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

RAJ Sports announces lineup of speakers for Epicenter Week – Portland Business Journal

Event organizers have just announced an impressive lineup of speakers. Notable names include eight-time Olympic medal winner Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, head coach of the University of South Carolina’s women’s team Dawn Staley, LPGA superstar Michelle Wie West and Reddit co-founder (and husband of Serena Williams) Alexis Ohanian.

Even though summer tends to be a little slower around here, there are still a bunch of opportunities to connect with community. From meeting with fellow founders to learning from some of the smartest folks in town, here’s what’s on the docket for this week.

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

Happy Hour with Tech Professionals, Thu, Aug 20, 2026, 5:30 PM | Meetup

Whether you’re deep in the tech world or just tech-curious, if you’re in Bend and want real conversations with interesting people, you belong here. Bring a friend, bring a coworker, or come solo and leave with new connections. No presentations, no sales pitches. Just good people and good conversation.

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

In a first, US will allow some private firms to carry out cyberattacks | TechCrunch

In a newly published presidential memorandum, the Trump administration said the move will allow the federal government to use “innovative capabilities of the private sector” to combat cybercrime and threats targeting Americans, such as ransomware attacks, financial scams, and sextortion.

I know you’re hard at work, finishing up your Bend Venture Conference 2026 application to share your startup story on stage at one of the largest startup pitch competitions on the west coast. Good on you. But did you know that content you’re creating can be repurposed for one of the largest startup pitch competitions in the world…? It’s true. So why not take that content and plop it into your application for SXSW Pitch 2027…?

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

No, local models will not win

Local models are never going to be as powerful. I think this point should be obvious: all of the current frontier models (closed and open-weights) are far too big to run on anything but a full GPU cluster in a datacenter. Of course, smaller models are getting more intelligent over time. In a year you might be able to run something about as strong as GPT-5.6-Sol on your laptop. But by then, you’ll think of GPT-5.6-Sol as too weak to be useful.