Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community

As you may have heard, Business Oregon created an Oregon 10-Year Innovation Plan (PDF) in 2021. Since we’re halfway through the plan at this point, they’re looking for your feedback. And response are due August 15, 2026.

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

Pro-data center industry group behind ad campaign in Oregon, six other states • Washington State Standard

Just days before the Oregon Legislature in March passed a one-year pause on a popular tax incentive program for data centers, a group called Oregon Connects registered as a nonprofit business in the state. Then the ads started appearing.

Sometimes, the modern day AI world reminds me an awful lot of the early days of the Web and search engines. Where we are all trying to get Alta Vista and Excite and Lycos to at least spider our sites so that we had some chance of appearing in their results. Or begging the curator of some Yahoo! section to make sure that you had a link. Now, it’s the same thing. With Claude and ChatGPT and Gemini and Perplexity. And… and… and…. But even more opaque. Because this isn’t some simple — or Boolean — search.

A gentle reminder for all of us: Our online existence is all algorithms. Discovery doesn’t happen in one big moment anymore. It happens through a series of tiny interactions. Interactions that are stacked up and fleeting. Every like, comment, share, save, and upvote is a signal to the machine that the content actually counts. And it’s those signals that decide whether a startup founder’s ridiculously hard work manages to reach ten people — or ten thousand. So please take a few seconds and engage with that content in some way. Because on these online platforms, you are the key to someone else discovering that startup.

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

Pacing the Frontier

To realize AI’s potential, industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight. But each company—and country—is under intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow that acceleration. And today, the world lacks the technical and governance tools to deliberately pace frontier-wide progress.

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

What a Former-Founder-Turned-VC Looks For · Luma

​Liz Wessel has seen both sides of the table. Before becoming a Partner at First Round Capital, she co-founded WayUp at 23, scaled it to 6M+ users, raised $40M, and exited via merger in 2021 — after nearly 8 years as CEO. Before that, she was part of the Product & Brand Marketing team at Google.

Which startups were selected to participate in the “big check moment” for OEN Angel Oregon Technology, this year…? I’m glad you asked. Because the list just hit my inbox. So I can actually tell you.