Community, startups, innovation…
all of the buzzwords

Portland has never been particularly good at bragging about itself.

That's part of the charm. It's also a problem. And somewhere around 2007, I started a blog called Silicon Florist to do the bragging on everyone else's behalf — mostly because no one else was going to.

More than six thousand posts later, I’m still at it. Even though numerous people have begged me to stop. But like three of you encouraged me to keep going. So here we are.

Along the way I cofounded PIE, an experiment in getting startups and giant companies — Autodesk, Coca-Cola, Daimler, Google, Intel, Nike, Prosper Portland, Puppet, the State of Oregon, Stoel Rives, Target, and Wieden+Kennedy, among others — into the same room without anyone getting hurt. I cofounded TechfestNW. And Built Oregon. I helped organize Portland Startup Week, Open Source Bridge, 30 Hour Day, Built Festival, and more PIE Demo Days than I can count — which mostly meant showing up early and staying late.

I don't really do anything. But I do my damnedest to celebrate the folks who are actually doing things.

Sometimes people pay me to help. That still surprises me.

• TEDxPortland — “An Introvert's Guide to Networking,” 723,000+ views
• The Startup Community Way — wrote the PIE sidebar on embracing failure for Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway's follow-up to Startup Communities
• It Takes a Valley — one of the contributors to Anika Horn's field guide to the people who build the ecosystems that make entrepreneurship possible
• OECD — cited in the International Compendium of Entrepreneurship Policies for a Silicon Florist post on the Zebra movement
• HubSpot INBOUND — Bold Talks, “The Power of Humility”
• Founder University — “How to Write Investor Updates,” plus the metrics that matter
• SOBCon, Chicago — “There is no weak position, only weak positioning”
• Skoll World Forum — “Ecosystem Builders as Second Responders to Crisis”
• Kauffman Foundation ESHIP Summit — “Why do you do what you do?,” plus panels and working groups
• SXSW — Pitch judge for roughly a decade, and curator of the Portland Tech Meet Up
• Kobe, Japan and Muscat, Oman — invited keynotes on building a community you actually have

I've turned up on PBS NewsHour, OPB's Think Out Loud, GeekWire, The Oregonian, Portland Monthly, Oregon Business, and the cover of Willamette Week.

Other folks have described me more generously than I'd ever describe myself. So I'll let them.

The Kauffman Foundation calls me one of the “OGs” of ecosystem building. The Portland Business Journal gave me Small Business Advocate of the Year. Mara also once called me Yoda, which I've decided to interpret as a comment on the wisdom and not the age.

I'm an introvert who has spent three decades in rooms full of people. So I've had to get very deliberate about how any of this works — and it turns out the deliberate part is the useful part.

I've done this at TEDxPortland, in front of 3,000 folks at Keller Auditorium. At HubSpot's INBOUND. At the Skoll World Forum. In Kobe, Japan, and Muscat, Oman, where I told very patient audiences to stop trying to be Silicon Valley.

Nobody has asked for their money back. Yet.

• An Introvert's Guide to Networking

  The version of networking you've been sold is built for people who like networking. This is the one for everybody else — where showing up, listening, and following through beat working the room every single time.

  Delivered at TEDxPortland, Keller Auditorium

• Don't be the next Silicon Valley. Be the first you.

  Every city wants a Sand Hill Road. Almost none of them need one. What you actually have — the industries, the weirdos, the institutions already sitting there — is the thing worth building on, and I'll make the case with receipts from a town that spent thirty years learning it the hard way.

  Versions delivered in Kobe, Japan and Muscat, Oman

• Aggressive humility: when your best founders refuse to tell anyone they exist

  Portland founders won't promote themselves. It's charming. It's also killing them. A talk about why quiet ecosystems get overlooked, and what to do about it that doesn't require anyone to become insufferable.

  Related: “The Power of Humility,” HubSpot INBOUND Bold Talks

• Collect dots before you connect dots

  Everybody wants to be the connector. Nobody wants to do the boring part first. This is about the years of listening, remembering, and writing it down that make the connecting look like magic later — and why there's no shortcut.

• Accelerators are crash tests

  We spent years at PIE accelerating startups, and the most valuable thing we did was accelerate the failures. Finding out you're wrong in three months instead of three years is a gift — here's how to build a program that hands out that gift on purpose.

  Related: “Ecosystem Builders as Second Responders to Crisis,” Skoll World Forum

• There is no weak position, only weak positioning

  Every business thinks its position is the problem. It almost never is. This one is about owning where you actually stand, and telling that story on purpose.

  Delivered at SOBCon, Chicago

A fair number of these were recorded. Here they are, if you want to check whether I can hold a room before you book me for one.

Want something else? Ask. I'll tell you honestly if I'm the wrong person, and usually suggest someone better.

Keynotes, panels, fireside chats, and the occasional unconference. Yes, I travel. Yes, I'll do the early flight. Even the redeye.

I've been typing words into computers since 1981. Back when I used to have to hit Play and Record on the cassette tape player to save my files. And I've been typing words into the Internet since 1990.

I've been writing Silicon Florist since 2007. More than six thousand posts about Oregon startups. Most of them written before anyone else thought there were Oregon startups worth writing about.

Some of the latest things I'm writing about:

• Building a bioscience company in Oregon? Apply for BioBuild by November 20, 2026
• REMINDER: Request your invitation to the Oregon UAS Innovation Showcase
• Remembering Aaron Swartz: Portland Civic Lab hosts free screening of The Internet’s Own Boy
• Yak chats with Human Led Growth podcast
• From Bend Venture Conference 2026, “Betting on Oregon: A Candid Conversation”

There are shows now, too: Portland, Oregon, Startup News, Startup Stories with Silicon Florist, and The Long Con, which is exactly as advisable as it sounds. All of them live on YouTube and wherever you get podcasts.

I also wrote the PIE Cookbook — everything we figured out running an accelerator, including the mistakes and the happy accidents, written down and given away so any community could run its own. We Kickstarted it in 2016. It is still a beta. It will probably always be a beta.

Before all of that, I wrote a few hundred posts for ReadWriteWeb and More than a Living, back when tech blogging was a thing you could just decide to do.

I also wrote a blog called “hypocritical” starting in 1998. We don’t need to talk about that. (But if you’re curious, it’s still out there in the Wayback Machine.)

This isn't magic. It's simply focus.

Return has been my consulting outfit since 2004. Return helps your company focus on a personality, an identity. Usually that personality is polite. Sometimes it’s quirky. Sometimes it’s downright rude.

To get there, Return helps you find the voice and the attitude your market actually wants — and then helps you interact with that market in the least obtrusive, most compelling way possible.

People tend to describe this as branding. Or rebranding. Or positioning. Or marketing. Or consulting. Or some other word they think conveys the concept. What’s the right word? Focus.

Because when it comes right down to it, Return earns its keep by helping you distill ideas into words and images your customers and employees understand, want, and cannot forget.

Who should call: founders who can't explain their own company at a dinner party. Teams whose messaging drifted three pivots ago. Accelerators, economic development folks, and universities trying to build a startup program that isn't just a rerun of somebody else's.

What it looks like: a few honest conversations, an outsider reading everything you've published, and a short document you'll actually use. Then I get out of your way.

Usually this means someone from outside asking the annoying questions your team is too polite to ask.

Thirty years of it. The first half was marketing jobs at venture funded tech startups. The second half is harder to describe, which is why the blog exists.

Still going

• Silicon FloristFounder & editor2007 – present
• PIE (Portland Incubator Experiment)Cofounder & general manager2009 – present
• Built OregonCofounder; interim director 2024–25; advisor2014 – present
• ReturnCofounder2004 – present
• Better PortlandAdvisor2016 – present

Finished

• Startup Champions NetworkBoard member2021 – 2024
• Calm Company FundScout and investor2021 – 2022
• Backstage CapitalMentor and investor2017 – 2022
• TechfestNWCofounder & advisor2011 – 2021
• Oregon Games OrganizationBoard member2014 – 2021
• Indie.vcScout2019 – 2021
• Zebras UniteAdvisor2019 – 2020
• Portland IQStartup resource work group lead2018 – 2019
• Oregon Story BoardCofounder & advisor2012 – 2018
• Technology Association of OregonBoard member2011 – 2017
• Oregon Entrepreneurs NetworkAdvisory board member2011 – 2014
• ReportedlyCofounder2014
• twurlCofounder2008 – 2010
• KumquatCofounder2007 – 2008

Before all this

• Open Source BridgeMarketing lead2008 – 2009
• ReadWriteWebWriter2008 – 2009
• hypocriticalBlogger1998 – 2007
• DigimarcManager, corporate marketing communications2005 – 2006
• ProSightSenior manager, marketing2001 – 2005
• MedscapeManager, corporate communications2000 – 2001
• MedicaLogic / MedscapeManager, interactive marketing1999 – 2000
• MedicaLogicMarketing specialist1999
• Diversity CorporationProduction manager1996 – 1999
• David Hiatt Literary AgencyEditor and literary agent1994 – 1996
• Whitman CollegeHead coach, lacrosse1993 – 1995

School, and two awards I still can’t explain

• Whitman CollegeBA, English1989 – 1993
• Portland Business JournalSmall Business Advocate of the Year2014
• Portland Business JournalForty Under 402010

Everything I can find a record of — 279 entries and counting. Some of it I remember fondly. Some of it I remember differently than the people who were there.

Keynotes, conference talks, and panels

• 2026PubTalks Fireside Chat, Eugene — two decades of Oregon startups
• 2025FOSSY — “Cooking Up Community: Build the Fire, Embrace Every Ingredient, Always Stir the Pot”
• 2024Silicon Forest Tech Summit — introducing the inaugural summit
• 2022Founder University — “How to Write Investor Updates,” plus the metrics that matter (CAC, LTV, churn)
• 2020Skoll World Forum — “Ecosystem Builders as Second Responders to Crisis”
• 2018Columbia GSAPP — “Labs, Incubators, Colonies: Propeller and PIE,” a duet with Andrea Chen of Propeller, New Orleans. Wood Auditorium, cohosted with NEW INC.
• 2018TEDxPortland — “An Introvert’s Guide to Networking,” Keller Auditorium, 3,000+ people
• 2018Kauffman Foundation ESHIP Summit, Kansas City — “Why do you do what you do?”
• 2015Whitman College — Andjelkovic Endowed Lecture Series, back at the alma mater
• 2015New Relic FutureTalk — moderating “Mobile Strategy for Today and Tomorrow”
• 2013HubSpot INBOUND, Boston — “The Power of Humility,” Bold Talks track
• 2013PSU Elevating Impact Summit — moderator, “Resilience: Uncensored”
• 2012SOBCon, Chicago — on business positioning: “There is no weak position, there’s only weak positioning”
• 2010SXSW Interactive, Austin — “Don’t Move! Build a Startup Community Where You Live,” with Jeff Slobotski and Jeremy Tanner, moderated by Erin Kotecki Vest
• 2009InnoTech Conference — “To Blog Or Not to Blog”
• recurringSXSW Interactive, Austin — SXSW Pitch judge and advisory board, and curator of the Portland Tech Meet Up
• archivalOEN PubTalk, Portland — “The Tech Startup Scene in Portland”
• multipleKobe, Japan — invited keynote on regional ecosystem development
• multipleMuscat, Oman — invited keynote on building on local assets instead of cloning Silicon Valley

Shows I host

• 2024–Startup Stories with Silicon Florist — long-form founder interviews across Oregon and SW Washington
• 2024–The Long Con — in person only, no video calls, no format
• 2023–Portland, Oregon, Startup News — weekly companion to Silicon Florist. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Libsyn, YouTube
• 2023–Mildly Interesting People — co-creator and co-host, with Cami Kaos
• 2025AI Is Revolutionizing Startup Growth Opportunities Now
• 2025Securing Funding for Startups Beyond Silicon Valley
• 2020–21PIE Crowdcast — live AMA series for founders during the pandemic
• 2020PIE AMA — How to find investors in the Portland startup community
• 2020PIE AMA — How to join the Portland startup community
• 2009–11memePDX — co-host with Cami Kaos. Episodes live in the Silicon Florist archive.
•  Masterclasses on YouTube — starting a startup before building or funding, what founders are actually like, how to mentor, how to Portland startup community

Podcasts and broadcasts, as a guest

• 2026My Open Source Experience — the secrets to successful and sustainable events
• 2026Next Round VC — the truth about startup accelerators
• 2026The Intersection, Intersectional Group — on founders socializing their concepts, blogging, curiosity, and abundance
• 2025Paden Squires — “Grow Slow, Win Big: The Truth About the Compounding Effect”
• 2025FutureProof Business — 30 years in startups: startup myths, VC truths, and building the Portland ecosystem
• 2025The 5 Min Startup — Episode 3, on why new businesses fail fast
• 2025Startup Success, Burkland — strategies for startups outside Silicon Valley
• 2025Overcommitted — “Navigating the Startup Landscape,” on founder burnout and where startups actually fail
• 2023PDX Executive Podcast, Dan Bruton — “Rick Returns,” on 15 years of PIE and Built Oregon
• 2022Social Venturers — S04E08, “Succession Planning: Transferring Social Capital to the Next Generation”
• 2021PDX Executive Podcast, Dan Bruton — building startup ecosystems and the evolution of tech community organizers
• 2021The Communities Show, Gamedev Camp — PIE, Built Oregon, TechfestNW, and the Portland startup community
• 2020Float Small Business — Episode 6
• 2020Millwork Commons — on the Portland startup community
• 2020Willamette Week — Distant Voices, an early-pandemic conversation
• 2020The Digital Native — Episode 11, on PIE and structural incubator design
• 2018And Uhhh — Episode 4
• 2017PR Talk, Veracity Agency — “Our Own Slice of PIE”, on the PIE Cookbook and accelerating failure
• 2017The Tech Academy — Tech Talk
• 2015Launch Yourself, Melissa Anzman — Session 28, on interacting more creatively
• 2011GeekWire Radio, John Cook & Todd Bishop — sizing up the Seattle and Portland tech scenes
• archivalPushPull — Episode 17, “Startin’ Stuff”

Press and mentions

• 2021GeekWire — mpathic and “empathy-as-a-service” at PIE Demo Day
• 2021Willamette Week — “What If You Could Pour Your Own Shampoo From a Tap?”
• 2020OECD Studies on SMEs and Entrepreneurship: International Compendium of Entrepreneurship Policies — cites my Silicon Florist post on the Zebra movement
• 2020Prosper Portland — Economic Recovery Task Force, listed across two work groups
• 2019Willamette Week — “Is Oregon Home to the Next Billion-Dollar Company?”
• 2019Willamette Week — “Rick Turoczy Says the Myth of the Unflappable Entrepreneur Is All Bullshit” (cover profile)
• 2010–19Moon Portland, Hollyanna McCollom — the travel guide lists Silicon Florist and names me as its founder
• 2017The Startup Mixtape, Elliott Adams — I turn up in its roll call of names
• 2017OPB Think Out Loud — “Turkey Trouble | Lead Dust | Makers And Techs,” with Marcelino Alvarez, on the split between Oregon’s techs and its makers
• 2016Draplin Design Co.: Pretty Much Everything, Aaron Draplin — I turn up in a project credit alongside Joshua Reich, Mark Zusman, and Matt Manza
• 2016Work With Flux — on the clearinghouse of 100+ Oregon companies hiring after the Intel layoffs
• 2016TEDxPortland — Mara Zepeda and Samuel Hulick, “Does technology make you feel more alive?”. She calls me a fairy godfather of the Portland startup scene, from the stage, at 5:00.
• 2015Portland Monthly — “Hot Tips from Portland’s Financial Pros”
• 2015Oregon Business — PIE plans to leave the Wieden+Kennedy building
• 2015GeekWire — PIE closes the accelerator, keeps helping startups
• 2014Portland Monthly — “Reasons to Love Portland: Rick Turoczy,” Marty Patail, from the “100 Reasons to Love Portland” series
• 2014Portland Business Journal — “Small Business Awards: Rick Turoczy gets startups off to great starts”
• 2014Willamette Week — PIE Demo Day live stream and report
• 2013Business Wire — “The Silicon Florist Shares Some Secrets of Growing Good Relationships with Bloggers”
• 2013Willamette Week — “TechfestNW 2013: Rick Turoczy”
• 2013OPB Think Out Loud — “Northwest Technology Update.” The segment page is gone and nobody archived it.
• 2012This Book Is About Travel, Andrew Hyde — I turn up in its roll call of names
• 2012GeekWire — “Four minutes on the train with… Portland startup guru Rick Turoczy of PIE,” John Cook
• 2012Willamette Week — “Exclusive: New PIE Class Announced”
• 2011From Idea to Web Startup in 21 Days: Creating bacn.com, Jason Glaspey — I donated a backend system to Bac’n, and it made the book
• 2011The Conversations of Democracy, Stephen E. Frantzich — cites my ReadWriteWeb piece “Obama’s Social Media Advantages, Act II”
• 2011The Oregonian — Mike Rogoway on the launch of PIE
• 2011GeekWire — “Google tosses support behind the Portland Incubator Experiment”
• 2011GeekWire — “Startup incubator reheats in Portland with help from Coke, Nike and Target”
• 2011GeekWire — “Fast-growing startup BankSimple flees NYC for Portland: Here’s why”
• 2011GeekWire — “Seattle and Portland should do more to become BFFs” (guest column, mine)
• 2011GeekWire — Quotes of the Week, for publicly begging the internet to resurrect Kozmo
• 2010Brew to Bikes: Portland’s Artisan Economy, Charles Heying — counts me among Portland’s “geek elite,” alongside Adam DuVander
• 2010OregonLive / The Oregonian — “30 Hour Day brings the telethon into the digital age”
• 200933 Million People in the Room, Juliette Powell — quotes me as “blogger Rick Turoczy”
• 2009PBS The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer — “Tech Industry Faces Struggles Amid Economic Slump.” Lee Hochberg reporting from Portland; I turn up on the chyron as a high-tech industry analyst, which was news to me.
• 2008–09ReadWriteWeb — bylined writer on the open web, APIs, and developer hubs outside California
• 2008The Oregonian — Steve Woodward on Portland’s early Twitter adoption
• 2006Blog Marketing, Jeremy Wright — I turn up in a list of bloggers
• 2005IT Portfolio Management Step-by-Step, Bryan Maizlish and Robert Handler — I turn up by name, from my ProSight days
• 2001The Economic Payoff from the Internet Revolution, Robert Litan and Alice Rivlin, Brookings — cites a phone interview with me from my MedicaLogic days
• 1999Flash 3 Web Animation F/X and Design, Ken Milburn and Janine Warner — quotes me from my Diversity days, when I ran web production

Writing

• 2026It Takes a Valley, Anika Horn — a practitioner’s book about the people who build the ecosystems that make entrepreneurship possible. I turn up in it.
• 2020The Startup Community Way, Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway — on building complex, founder-led regional ecosystems. I turn up in this one too.
• 2020The Community Club — “In Community We Trust,” on why trust is the currency of community and how to keep it
• 2017Portland Makers: How to Build a Creative Community — ポートランド・メイカーズ. Mitsuya Mazaki interviewed me in 2016; my words came out in Japanese, and later Korean.
• 2016–17The PIE Cookbook — everything we learned running PIE, written down and given away open source so any community could run its own accelerator. Kickstarted in 2016; the 0.9 beta landed in 2017.
• 2008–092008 Portland Tech Recap — 64 slides, for PDX Web Innovators
• 2001–06Flash Geek — my Flash and PowerPoint tutorial site, recommended in Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint, Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances, Flash Site Workshop, and Flash for the Real World
•  Brand Signals — 150 slides on positioning and the things a brand says without saying them
•  Inspiring Illogical Decisions — 50 slides on conviction over incrementalism
•  A Series of Happy Accidents — 48 slides on how Portland’s scene actually happened
•  Ideas About Ideas — 30 slides training executives to mentor founders
•  How to Bake PIE — 37 slides on accelerator mechanics and cohort design
•  PIE: How to Meet — 18 slides on how a founder meeting should actually go
•  OEN Social Media 101 — 83 slides of workshop for the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network
•  Tiny Startup Camp: Social Media — 21 slides, the short version

Things I’ve invested in

•  Airship (neé Urban Airship) — Portland mobile engagement platform that grew out of the PIE coworking space and went on to raise more than $100M
•  Backstage Capital — Arlan Hamilton’s fund backing founders who are underrepresented, underestimated, and usually overlooked
•  Bison Venture Partners — Garry Johnson III’s outfit working to get investment dollars to Black founders, and lately to get founders AI infrastructure they actually own
•  Calm Company Fund — Tyler Tringas’s fund for profitable, sustainable software companies that never wanted to be unicorns. I scouted for them, too
•  Customer.io — Portland customer messaging platform, and a charter member of the quiet generation of Portland startups that just execute
•  Freeland Spirits — Jill Kuehler’s women-owned Portland distillery, where the grain is grown on Cory Carman’s Oregon ranch and everything else starts from scratch
•  Graze — feed-building on Bluesky’s open social protocol, so the algorithm is yours instead of somebody else’s
•  Riff — Bend cold brew coffee, since reinvented as an energy drink. My position is marked failed, which is how a fair number of these go
•  The Sports Bra — Jenny Nguyen’s bar that only shows women’s sports, which turned out to be a very good idea
•  Tender Loving Empire — Portland record label and craft shops, proving you can build a company out of making things by hand

Kickstarter investments

•  Hasaan Hates Portland
•  It Takes a Valley
•  Adventure Hoodie
•  Plant Simple - Classic sauces, made plant-based.
•  Cütie Catcherz: One Shot
•  Refactoring English
•  The Book of Shame: An Extra Fabulous Experience
•  Twisted Cryptids
•  BACKFENCE Storytelling - True Stories for Everyone!
•  the NEW adventure hoodie with 23+ features and innovations
•  Mr. Lovenstein Presents: FEELINGS
•  Command of Nature
•  CardCraft - We believe in the Power of Connection
•  Draplin Design Company Brand Tumbling Dice - Limited Edition
•  BLADE RUNNER – The Roleplaying Game
•  Mastering the Game of Allyship
•  Lost for Words
•  Momentum Planner
•  Rabbit Rabbit: A Game of Superstitions
•  A Kids Book About COVID-19: Print Edition & Translations
•  Flatter Me: A Compliment Battle Card Game
•  DORSUM EXOSPINE
•  Save Cameron’s Books, EST. 1938
•  Throw Throw Burrito
•  Performance Sunglasses Built to Last and Backed for Life
•  AllGo - An Accessibility App for Plus-Size People
•  WE ARE CHANGE AGENTS.
•  Get Your Money Together: your purr-fect finance workbook
•  Brain Fuel - a unique brainstorming tool
•  Unstable Unicorns
•  Publicly Traded, Privately Held
•  CANVAS: A Revolutionary New Beverage Made from ’Saved Grain’
•  Make it Green
•  Pitch Deck
•  100 Postcards from Amsterdam
•  Indie Microblogging: owning your short-form writing
•  Bears vs Babies - A Card Game
•  Cereal - 250 Daily Treats For The Every Day Entrepreneur
•  The Startup Mixtape
•  The Responsible Communication Style Guide
•  “This is Fine” Plush Dog.
•  A New Home: The IPRC Relocation Project
•  Chuck Palahniuk’s Lullaby
•  Audibility Customs: Custom-Fit Headphones
•  Brixo - Building Blocks Meet Electricity and IoT
•  Pistol Lake: Ultra-functional activewear for minimalists
•  Love Wins- A Powerful Book of LGBTQ Love Stories
•  Retrofit Comics 2016: 12 New Graphic Novels & Comics
•  CreativeMornings: support the volunteers who make it happen!
•  “Oi” - The bike bell that doesn’t look like a bike bell
•  Snow Monkey Subzero Superfood: Ice Cream For Breakfast?
•  Walking with Ramona: Exploring Beverly Cleary’s Portland
•  Joking Hazard
•  OSSIC X: The first 3D audio headphones calibrated to you
•  MOGICS Power Donut & Bagel - Share the Power, Save the Space
•  Prepd Pack - The Lunchbox Reimagined
•  Python Jumpstart by Building 10 Apps [video course]
•  The Suck Less Job Search
•  Columbia Gorge Getaways: The 1st Comprehensive Gorge Guide
•  Bring “Thank You For Playing” To Theaters/Screens Worldwide!
•  The Offworld Collection
•  PEN America presents Passages
•  THE DISSIDENT
•  The Ultimate Stylish and Fully Functional Commuting Jackets
•  Olympia Oyster Bar, Oysters for Everyone!
•  The Super Fleece by Rumpl: The Perfect Blanket for Your Bed
•  Where the Heck is Matt?
•  WooBots - Transformable Wooden Robot
•  ZILLA and ZOE: The Movie
•  The Wonderful World of Creatures & Code
•  XO: a retro sci-fi strategy game for PC/Mac/Linux
•  Flying Fish Food Revolution
•  Priced Out: Gentrification beyond black and white
•  Know Your City: Sustain our new projects into 2016!
•  Neocities 3.0: An interactive HTML/CSS course for everyone
•  Help Us To #RewriteTheCode: The #ProjectDiane Documentary
•  THE JENNINGS HOTEL – The Hotel That Kickstarter Built
•  Adaptive Saber Parts - Make your dream lightsaber a reality.
•  The Product Hunt Effect
•  CHIP - The World’s First Nine Dollar Computer
•  Aletruism Brewing: Have a pint, change the world.
•  Only on Kickstarter: THE LEADER’S GUIDE by ERIC RIES
•  Women In Tech: The Book!
•  Society Nine - The brand for badass women.
•  TLC is BACK to make our FINAL ALBUM with YOU!
•  Exploding Kittens
•  Yellow Scope: A Different Kind of Science Kit for Girls
•  Betabook: The Portable Whiteboard for the Digital Age
•  The uKeg Pressurized Growler for Fresh Beer
•  Women’s Jeans in 400 Sizes : Made-to-Order by Qcut
•  Whiskey Elements: Customize your Whiskey in 24 hours
•  The Manual, Everywhere
•  Exhibition Kickstarter
•  GripSnap: the magnetic holder for smartphones and GoPros
•  COOLEST COOLER: 21st Century Cooler that’s Actually Cooler
•  Tickle: Learn to Code to make iPhone+iPad Apps and Games
•  New Album
•  The Return of Upcoming.org
•  Pijin: Flock, talk & unlock the sensory puzzles of speech
•  The Great Discontent Magazine, Issue 1
•  Everydisk – Easily access all your computers, from anywhere.
•  Periscope Studio: Maiden Voyage
•  KeyBit - MagSafe Adapter Key Ring
•  Hunter Thompson: The Cozumel Diary
•  ME, FAKEGRIMLOCK: THE BOOK OF AWESOME
•  GUSTIN: Redefining premium menswear, starting with denim.
•  Star Wars and Mustaches T-Shirt & Blockprints
•  THE ONE MOTORCYCLE SHOW BOOKS V1 & V2
•  Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake
•  FlatLight
•  AirTracks: Inflatable All-Terrain Camera Slider
•  Hop in the Saddle
•  Molecule Synth:An Electronic Musical Instrument for Everyone
•  The Humble Velocipede
•  The Portland Sessions
•  Stealing Time Magazine, vol I, iss 1: Genesis
•  Know Your City: Portland’s Social History App 2.0!
•  Twig: the amazing ultra-portable cable for your iPhone
•  Darth Across America
•  Trygger Camera Case: iPhone 4/4S Polarizing Filter Case
•  XOXO Festival
•  Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android
•  Light Table
•  Cultured Caveman: Portland’s first 100% paleo food cart
•  This Book Is About Travel (A Manual For Modern Movement)
•  The HuMn Wallet - the best minimal RFID blocking wallet
•  CASH Music Platform
•  ZOOKA™ - Wireless Speaker for your iPad, iPhone & iPod
•  Elevation Dock: The Best Dock For iPhone
•  TOAST: Functional bling for your iPhone!
•  Computing: a Documentary of the Human Experience
•  The Uprise Books Project
•  Preview “Design for Hackers” by backing the book tour
•  ISS-Notify
•  A New Season of Destination DIY
•  RDTN.org: Radiation Detection Hardware Network in Japan

Organizing

• 2023–Pitch Black — production crew. Stephen Green’s pitch competition for Black founders, and the best pitch event in Portland. Every dollar goes to the founders as non-dilutive grants.
• 2017–Built Festival — Built Oregon’s annual gathering of the state’s consumer product founders, makers, and retailers. Started as Built Up Festival in 2017; 700 people across 17 events that first week.
• 2015–Portland Startups Slack — started it to find out whether a chat room could recreate the early Twitter magic of the Portland startup scene. It could. More than 8,000 profiles now, most of them cheerfully dormant.
• 2014–Portland Startups Switchboard — launched with PIE alum Switchboard, so folks could Ask for what they need and Offer what they have. Nearly 2,000 people in the first year, and it’s still going.
• 2011–21TechfestNW — cofounder and programming curator, with Willamette Week. Multi-track stages, international speakers. Fortune called it “the next SXSW,” which was generous.
• 2014–20Portland Startup Week — started it and ran the programming, then handed it off in 2020. It outlasted me by six years and survived a pandemic before being retired in 2026 in favor of a statewide Oregon Startup Week.
• 2019Startup Champions Network Spring Summit — lead organizer and local host, with PIE. Ecosystem builders from around the country spent 2.5 days in Portland, March 19–21, with panels at the Wacom Experience Center, a public reception at Tilt on East Burnside, and site visits across the city.
• 2016Intel Outside — lead organizer. A free community job fair at the Falcon Building for the ~800 Portlanders laid off by Intel, built from a blog post to nearly 200 supporting companies in four weeks, with no budget.
• 2016PIE Cookbook: An Open Source Guide for Startup Accelerators — crowdfunding the work of writing down everything we learned running PIE, and giving it away
• 2014Built Oregon — funding a statewide storytelling project for Oregon’s consumer product founders, because nobody was telling those stories either
• 2013Hack @ Hayward — Eugene, with Intel, Oregon Film, and TrackTown USA. Two days at Hayward Field imagining the fan experience ahead of the World Junior Championships.
• 2012Portland Narrative Hack — a day with Intel, Wieden+Kennedy, and Oregon Film, hacking the future of interactive storytelling. Sixteen people, no rules. It became Oregon Story Board.
• 2009–1030 Hour Day — a 30-hour livestreamed telethon run out of PIE for Oregon Food Bank, Free Geek, and Toys for Tots. 77,000 viewers, nearly $10,000 raised, and we did it twice.
• 2008–09Open Source Bridge — marketing lead for the first one, after OSCON left town
• multiplePIE Demo Days — the day each cohort graduates into the ecosystem. Bittersweet every time.

Things I built

• 2026RSVP w/ me — every event, ranked by who you know, so you can see who’s going before you walk in the door.
• 2014–Built Oregon — cofounder. A nonprofit to celebrate, connect, and accelerate Oregon’s consumer product companies, because Oregon is the Silicon Valley of consumer products and somebody had to say so. Started as a storytelling project.
• 2014Reportedly (acquired) — a tool to get founders in the habit of sending real updates to their investors, advisors, and team, instead of going quiet for a year. The site is somehow still standing.
• 2013–16Oregon Story Board — cofounder. A digital storytelling accelerator, with Oregon Film and PIE, and Intel as the first sponsor. VR, AR, interactive narrative. Portland being Portland. It grew out of a one-day hack.
• 2012–21TechfestNW — cofounder, with Willamette Week. Started in 2012 as PDX, the Portland Digital eXperience, a tech conference bolted onto MusicfestNW.
• 2009–PIE — cofounder. The Portland Incubator Experiment, launched with Wieden+Kennedy and still an experiment, with partners from Autodesk and Coca-Cola to Nike and the State of Oregon along the way.
• 2008–10twurl (acquired) — a URL shortener, back when Twitter counted every character and everyone needed one. Ran on OpenID. I never promoted it once and people used it anyway.
• 2007–Silicon Florist — a blog about Portland startups. More than 6,000 posts so far, even though numerous people have begged me to stop.
• 2007–08Kumquat — built and funded through Return. Self-directed performance reviews, so you could go ask for the feedback nobody was volunteering. Read/Write Web called it elegant and a ways to go, which was fair. It didn’t make it.

Missing something? I probably forgot it. Tell me and I’ll add it.

A friendly little virtual me that has read everything I've ever written — every post, every talk, every long-winded answer — so you can ask it the thing you'd ask me.

Which means you can get a Rick opinion at 2am without having to buy me a coffee. Or wait for me to reply to your email, which — and I say this with love — can take a while.

If you've got a stage that needs filling, a company that can't explain itself, or a community you're trying to build from scratch — say hello. I'd genuinely love to hear what you're working on.

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