Portland Oregon Startup and Tech News
Back 11 years ago, when I started this blog, one of the things I appreciated most about the Portland startup community was its transparency. Everybody was blogging. About what they thought. About what they were building. About everything.
It’s always a joy to see new startup accelerator programs starting in the Portland startup community. One might say that, with this one, my tail is wagging. My tail… Ahem. *tap tap tap* Is this thing on?
Back a dozen years or so, before I started this blog, I happened upon COLOURlovers, a Portland founded startup that was unlike anything I had seen to date. It wasn’t a business to business site. It wasn’t software. It was consumer focused. And social.
Digital healthcare has long been one of Portland’s strongest areas of startup success and support. But like so many awesome Portland things, it’s also a tightly knit community for which it can be difficult to figure out where to start. That’s why OTRADI Oregon Bioscience Incubator started a regular happy hour. So that making those connections could be easier.
It’s the end of the week. A time to reflect. And prepare for the week ahead. And for many startups, it’s a time to realize, yet again, that startups are just hard. And difficult. And messy. You don’t always have the answers. You don’t know where to find them. And you’re often lost. But there are folks who want to help. With things like Startup Therapy Office Hours.
Startup folks, am I right? They’re always thinking of creative solutions to problems. And in Portland, unlike some of our differently motivated neighbors to the south, they’re often thinking about solutions that make life better for everyone in our community. Like Business for a Better Portland. An ad hoc chamber of commerce that sprung out of a desire to inform a collaborative—rather than contentious—model of public-private partnership.
If you were part of the Portland startup or open source community a decade ago—or if you were a startup type who visited Portland during that time period—you probably had the chance to attend Beer and Blog once or twice. If you weren’t around Portland then, you’ve no doubt heard me wax nostalgic dozens of times about the event, a weekly happy hour that served as the point of connection for our fledgling community.
Vancouver, Washington—our neighbors directly to the north—have gone by any number of names and descriptions over the years. As has the startup community in the ‘Couv’ and its supporting organizations. But all of that may change, now that they’ve revealed an identity designed to serve as the front door for the Vancouver startup community. Meet North Bank Innovations.
Whenever folks ask me about getting a company started, I always recommend Startup Weekend as an option. In my experience, there’s no better venue for getting a crash course in startup stuff over an accelerated timeframe. Plus you meet potential cofounders and team members. It’s just a great set up. And now, leave it to Oregon to make it even better.
There have been any number of fundraising announcements in the past two weeks. And as compelling as that news is, it’s even more exciting to see the companies putting that money to work. Like Rigado, for instance. Which recently raised $15 million. And that led to a bunch of open jobs. Like nine of them.
