Portland Oregon Startup and Tech News
There’s this weird thing about milestones: they make you super reflective. Like “rethink the whole world order” reflective. And other things affecting the world order only tend to exacerbate that. So after a decade of blogging about the Portland startup community, I hope you’ll forgive my few moments of introspection. The topic this time? Patreon.
It’s no secret that Portland likes its shiny new technology. We’re among the earliest of adopters and the most curious of hobbyists with all sorts of newfangled stuff. And that means that once a technology enters the popular lexicon, we tend to be fairly well phrased in its applications and potential. So when it comes to technology like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence, folks in Portland have a great deal to say. And they’ll be doing exactly that during the next Portland Business Journal Power Breakfast.
In today’s world, there can be any number of inputs that affect our mood and behavior. And thanks to some of our modern efficiencies, many of those inputs can be tracked and quantified. So what if you could use those metrics and observations to better understand human behavior—and the triggers that affect behavior? That’s a question that Portland startup BEHCA is seeking to answer.
It’s a question that has plagued every founder at one time or another: Will this idea actually work? And for many first time founders, getting to a credible answer to that question can be just as difficult as any part of the startup process. That’s why TiE Oregon offers the TiE XL Bootcamp, a 30-hour program designed to help entrepreneurs validate their product idea and get some of their early stage questions answered.
When you have a rolling schedule, you get to make startup cohort announcements twice as often. And such is the case with Portland’s Jaguar Land Rover Tech Incubator, who just announced the 7th cohort of companies going through the incubator.
Okay okay. So I know that’s a bit of a stretch. The solar eclipse isn’t going to make it pitch black around here. But I’m never one to shy away from the opportunity for a punny headline. Plus, I promised that I would start giving you more of a heads up about awesome events around town. So there’s that, too.
For the past three years, I’ve organized Portland Startup Week at the beginning of each year. While it’s regularly attracted nearly a hundred events and hundreds of attendees, it still put folks in a bit of a crunch as they were recovering from the holidays. This year, we want to make the event even bigger and better, so we’re shifting some things up.
While I like to drone on an on about tech startups, the truth is that there are any number of startups and industries that are thriving in Oregon. Perhaps none as obvious as the breadth of consumer goods — apparel, beverage, food, outdoor, tools… the list goes on an on — we have here in the state. But for all of the activity, there seems to be little opportunity to gather these amazing companies and entrepreneurs together. Until now. Meet the Built Up Festival.
Without getting too dystopian, you have to admit that robots are good at stuff. I mean, they just are. Sure, they’re not good at everything that humans are good at doing. But they’re good at specific things. Like precise things. And that’s why this Portland robot is going to change the way you think about capturing video. Meet KIRA from Motorized Precision.
While you can safely bet that startups will always complain about two things—lack of capital and lack of talent—it’s completely true that the Oregon job market is exceptionally tight, as of late. And hiring talent can be even more challenging than it has been in the past.
