Tuesday, June 30—$2.15 billion later.
Claude Code agents: what they actually are | Data Science Collective
A ground-up guide to subagents In Claude Code for practitioners who want to understand the feature before building with it.
Central Oregon sees a drop in homelessness after years of steady rise • Oregon Capital Chronicle
Nearly 1,700 individuals experienced homelessness across three central Oregon counties in 2026, a 19.1% drop from about 2,100 people in 2025, according to the Homeless Leadership Coalition’s point-in-time count.
Woodstock Food Carts: Coming To Woodstock Blvd in Portland – Bridgetown Bites
They look to open in this summer. The owners write, “This is a prime location with great visibility, strong neighborhood vibes, and a community that loves good food.”
How public celebrations quietly remake what it means to be American
Public celebrations – such as parades, festivals and even road races – can help with this. They play a critical role in society, incorporating the newest Americans into the community and creating a greater sense of belonging for everyone.
Things I Think I Think – Q2 2026 — Chris Neumann
There is a magical time once every 4 years when the world comes together around the beautiful game. Given all of the geopolitical changes that have taken place over the past few years, it’s hard not to smile at the fact that cohost United States will play its first elimination game today, on Canada Day, while Canada will next take to the pitch on the 4th of July.
Spotlight: Eric Fruits and Joe Cortright — Oregon Journalism Project
Two economists have sharply different takes on the recommendations by Gov. Tina Kotek’s Prosperity Council.
Exclusive: No More Side Hustles: Why AI Startup Omnea Will Give Employees $250K To Openly Plan Their Next Startup
“Starting a business, you don’t want to speak to investors who you don’t know. You want to speak to people you know and trust, who want you to succeed and know what they’re talking about,” said Ben Freeman, founder and CEO of Omnea, in an exclusive interview with Crunchbase News explaining why the company decided to start the initiative. “And ideally, you want to get the advice of your colleagues. But it’s always taboo — telling your colleagues you want to go start something and quit your job. I don’t think it needs to be.”
We Need To Save Venture Capital From Bad Data
When I moved into investing, it was a shock to me how far behind the industry was, comparatively. Today, as every financial institution scrambles to prove it has an AI strategy, the pressure to do something visible with the technology overrides the desire to do something useful with it. The way most investment teams adopt AI today is, to put it charitably, misguided.
Sip and Learn Tickets, Wednesday, July 15 • 8 AM – 10 AM | Eventbrite
This isn’t your typical networking event. It’s part coffee break, part storytelling circle, and part growth session — where founders, creatives, and dreamers come together to share the ups, the downs, and everything in between.
Let It Crash: How to Steer What Comes After
The products of a technology bubble are more durable than the bubble itself. Technological fervor drags an absurd amount of capital into the new thing and pours it into infrastructure that no rational, sober investor would have built that fast. Britain got a railway network out of railway mania. The 1990s gave us the fiber that carried everything we built in the 2000s, laid by companies that mostly went bankrupt laying it. The investors lost their shirts; the rails and the fiber stayed.
The primitive is the product | Amplify Partners
And once you get the primitive right, it becomes the building block that everyone else standardizes around. The abstraction ultimately becomes the interface, the interface becomes the ecosystem, and the ecosystem becomes your competitive advantage.
The Founder’s Guide to Secondaries: Getting Liquid Before the Exit.
Selling your shares privately, without an exit, is now a bigger source of liquidity than the entire IPO market.
1803 Fund buys Albina industrial properties for redevelopment – Portland Business Journal
“These properties are part of a neighborhood called The Low End — a name with roots in Albina’s early days, given its proximity to the river’s flood plain,” 1803 Fund CEO Rukaiyah Adams said in a statement. “Our vision connects Albina Riverside, The Low End, and the surrounding neighborhoods into one thriving district.”
The twilight of the chatbots – by Ethan Mollick
But abstract graphs only get you so far, and they can hide how jagged the frontier is (and also the fact that the open weights models, while very impressive, do not always perform as well as their benchmarks would indicate). To get real insight, you need to try using AI for different use cases and rigorously assess how good they are in the areas that matter to you.
