Startup and tech news, jobs, and events in Portland and Oregon
There are any number of reasons to love Portland. But it’s rare to see anything startups making the citywide lists. That’s why it was nice to see Willamette Week highlighting a couple of interesting reasons to love the Portland startup community.
There have been in any number of times throughout history where humans have done things that they thought were totally fine — only to find out later how detrimental those activities were. Pick your favorite. I’m not here to judge. That said, I am here to propose that the normalization of startup founders being constantly stressed out, never sleeping, and always on may very well be one of those things.
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 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.
Like most things Portland, there are a ton of awesome makers and manufacturers in town doing a ton of awesome things. But thanks to our culture of aggressive humility, we don’t always know about all of that awesomeness. That’s why it’s nice to have things like the Friends of Fictiv happy hour. If only to bring some of those hidden gems in our midst to light.
Wait what? You thought the TechfestNW PitchfestNW applications were due in 2018? Well, they were. But that was only the first group. There’s a second application period. And it ends this week. So if you’ve been procrastinating, you should probably get on completing that application.
You’ve heard me bemoan it any number of times. Ask someone what the Portland startup community is like and you’ll get any number of adjectives. But you won’t really get any numbers or metrics. We’ve just never seemed to capture that terribly well. But PDX Startups may help change that.
I remember when TechfestNW — then called the Portland Digital eXperience — barely had 75 people in the audience. Now they have 75 startups — and potentially more — attending the event to participate in PitchfestNW. And that’s not even the main event.
For all the optimism about the beginning of the new year, there’s also a fair amount of realism. And some well informed pessimism. Most notably, for the latter, surrounding the economic correction that we’ve all been anxiously awaiting as we watched the longest running bubble in startup history continue to gently waft along.
In my opinion, one of the most promising threads in the Portland startup community as of late has been the whole conversation about financing startups. Because not every startup is right for an equity based investment from venture capital. And even if they are, VC brings with it some pressures that can be less than positive for many companies and founders.