Portland Oregon startups, tech, news, events, jobs, and community
Portland startup and tech news, jobs, and events #pdx
On the downside, education has been disrupted — or completely upended — by the impact of the pandemic. But the silver lining is that many educational institutions are rethinking how they teach and deliver curriculum. Which is an opportunity. Portland startup Blackbird offers a way to capitalize on that opportunity by improving coding education for middle and high schoolers.
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One of the most confusing things about the Portland startup community is how quiet it is. It’s not because there’s nothing happening. Far from it. And it’s not because people aren’t interested in including new and amazing people like you in their groups or meetups. Honestly, the quiet nature of the community comes from a very positive place: folks around here tend to be aggressively humble. They’re not ones to toot their own proverbial horns or be making a lot of noise about what they’re building.
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Not many folks realized it but Goldstar, a live events ticketing platform, had a fairly significant Portland presences with nearly 40 local folks working at the company prior to the pandemic. Today, Goldstar announced they were being acquired by TodayTix Group. And with it, the Portland story would seem to come to an end. Except for the fact that the Portland folks get to work for a new startup spun out of Goldstar. Meet Stellar.
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Every year around this time, Portland has some sort of weather event. And right on time, the feet of snow falling nearby and the closure of I-84 are probably resulting in any number of tweets in the Portland area. As part of those tweets, an astute Twitter user like you might notice that the hashtag #pdxtst seems prevalent. But why is that?
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Arguably my favorite professional organization in town and the one organization I can name that has managed to sustain consistently exemplary programming throughout the ups and downs of the pandemic, PDXWIT — which started as a nonprofit organization to support Portland women in the technology industry — is turning ten years old.
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Yesterday, I shared a recent report by Rise of the Rest which illustrated the number of VC dollars from the Bay Area and New York City that were being invested elsewhere in the country. Portland did okay in the rankings. But something was gnawing at me. Like I needed some additional context. And suddenly it dawned on me this morning that that additional context might be the populations of the metropolitan areas that were highlighted — and what the per capita venture capital investments were.
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If you haven’t heard of Torq before, it may be because the name and business are fairly new. The company was formerly known as StackPulse, but a pivot in business also motivated them to pursue a new name. And new infusion of capital — a $50 million Series B led by Insight Partners — will probably make that name pretty memorable around Portland.
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When it comes to tracking citizens with technology, these days it’s way more than just closed circuit cameras or cell tower tracking. The number of technologies available to the City of Portland include “any software, electronic device, system utilizing an electronic device, or similar used, designed, or primarily intended to collect, retain, analyze, process, or share audio, electronic, visual, location, thermal, olfactory, biometric, or similar information specifically associated with, or capable of being associated with, any individual or group.”
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It remains to be seen whether our post pandemic world will redefine the concept of corporate headquarters. That is, as a mentor of mine recently asked: in a remote first world, does the concept of a company being “a Portland company” even exist anymore…?
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It’s another exit via acquisition for serial founder Raven Zachary. His latest company — the Microsoft Hololens agency he helped cofound, Object Theory — has been acquired by ARound. Small Society, the iOS development shop Raven cofounded prior to Object Theory — a preeminent player in the then burgeoning Portland mobile scene — was acquired by Walmart Labs in 2012.
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