I’m always saying that we have a super interesting fintech cluster here in town. Thanks, in part, to the diaspora from early challenger banks like Simple. And a recent hire — by a company helmed by one of the cofounders of Simple — lends credence to that assertion. You see, Chris Chen, formerly CTO of Wyre, has joined Sila as CTO.
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Silicon Florist links arrangement for April 6, 2022 💐
North American Startup Investment Fell 11% In Q1
Altogether, investors put $82.8 billion into seed through growth-stage technology investments in the first quarter of 2022—down 11 percent from Q4 of 2021… but seed funding was up.
Read MoreSilicon Florist links arrangement for March 3, 2022 💐
OEN brings back PubTalk, with a slightly different format
The retooled event will be monthly, mostly. The group will take May, September and November off, since those months will have other big OEN events: Angel Oregon bioscience, Angel Oregon Food and the annual awards show. PubTalk will also be off in August when many people take time off.
Read MoreSila cofounder chats with Nasdaq about the state of fintech
Listen as Portland’s Shamir Karkal, cofounder of fintech startup Sila and cofounder of Simple, discusses the current state of fintech with Nasdaq.

Portland fintech startup Sila raises $13 million Series A
In case you haven’t been tracking, former Simple cofounder Shamir Karkal has been quietly building another fintech startup here in Portland. But after today, it might not be “quietly” much longer. You see, that company, Sila, just raised $13 million.
Read MoreSila partners with Constitution Lending
Sila, a Portland fintech startup that provides an API and SDK that enable app developers to incorporate financial transaction functionality into the solutions they’re building, has partnered with Constitution Lending to help improve their real estate lending capabilities.
Read MoreWhat even is money?
In these times of GameStop arbitrage, Cryptocurrency, billion dollar companies, and trillion dollar budgets being bandied about, it’s a fair question: What is money?
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