Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community
Portland startup and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
There was a time, not so long ago, when Portland was home to more hackathons than you could shake a keyboard at. Hackathons that brought disparate groups in our community together. And helped tighten bonds among members of the community. Hack hack hackity hack.
Portland is nothing if not collaborative. So it would only make sense that a bunch of the Portland startup community would band together to help welcome the newest startup support organization in to town, WeWork Labs Portland. And what better way to show that support than to gather in celebration of the launch of the project.
I often bemoan the fact that, dadgummit, kids just don’t blog like they used to. What with all of the social medias and stuff. That’s why it’s always nice to see another voice providing news and insights on Portland and our community. Like Bridgeliner, a local outpost of the WhereBy.Us network.
You’ve heard me talk about the growing prevalence of regional offices as a compelling and growing part of the Portland startup community. To date, many of these offices — which often rival or fully eclipse (Intel) full fledged Portland companies in size — have played the role of employers, event hosts, and sponsors for the community, as a whole. And that’s a trend that I hope to see continue.
While we’ve all been geeking out about VR for a while now, it’s not always easy to understand the practical and needed applications of that technology. Until we see them. And then we’re like “Ohhhhhhh. Yeah. That makes sense.” Like the work Portland startup The Wild did with adidas and the HTC Vive.
[Editor: Meetup groups shut down all of the time. That’s not newsworthy. What’s worth your time is reading about why the Portland 1 Million Cups Meetup is shutting down. And then decide what we can do to prevent this from happening again. The following was sent to the group by lead organizer, Dayna Reed. Reposted with permission.]
You’ve no doubt heard about Sightbox — or maybe seen their logo on the Portland Timbers jerseys. They’re the Portland startup that was successfully acquired by Johnson & Johnson. An acquisition that made any number of local investors’ IRR look pretty darn good. Now, they’ve got a renewed focused on being an active participant in the Portland startup community. And the first step? Showing you where they work.
I always appreciate folks who are looking to be more helpful to the Portland startup community. Especially when they’re asking how they can be helpful. That’s why I’m sharing this survey from OK Studio.
It’s debatable whether this is fortunate or not, but whatever the case, the term “startup” is inextricably linked to technology companies. Even though any type of company that has the potential to be capital efficient and scale quickly can technically, ahem, be a startups. So I try to share other startups from outside the realm of tech.
You may have heard of a little company called WeWork. (Actually, the company is called We Company, now, but bear with me…) They’ve got a few spaces where folks can, you know, work. They even have a few of those spaces here in Portland. But what you may not know is that they’ve recently launched an accelerator program for startups called WeWork Labs. And we’re getting one of those here, too.
