[ngokevin]

As a PDX native that went to Oregon State and saw a lot of people go towards Intel, I don't feel the Oregon Intel crowd has strong aptitude for starting something up. They're at Intel in the first place because it was a secure job in their hometown they could coast at. I'm sure there are many of them that can do it, but I don't feel Portland has strong startup energy.

[chneu]

Disagree. Hillsboro has plenty of businesses from ex-intel employees.

Just off the top of my head I can think of a dozen or so.

They're just not in tech for the most part. I can think of 2 breweries, a standardization company, two machine shops. And those are just within a mile or so of my house.

I think a lot of folks work at Intel in order to get out of tech. That's basically what I'm doing, lol. Work enough to save and get out of tech.

Tech is also expensive to start up in. So it makes sense that a lot of the intel-driven businesses would be non-tech.

[ngokevin]

Ah, I meant tech startups. Starting a brewery and machine shop is exactly what I expect from the PDX crowd. I think you echo what I said, people working in PDX tech are there for the salary and coast so they can focus on their own lives outside of work, which is perfectly fine. But not conducive to a tech startup environment

[pquerna]

it's happening?

"Ex-Intel executives raise $21.5 million for RISC-V chip startup":

https://www.aheadcomputing.com/

I believe the founding team is all in Oregon - and mostly all ex-Intel.

[UncleOxidant]

Yes, these folks came out of Intel Labs. But that's also a fabless startup. When you start talking about fabs you're talking about needing real money (in the multi billions of dollars). That kind of funding could only come from the likes of Apple and Nvidia.

[phoenix3200]

They did not come (directly) out of Intel Labs. They left because they were working on a moonshot project that lost corporate support. Just like Ampere computing, just a few years later.

[insane_dreamer]

Some are starting:

https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2025/06/top-resear...

[anon291]

This is basically correct. The culture in PDX is totally different.

[brcmthrowaway]

How does it compare to Silicon Valley?

[nxobject]

It's a very laid-back place - more of a "you're missing out on life if you're not enjoying nature every weekend" type of place. Lots of new parents in the mid-to-late 30s (I think the highest proportion of any major city, actually.)

I think what hampers Oregon is that there isn't much non-Intel investment in R&D in the Portland region as well, compared to the Bay Area – there used to be a graduate institute funded by Tek et al., but that never got sustained. [1] The local academic medical research center is well-regarded and otherwise wouldn't have trouble attracting talent if it wasn't for the salaries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Graduate_Institute

[elihu]

I was a student at OGI back when it was still a thing. Then a lot of the DARPA grant money dried up because of the Iraq war (they wanted research that could be applied to weapons in the short term, not basic research into operating systems and programming languages).

They merged with OHSU, but it turned out OHSU was about as broke as they were, so most of the CS faculty migrated en-masse to PSU and took all their grad students (myself included) along with them. (It turns out grants generally go to the principle investigator, not the school. So if your advisor moves schools, their funding goes with them.)

[dheera]

> salaries

Yeah, this is going to be the ultimate deciding factor. When local companies don't pay enough to live and Bay Area companies are paying upto 10X+ the compensation (for AI roles) people are going to make the move.

[toasterlovin]

Silicon Valley is filled with people who moved there to start businesses. Portland is filled with people who moved there for a better quality of life.

[jeffbee]

You only need a sprinkling of people with the entrepreneurial spark to kick it off, right?

[ngokevin]

It helps there to be a strong community of founders, employees willing to take a risk to work at startup for less money, investors, capital, and general energy in the air. PNW tech scene is relatively low-key and apathetic to startups. Anyone with that type of ambition should have already migrated

[anon291]

There was a strong contingent of forward looking tech people and entrepreneurs a few years ago (pre COVID). They have left due to the large restrictions during COVID and the flight of capital and the general decline of Portland due to the riots and the lockdown measures.

[amanaplanacanal]

Were there more restrictions in Oregon than California during COVID? Or are you talking about something else?

[anon291]

Oregon and California were roughly on par. However, the once bustling downtown where you'd normally find people socializing after work, or hanging out, or doing tech-oriented meetups (I.e., the sorts of things that lead to business creation), was beset by 'fiery but peaceful' riots for almost an entire year. Now, the entire industry of after-work social hours, meetups, etc is dead. It is beginning to be revived but on the east side and suburbs, which is more residential and 'suburban' (although east side portland, is definitely more urban than most places). Suburban is okay, but you really need downtowns to create the sort of bustle that leads to that bay area zeitgeist.

One of the underappreciated things about the bay area is that, while it is very suburban, there are several respectably sized downtown cores -- Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City, and of course the Big Kahuna - San Francisco -- all connected by relatively speedy (and from what I understand, much speedier now) rail.

[nxobject]

Here's one thing OP might be talking about – the "skyscraper district" of PDX practically emptied out during COVID, precisely because Portland has highly segregated big-B-business and residential districts. The rise of WFH meant that the whole district nearly emptied out overnight – especially anchor tenants like law firms and tech that were most amenable to WFH. Without any residential population in the area, boom: no place for a downtown flagship office.

[nxobject]

Since I don't want to stealth-edit my post, another one was the rise of "nuisance homelessness" – the same shelter-in-place order prevented the City from sweeping people into warehouse shelters (but lower-capacity motel shelters were set up); and a combo drug-decriminalization-and-treatment-funding bill gave us the decriminalization but never actually funded the treatment in time, and so there was a lot of open-air drug use. That didn't help the return to "downtown" either.

[anon291]

Yes my company (small startup) closed its Portland office during COVID. It was opened for people who didn't want to be in the bay area. Pre COVID it was en vogue for bay area startups to have a PDX office. Then COVID happened and downtown became a ghost town.

I knew the end was in sight when it became company policy that no employee stay past 6PM without HR approval due to the danger.

[nxobject]

Do you think east of the Willamette will be where any tech scene rebuilding might end up? I wonder which neighborhood might have the right mix of housing, office space, and recreation (ie food.)

[selimthegrim]

Danger of what?

[cruffle_duffle]

All of the west coast went insane, really. It was like the entire region had a competition for how crazy and nonsensical they could make the rules.

As a result, basically every west coast city absolutely destroyed itself and will take at least a decade or more to recover… it they every really do.

[thebigman433]

This is extreme hyperbole if you have been to most West Coast cities recently. Rents have shot up to new heights for a reason.

Portland specifically is lagging a bit, but they are on the upwards trajectory (with a few big things to fix still).

[jeffbee]

I go to Portland regularly just so I can enjoy a city that's much nicer than San Francisco. And Seattle recently hit another record population, it is significantly larger than it was before COVID and will soon pass SF.

I suspect the person denigrating the West Coast cities is doing so from their basement in East Prolapse, Kentucky, as a way to rationalize their life choices.

[UncleOxidant]

You also need funding. That tends to be harder to come by in Oregon vs Silicon Valley.