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

Portland council votes to discourage data center NDAs, pursue moratorium – oregonlive.com

The Portland City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to city administrators not to sign nondisclosure agreements with prospective data center developers and to explore a moratorium on new data centers in the city limits.

Portland has always been better at showing than telling. At making excellent things rather than bragging about them. At exploring the edges and gaps instead of going with the crowd. Zigging where others have zagged. And from time to time, proudly making ridiculous decisions.

You know about the Newberry Volcano right…? It’s a unique geothermal asset in the Central Oregon that has been the focus of utilizing the incredibly warm volcanic activity to generate energy. And it’s picking up… steam? I don’t know. This is a pun rich environment. But suffice it to say Mazama Energy has raised $135 million to continue pursuing the effort.

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

Voyager Capital, Access Venture Partners lead $8M Rapta round – Portland Business Journal

Rapta has created an AI platform that uses cameras and computer vision to help manufacturers achieve higher quality assurance results and fewer errors. It does this by watching an assembly and then alerting the human worker to correct or incorrect work.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Portland’s sweet spot for tech is “engineers building tools for other engineers.” Tektronix, Intel, Airship, AppFog, Cedexis, Elemental, Hydrolix, JanRain, Lytics, Meridian, Puppet, C1 and Tripwire and an untold number of other cybersecurity companies… the list goes on and on. And a close second…? Open source. Which is seeing a bit of a renaissance with things like the growing AT Proto community. And we’re definitely seeing it with the latest news: Antfly is a Portland based open source project that has raised $2M to help commercialize a hosting platform.

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

Sam Altman says Y Combinator taught him how to govern OpenAI | Fortune

Long before Altman made decisions at the helm of OpenAI, he ran Y Combinator, the influential startup accelerator that has backed thousands of young companies. Unlike running a traditional company, however, Altman couldn’t simply tell the startups YC invested in what to do. “At best you can govern—you don’t get to, like, rule,” Altman told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell in the latest episode of Titans and Disruptors.

You know me. I love an affinity map. It probably has something to do with Platial being one of the first startups I started tracking around here. Or maybe it’s Adam DuVander’s influence. But whatever the case, I do love a good map. So I wanted to share another one I found: Fresh Hop Finder.