Silicon Florist links arrangement for September 26, 2025

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

How to Make Sense of Any Mess

This book outlines a step-by-step process for making sense of messes made of information (and people). The steps are in order but most projects are not, so feel free to skip around or jump to a specific term from the lexicon.

Next Portland is Relaunching, With Your Help – Next Portland

Over the course of the year, I’ve been working with friends and colleagues to transition Next Portland into a nonprofit—a greater reflection of the community-led impact and attention the site has garnered since the beginning. With the creation of this new organization, the goal is to attract more volunteer effort and collaboration with both public and private sectors. I hope to make the site a collaborative project, dedicated to the longtime mission of making it easier to discover what’s being built in Portland.

Raise Institutional Capital or Make Do Without – David Cummings on Startups

There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to raising institutional capital. The best approach for an entrepreneur is to be intentional and consider personal and team goals and aspirations.

Everything you’ve been told about burnout is wrong

Burnout is not what it presents: it’s not about working too hard for too long, burnout is about working in the face of a goal that seems too far out, too unattainable, too abstract.

Roux Portland set to take over L’Echelle, Farag’s other events – Portland Business Journal

The event is a partnership between production company House of Commons and nonprofit business support organization Xcelerate Women and is designed to highlight women in the culinary, food and beverage industry.

The Arc Of Venture Capital Bends Toward Democracy

The scale of the opportunity is enormous. Missing out on a $20 trillion AI wave isn’t just unfortunate — it’s locking out the majority of Americans of a generation-defining creation of wealth. Private tech also provides diversification in an era when public portfolios are dominated by the “Magnificent Seven.” And with 60% of public equity assets held passively, denying those same long-term investors access to private growth feels increasingly arbitrary.

These YC founders pivoted 5 times before building a social app that nabbed 300K users and over $1M ARR in 6 months | TechCrunch

A couple of months ago, the founders behind YC-backed social app Candle were in “pivot hell,” cycling through more than a dozen ideas after joining Y Combinator’s Fall 2024 batch, while the clock on their seed money ticked down.

Airship Named in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Multichannel Marketing Hubs | Airship

We believe this is a testament to our commitment to helping brands overcome one of the biggest  challenges in the digital world: moving beyond cross-channel messaging to optimize the entire customer experience with personalized, native interactions right where conversion happens — on your apps and websites.

AI Is Gorging On Venture Capital. This Is Why ‘Physical AI’ Is Next

Whether this proves to be a bubble or a long-term global trend is still unclear. As Crunchbase News Senior Data Editor Gené Teare pointed out at the opening of the summit: “We are two to three years into a new investment cycle. Despite the billions raised by foundation model companies, we are still in the early stages of funding to AI, which will shape the next two decades.”

Portland AI Engineers October Meeting

This is a great opportunity to sample a diverse range of what builders are up to in the AI engineering space. Be ready to provide feedback and your unique perspectives. We focus on the tech, this is not a sales pitch event.