Category: Portland

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.

The community is always asking for ways to more easily engage with local government. Last year, they got the Portland Office of Small Business, a Prosper Portland managed entity designed to facilitate that exact request. And even though they’ve only been around for a year, they’ve already done a ton to engage with the community.

This is the kind of inspiration and creativity I love to see. Is it someone chasing a billion dollar valuation…? No. Is it someone looking to take over the world…? No. Is it someone who recognized a problem and then used technology to help create a solution that makes the world a better — and more well informed — place…? Absolutely. Meet TickCheck. (I mean, Tick Track Toe was right there. But I digress…)

If you happen to around Bend next weekend (I don’t know. Maybe you live there or something.), Bend Startup Central is putting me in the hot seat for a fireside chat and a panel on the past and future of Oregon startups. I’d love to have you swing by and share your views. Or ask your questions. Or even just sit quietly and wonder what exactly you’ve actually gotten yourself into and where the nearest exit is.

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

Seattle, we’ve got an image problem – GeekWire

You may disagree with those headlines. You may dislike the politics behind them. But rhetoric, image and storytelling matter — especially in a moment when cities are competing fiercely for talent, investment, startups and relevance in the AI era.