Silicon Florist links arrangement for September 1, 2026

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

Labor Day Weekend 2026: Eats, Drinks, and Happenings in Portland – Bridgetown Bites

This year, Labor Day falls on Monday, September 7, and with the adjoining Saturday and Sunday, September 5 and 6 it makes for a nice long weekend.

(2021) New leadership at the oldest startup accelerator in Portland

There have been any number of accelerators supporting Portland startups throughout the years. But no shared office space accelerator has been at it as long as the Portland State Business Accelerator. And today, that accelerator — which was founded in 2004 — announced new leadership. Arsh Haque has taken over as the PSBA’s newest director.

Read Tim Cook’s full memo to Apple employees on his last day as CEO – 9to5Mac

In the memo sent to employees this morning and obtained by 9to5Mac, Cook reflects on his time at Apple and thanks employees for all of their work. He also says he takes “enormous comfort in handing the helm to someone as brilliant and wonderful and capable” as John Ternus.

Agency and Agents – by Ethan Mollick – One Useful Thing

AI does many things, but a thing it is very good at is coding. So one of the first risks that might come from very smart AIs has to do with their coding abilities, since if you can write good code, you can also write bad code that can hack or attack other systems. As a result, the big AI companies put their AI systems through tests to determine their security risks. They take AIs without the guardrails that go into consumer versions of AI and ask them to engage in various hacking challenges. In order to make sure that there is no danger to the public, each AI instance, each individual agent, is kept in a separate space, called a “sandbox,” with no access to the internet or to each other.

Sector Snapshot: Proptech Funding Holds Up, But Investors Are Placing Different Bets

But startup investors haven’t abandoned the sector, either, Crunchbase data shows. Instead, they’re being more selective about their bets and putting more money into companies using AI and other technology to make construction, property operations and real estate transactions faster and less expensive.

The Future Tech Role Is the Product Architect – akashyap.ai

TL;DR: Coding is moving from humans to agents. As agents get better at implementing, testing, and reviewing software, the human role moves toward deciding what should be built, defining how the system should work, and verifying the result. The person who owns all three is the product architect.

Invisible Companies: Why Overlooked Businesses Win- Colossus

Invisible companies persist for a different reason: the missing information is itself invisible. Would-be competitors do not know that they do not know, so they don’t think to search. And the invisible companies have no reason to tell them. No one searches, so no one competes; no one competes, so the profits persist. The reward for being overlooked is, paradoxically, the opportunity for supranormal profits.

AI and Employment: So Far, So Good – Marginal REVOLUTION

Among those using generative AI, 85% of firms cited writing or editing documents and email as the biggest uses, half cite searching for information, 45% summarizing documents, and 13% coding. Sixty-four percent of adopters say they changed nothing about the business in order to use AI, 15% trained existing staff, another 15% built new workflows, and just over one percent hired anyone with AI skills.

NSF grant to fund PSU research commercialization programs – Portland Business Journal

“We have built an array of economic-development infrastructure in Propel PSU, and we know PSU has a research portfolio that is ready to translate,” said Joseph Janda, assistant vice president for innovation and principal investigator on the award, in a written statement. “This award lets us connect that infrastructure to PSU projects deliberately and with depth, so that more PSU discoveries become products, licenses, startups and industry partnerships that benefit Portland and the state.”

AI Builder Series: AI Without the Hype — September 5, 2026 | STEAM Circuit

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.

Claude Fable 5.1 and Mythos 5.1

We’re introducing Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1. They’re the world’s most advanced models for coding and knowledge work—and their research capabilities offer an early glimpse of how AI models will contribute to scientific progress.

Shopify Connect Link: Simplify Shopify Onboarding for Your Customers

nstead of requesting Shopify credentials or creating a Warehance user account, your team can generate a secure, client-specific connection link and send it directly to the customer. The customer simply opens the link, confirms the organization requesting access, enters their Shopify store URL, and authorizes the connection through Shopify’s standard approval flow. No Warehance login is required, and Shopify credentials never need to be shared.

Redshifted | Vibes DIY Blog

That is exactly what AI acceleration is doing to people. The most accelerated among us haven’t left; they’re right there on the payroll, in the group chat, at the meetup. They still emit — more than ever, actually. But their working notes are prompts, their essays are systems, their conversation partners are agents, and the trail they leave is stretched so far out of the human-readable spectrum that from behind, it reads as silence. We talk about these people the way you’d talk about the raptured. He used to write. She used to teach. They used to be here. They are still here. We just can’t see their light.