Portland Startup Week: Why Starting Small Just Became The Biggest Edge
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A year ago, Geoff Jensen was at Portland Startup Week trying to figure out the same thing a lot of founders are: find a co-founder, join a team, or raise money? He won the hackathon, built a great team — and within months realized the team was too big, the fundraising timeline was too slow, and the features they were building were already being absorbed by frontier models.
That forced a reset. And it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.
Geoff is a product designer and AI technologist with 25 years of experience across eight startups and four tech revolutions — from early web to mobile to blockchain to AI. He's led product and design at companies from early-stage to 100+ employees, helped raise $5.8M as Head of Product Design at ReSource Network, and built tools used by hundreds of businesses. He's currently shipping AI-native products solo, in public, in real time.
This talk is for solopreneurs, small teams, people weighing whether to job hunt or build, and investors trying to understand what the new landscape actually looks like. Geoff will share what he's building, what's working, what's brutally hard, and why the companies worth betting on in 2026 look nothing like they did twelve months ago.