Portland Oregon Startup and Tech News
If you run in early stage startup circles, you’ve likely come across Product Hunt, which over a relatively short period of time has become the de facto place to launch a product—and now, if they’re physical products, ship them as well. What you may not know, however, is the Product Hunt has an Oregon connection.
I love startup folks. They’re creative. And resilient. And optimistic. And when one path doesn’t pay off, they’ll quickly start right down another one. So it should come as no surprise that two Portland founders—both representing notoriously under funded demographics among the ranks of venture capital funded startups—would look for an opportunity to fund their companies in new way. Meet Fund a Founder.
One of the challenges of the Portland startup community has always been momentum. We sometimes have great—at times even fantastic—startup news, like an exit or a major announcement. But more often than not, that happens as a solitary instance. And then it’s some time before the next major announcement. So it’s rare to have a day like today where both Torch 3D and Vacasa have major news.
Way back when… as a previous generation of the Portland startup community was starting to come together, Raven Zachary launched something called “Portland on Fire.” It was a project that played a critical role in helping introduce members of our community to one another — and provided a starting point for deeper personal connections among various folks Portland. He called the process “slow social networking.”
Used to be that Portland had a regular cadence around Startup Weekend. And while that cadence seems to have slowed, we still have our fair share of amazing opportunities for would-be founders to engage with a host of mentors in an effort to test their startup concepts. In fact, there’s exactly that opportunity this weekend with Portland Startup Weekend Latino.
As motivations for startups and more sustainable business models continue to evolve, there are an equal number of organizations rethinking the support structures for those founders and their businesses. One of those organizations has been working on the problem for half a decade. And they’ll be in Portland tonight. Meet Happy Startup School Portland.
As the summer begins to fade into the nine months of rain, a lot of folks are buckling down on the job search front. Luckily, there are a bunch of companies hiring. So if you’re looking for a gig in Portland, look no further than the Silicon Florist job board.
If my Instagram feed is any indication, a number of you just spent the last weekend running in the Portland Marathon. So this may be a little early to pound the pavement again. But trust that I’m only asking you to get back on the road because it’s for a good cause. It’s time for another 4K 4Charity Run. Read More
Not so long ago, banks were a viable means of financing business. But as the terms of that financing became more inaccessible and onerous, we saw new models arise. One of those models was venture capital. Now—thanks in part to efforts like the Zebra movement—the VC model is beginning to show its own imperfections, inadequacies, and inaccessibility. So it only makes sense that folks would start thinking about new models for financing. One of those folks is Portland’s Luke Kanies, founder and former CEO of Puppet.
As much as I love our Portland companies, I’m even happier when they can expand their markets by exporting their goods and services to other communities. It doesn’t matter if they’re tech, creative, food & beverage… you name it. Being part of the “traded sector” helps Portland. So you can only imagine how happy I was when I heard PitchBlack was being shared with other communities as well. They’ll be in Seattle on Wednesday night as part of Techstars Startup Week Seattle.
