..read more

(h/t Mitch Daugherty ..read more

Speaking of coworking, there’s another opportunity to cowork with your fellow startup founders on Tax Day, April 15, 2024. UpStart Collective will be opening both locations to free coworking with non-services-based businesses. So startups. And you’re invited. Welcome to the UpStart Collective open co-working day! The next open co-working day is happening on April 15th from 9am – 5pm. You will have the option of working out of the eastside or the newly launched westside location. Please be sure to select which location you would like to work out of. We’re excited to meet you! For more informa ..read more

I know, I know. It comes as quite a shock. After living in a region where the venture capital flowed so effortlessly for so many years… Oh wait. Sorry. I was looking at the wrong thing. VC investments are down in the Portland area. Way down. Not that they were ever up to a crazy level. But they’ve been better. But it’s not a cash on hand situation. It may be more of a dearth of viable investments situation, as Diane Fraiman of Voyager Capital shared with the Portland Business Journal: “There are monies available up and down the venture funnel in Portland but there is a reduction in the number ..read more

As a startup, few things are as important — or as challenging — as figuring out Product Market Fit. That’s why I’m so thankful that First Round Capital took the time to create this free course to help you figure all of that PMF stuff out. Introducing PMF Method, a free 14-week intensive experience designed to help exceptional B2B founders build epic companies. Uncover what customers really need, build the right V1 product, and close your first commercial contracts. Now you have two challenges: 1) Getting in, and 2) Figuring out a way to spend 14-weeks in the Bay Area to take advan ..read more

Remember Radious…? They’re the Portland startup that provides on demand workspace for folks — by activating homes for the workday the same way Airbnb does for the… um… sleepytime? Anyway… last time I checked in with them, they were excited to be expanding to the Bay Area. So you can only imagine their excitement now. Radious is going nationwide. With this new service, companies can find the right property for their off-sites, team meetings, social workdays and more anywhere across the country. While Radious has active marketplace listings in San Francisco, CA, Portland, OR and Milwaukee, WI ..read more

Whenever folks talk to me about being a startup founder, I am the first to admit that I am not — in fact — a very good founder. If a founder, at all, really. I mean, I’m an okay entrepreneur. But I’m not a founder. In fact, I can confidently say that I’ve actually only got a few of the basic qualities that I believe an early stage startup founder absolutely needs. Why…? Because I’ve seen these five qualities appear and be proven out by hundreds of startup founders I’ve had the opportunity to work with and watch over the years. And I’ve seen folks like me — who lack some of these qualities — fa ..read more

There’s not shortage of “startup founder advice” out there. But there’s something about an extensive document of lessons learned over 20 years. Especially when it’s unpolished and unassuming like this Startup Founder Survival Guide composed by David Politis. I’ve been an executive at two companies at inception (founding employee then CEO at one, and founder/CEO at BetterCloud). I was also an executive at one of the first cloud consulting companies just as they were getting started. At these companies we generated $100s of millions in ARR and hired thousands of people, including dozens of ..read more

You might not realize the role that Portland — and to that extent a couple of particular Portland writers — played in the era that was Web 2.0. One of them was Adam DuVander who served as the editor of Programmable Web, the repository for a wealth of the information on the APIs that drove Web 2.0. And the other was the first writer hired at TechCrunch who then wound up as co-editor at ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick. For this post, I’m going to focus on Marshall — I mean, Adam is great too — because that’s who Richard MacManus, the founder of RWW, focuses on in the latest edition of his ser ..read more

Looking to learn more about what’s happening in AI startups in town…? Well, you’re in luck. Following on the success of their first PDX AI Demo Night, Oregon Venture Fund has brought together another group of AI startups to share what they’re building. And you’re invited. The goal of this event is to showcase the AI products coming from the founder and engineering community through lightening demos and Q&A. ​Join us for a fun evening of learning & networking, as we revel in the latest AI demos from: ​Digs Hello Wonder Skypoint ​Squidgies The event takes place Tuesday, April 23, 202 ..read more