Startup and tech news, jobs, and events in Portland and Oregon
A lot of my focus tends to fall on companies that call Portland home. But that doesn’t mean that’s the only spot in the region with amazing startups. Beaverton, Vancouver, Bend, Eugene, Corvallis… they’re all over the state. And I need to do a better job of highlighting that. So let’s start with Beaverton startup Bigleaf, who just so happens to be holding an open house, this week.
Tucked back away in the recesses of my brain are any number of trivial Portland startup community facts I’ve gathered over the past two decades. One of those tidbits — for which I rarely have use — is the fact that Brad Fitzpatrick, the creator of the iconic LiveJournal — arguably one of the earliest and most popular harbingers of the modern social media world — grew up in Beaverton and attended Aloha High School.
[Editor: If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times. Not every startup event has to happen in the evening. Folks have families. And lives. That’s one of the reasons I’m rebooting Portland Lunch 2.0. And that’s why I’m glad that we have event organizers like Josh Carter who organizes Coffee w/ Co-Founders, a caffeine fueled morning happy hour for founders. This is a guest post from Josh.]
In the world of startup accelerators, there are two juggernauts: Y Combinator and Techstars. So I’m always happy to hear when a local company makes it into one of those programs. Especially when it’s the original Techstars in Boulder, which — at least in my mind — carries with it an additional prestige. And that’s where Bend startup LuDela will be spending a three-month stint.
While it used to be common knowledge around these parts, Portland Lunch 2.0 seems to have become a bit of an enigma. I can tell, because every time I start talking about it, folks are like “How do we even do a Portland Lunch 2.0?” Fair question. Let’s see if we can clear some of this up. For both attendees and hosts.
Like most things Portland, there are a ton of awesome makers and manufacturers in town doing a ton of awesome things. But thanks to our culture of aggressive humility, we don’t always know about all of that awesomeness. That’s why it’s nice to have things like the Friends of Fictiv happy hour. If only to bring some of those hidden gems in our midst to light.
If you’re like me, you know a lot of folks who work from home. They might be working for a company that favors remote workers, like Automattic. Or maybe they’re working solo on their own business. Or it could be that they’re part of a startup team that is saving capital by avoiding rent.
When I caught the news about Orchestra Software’s equity round, I was immediately reminded of Jama Software. Both companies were bootstrapped early on. They both took on investment after a number of years in business. And the amount of the funding was roughly the same amount.
Startups can always use more support. So it’s always nice to see new startup accelerators in Portland. And while I’ve written about the concept of The Initiative before, it’s now an actual thing with startups and stuff. Nine woman led cannabis companies, in fact.
You’ve all seen it. The stock imagery. It’s the high fiving white dudes. Or the oddly tokenized board room shot. But what if available stock photography wasn’t so cheesy? And what if it represented a broader range of the folks we work with day in and day out? That’s what Disabled and Here is hoping to accomplish. And they could use your help.