Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
Happy hours. They’re a thing. For real. And not so long ago, there was a community happy hour that grew into a really, really big thing. And an important and formative thing. But it didn’t start that way.
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Community doesn’t just happen. Ecosystems aren’t just built. In fact, some might say that building community is artificial. It takes effort. And consistency. And communication. And collaboration.
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Back in the early days of this generation of the Portland startup community, we used to have a weekly happy hour every Friday. Its origins stemmed from a small group of folks providing peer support for their self hosted WordPress installations in local watering holes. So it was called “Beer and Blog.”
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Sorry, this one kinda snuck up on me. Portland Seed Fund regularly takes the opportunity to invite a bunch of startups to come hang out and practice their pitches to the PSF partners. This time, it’s taking place at the Portland State Business Accelerator.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the Portland startup community used to gather on a regular basis at a happy hour called Beer and Blog. It was a time to catch up with friends. A time to make new connections. A place to send folks when they were looking to get better connected to the community. And it’s how many folks who are still involved in the Portland startup community met one another, originally.
When I caught the news about Orchestra Software’s equity round, I was immediately reminded of Jama Software. Both companies were bootstrapped early on. They both took on investment after a number of years in business. And the amount of the funding was roughly the same amount.
Founders tend to be an optimistic bunch. But optimism can only get you so far. And if you’re looking to pursue venture capital as a means of financing your startup, that optimism is going to take some lumps as you pitch, refine, pitch, refine… Lather rinse repeat. So it’s always nice when that pitch feedback comes with some added perks. Like pizza and beer.
If you were part of the Portland startup or open source community a decade ago—or if you were a startup type who visited Portland during that time period—you probably had the chance to attend Beer and Blog once or twice. If you weren’t around Portland then, you’ve no doubt heard me wax nostalgic dozens of times about the event, a weekly happy hour that served as the point of connection for our fledgling community.
In what now seems like ancient history, the Portland startup community used to have a gathering called Beer and Blog. Back when the community was smaller. And when people actually used to blog more regularly. Back then, it was the way to meet folks from our online community, offline.
While Mozilla has been part of the Portland tech community for more than a decade, they didn’t officially open an office here—their first US office outside of Silicon Valley—until five years ago. But with ever growing concerns about privacy and security on the Web, Mozilla has recently started making a lot more noise about their presence in the Rose City—and their Firefox Web browser.
