Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
One of the most well-known startup stories of the past generation of Portland tech startups was Cloudability, a company founded and grown in Portland that was successfully acquired in 2019. Now, the founder of Cloudability, Mat Ellis, is working on something new called FasterBetter.
Read More
You know what I always say. No. Not that. The other thing. The thing about serial founders. You know, the thing about how the Portland startup community needs to get to a point where it’s not burning out founders so much that they never start other projects. How we need more serial entrepreneurs and folks with startup experience starting new things. Again and again. That thing.
Read More
Mat is a tireless supporter of startups in Portland. He has also been a great mentor and coach for myself and other leaders. He has a bottomless well of empathy for founders and the struggles of running a startup, managing investors, and working with employees.
— Andrew Plato
Follow Mat on Twitter.
Have someone you’d like to recognize? Give them the kudos they deserve.
I don’t know about you, but I take a lot of screenshots. A lot. On my phone. On my desktop. Tweets. Parts of the screen. A lot. So I found this recent advice from Cloudability founder Mat Ellis super helpful. I thought you might as well. Plus — in this time of short social updates — I always love to see folks creating longer form content. So I wanted to encourage that.
Read More
There are any number of amazing Portland startups. (Clearly. That’s why I’ve been writing about them on this blog for nearly a dozen years.) But every once in a while, a startup comes along that becomes the center of gravity — the proverbial Cinderella story — for a generation of startups around here. Cloudability was very much one of those startups. And today, the denouement of that startup story begins, in the best of ways, with an exit. Cloudability has announced an agreement to be acquired by Apptio.
[Editor: If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times. Not every startup event has to happen in the evening. Folks have families. And lives. That’s one of the reasons I’m rebooting Portland Lunch 2.0. And that’s why I’m glad that we have event organizers like Josh Carter who organizes Coffee w/ Co-Founders, a caffeine fueled morning happy hour for founders. This is a guest post from Josh.]
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. But I keep saying it because I believe it. You can learn far more from stories of failure than you can from stories of success. And nowhere is that more true than the wonderful world of startups. That’s why I’m really happy to hear that FailPDX is back with a new rendition of Fail Talks.
I know I’ve said it before, but of all the inspirational folks with an entrepreneurial spirit here in town, few compare to the folks at Street Roots. Calling their business pursuits “life changing”? A staggering understatement. And like any founder or small business person, they could use our help. And there’s no easier time of year to help than now, thanks to the efforts of Business for a Better Portland.
Last night, the Technology Association of Oregon (TAO) held their annual Oregon Tech Awards celebration gala, their biggest event of the year. (Coincidentally, GeekWire held their big Seattle tech awards last night, too.) And the Portland startup community was well represented.
It’s summer. Which means good speakers are hard to come by. Luckily, there are still plenty of crappy speakers to go around. Like me. So I’ll be stepping up to say a few words before the cards are dealt and the chips fly at the next Portland Startup Poker 2.0.