The Portland Metro Region Innovation Hub — you know, the hub of innovation for the Portland metro region — has seen its fair share of fits and starts. And unfortunately, I’m sad to share that it is going to have another start. Or restart. The organization’s second Executive Director Asad Butt has announced he is stepping down from his role.

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

What the Oregon Community Can Do to Support Startups

But the longer we talked, the more the conversation tilted toward the other side of the ledger. Because for all its rough edges, Oregon has one of the most generous, show-up-for-each-other startup communities I’ve ever been part of. People answer the cold email. They make the intro. They drive across the mountains for a panel on a weeknight. That’s not nothing. That’s actually rare.

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

Dorkbot PDX: June Edition, Mon, Jun 8, 2026, 6:30 PM | Meetup

Most of Dorkbot is a freewheeling hangout, but each month we feature a short talk about a cool project or teaching some esoteric wizardry. This month, Helen Leigh will share some of the musical instruments she’s made over the years and share some of the technologies behind them. Helen’s projects include: spider harp, purring tentacle, golden disco ball theremin, robotic midi drum machine, and an embroidered kraakdoos.

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

On this day in Portland startup community history: Jive Software unveils expansion plans (2008)

I mean, we all know that they’re moving into new offices in Portland, this summer, but now they’ve revealed that they’re planning to move into offices in Silicon Valley, London, and Zurich.

Our friends at the Oregon UAS Accelerator are currently on the lookout for their next cohort of founders. That’s right. The Pendleton-based drone, robotics, and autonomous-systems accelerator has opened applications for a whole new group of folks to join them for their Fall 2026 program, a 12-week hybrid accelerator(some virtual, some on the ground in Pendleton). So if you’ve got a prototype, an MVP, or even just some early validation, get your application submitted.

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

Revenge of The Business Idiot

Any executive-level fuckwit you’ve met in your life now has a seemingly-powerful tool that can burp up mimicry of open source software and, if you constantly prompt it, eventually get something half-functional onto some sort of web server.

A whole new flavor of question has shown up for the folks who build developer tools: which models recommend you and why…? Adam DuVander’s EveryDeveloper has a public answer to that question: LLM Rank, a free, independent ranking of which dev-tool companies the major AI language models actually point developers toward.

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

Start Your Startup · Luma

​In this session, serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and UpStart Collective co-founder Josh Carter breaks down how to treat your startup like a scientific experiment — form hypotheses, run tests, let the numbers tell you what to build next.

Always love seeing local startups getting broader coverage. Especially when they’re working on challenging problems that could have significant and positive impact on society. Like Canopii, which GeekWire just featured in a recent writeup.