Portland startups, open source, and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: being a startup founder is one of the loneliest and most challenging roles most folks will ever experience. Worse yet, no one truly gets what you’re going through. Or the ridiculous emotional rollercoaster you’re on.
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Founders are always looking for any edge they can get. Ways to improve their products. Making connections with people in the industry. And trying to do everything they can to attract new users. Now, a new offering from Jam, provides all of that for a flat fee of $250. And among the handpicked experts? Portland’s Sahil Lavingia.
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I’m lucky that I get the opportunity to sit at the nexus of passionate founders building early stage companies and the community of mentors who wants to support and bolster those founders as they strive to build the next great Portland company. While we all recognize that building a startup is ridiculously difficult, sometimes we forget that founders are suffering from any number of stressors and pressures, despite the stiff upper lip they project.
I’m a firm believer that founders do best with multiple forms of mentorship. And peer mentorship is a critical component of a well-rounded mentor pool for any founders. That’s why I’m always glad to see organizations furthering the model. Like Women Led, which is looking for participants in their mastermind groups.
Serial entrepreneur and all-around awesome guy Kyle Kesterson of Freak’n Genius wrote a great piece for GeekWire today about sharing true experiences with your startup peers. Not about “Killing it!” or “Everything’s awesome!” But truly sharing what’s happening with your company. Read More
Last year around the time PIE was starting, David Cohen, cofounder of TechStars, shared the TechStars Mentor Manifesto. And it served as an inspiration for me. A post by Micah Baldwin, a TechStars mentor who now heads up Graphicly, provided a similar nudge for me. Read More