"It's Really Important for Founders to Socialize Those (Business) Concepts," with Rick Turoczy, on Portland's Startup Community, Blogging (Long-Live Silicon Florist!), Curiosity, and Abundance.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: [00:00:00] All right. Uh, hello everyone. Welcome to the intersection, a podcast program about, of course, intersectionality and all the stories that come with it. And, um, I feel today's episode is kind of like. Long time coming. And, um, I have been wanting to have this conversation for a very long time and today it's finally happening.

So I'm very thrilled and very honored. And my guest today, um, I feel in Portland, he almost doesn't need introduction, but since we we're an international program, um, so my guest today, his name is Rick Osi and he is a long time Portland startup leader and community organizer and leader in Portland, Oregon.

And, um, I feel I've known Rick forever, even though I really don't remember when [00:01:00] we actually met. Um. But I had the owner of, uh, participating in one of Rick's program. Uh, it's called Pi PIE, uh, uh, maybe 3, 2, 3 years ago. Um, and today we are finally interviewing Rick. So I will invite Rick to introduce himself.

Welcome Rick.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: you. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and I'm excited that we're finally getting to have this conversation as well. So, uh, a little bit about me just for context. I've worked in, on and around venture funded tech startups for the past 30 years. Uh, 12, first 12 years I worked in startups and then, uh, tried to do a few companies of my own and really just decided that that wasn't something I was terribly. Good at, so wound up moving into more entrepreneur and startup support roles and [00:02:00] mentoring. And advising. Uh, most people probably know me from the blogging and, and promotion I've done around Portland startups. That's a blog called Silicon Florist that I've run since 2007. And then in 2009, I had the opportunity to start pi,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: which is really an ongoing experiment to figure out how more established organizations like corporations or universities or government entities can best collaborate with the startup community for mutual benefit.

And that has been an ongoing series of experiments held here in Portland, Oregon. But we've also documented our learning so that anybody anywhere can benefit from the work that we've done.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: And it is being. 20. So since you started Silicon Floris, it's been almost 20 [00:03:00] years.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: years. Yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. Um, 20 years is a long time. And, um,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: telling me?

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: okay. I have to tell you, I went to college 20 years ago and I was just remembering that earlier this week and I was like, that was 2006.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: huh.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: It is a long time.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: long time.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: And you know, our program is audio only, but um, Rick, you have a very long beard.

So when was the last,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and gray is my beard. Yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: when was the last time you cut it?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I can't remember. I did at some point prior to the pandemic, like I probably had a beard for. 10 or 12 years. And there was one time, 2018 or so, that I cut it off and everybody was like, no, that's [00:04:00] not okay. Put the, grow your beard back. And so I've worn it that way ever since.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Wow.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: pandemic was super helpful

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Okay.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: because, you know, you didn't, you didn't have to leave and you could just be however you wanted to be.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: People have really strong opinions about beard

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: do. They

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: in this town. Okay. Like they told you it's not okay, and you obliged.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. I mean, I don't have to look at my face. They do. So I feel like it's, it's the more polite thing to give them what they wanna look at, so, yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I mean, that's fair. I think especially considering the work you do, uh, it's really public facing, community facing, so I guess like in a way. Okay. Do you consider yourself who has a persona?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I do, I, I very much do. I have a very, I have a, uh, several personas, I think I, my Silicon florist persona [00:05:00] blogging, YouTube podcasty persona, which you're getting right now, is this very kind of optimistic, upbeat, like negar, never negative, never critical, just kind of trying to find the, the positive story in, in all of the things and, and broadcast that positive story. I think my pie persona is much more, uh, trusted advisor like truth telling more so than, you know, only focusing on the positive. Like, I, I try and help founders like figure out. Like what's, what they're really doing and if there's potential there. And I don't want them wasting time or

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: energy or, or emotion trying to build something that's not going to go somewhere.

So I tend to be a little more direct in that persona. And then me, like my personality is really I'm, I'm an [00:06:00] introvert. Like I've learned how to exist as a public facing person, as an introvert, but it's incredibly draining

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: to like deal with people on a regular basis.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: So you are an introvert who plays kind of like an extroverted role for like 20 plus years.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, yeah. I had to learn how to, I mean, I had to learn how to do it, not that I'm acting or faking, just that I have to really focus on tapping into a certain part of my personality to affect that persona. And I really try, especially with the, the, well, both, both the, one and the kind of trusted advisor one, they're really imbued with empathy.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: like, this is what I would've wanted to hear as a founder. Or these are, you know, this is the [00:07:00] kind of like feedback and, um, and insight. I that is most beneficial. So like that's, that's where a lot of energy for that comes from. then I think also in doing this work, no matter how much technology changes or how much innovation we see, underlying principles of building a business are relatively the same.

They remain pretty consistent. So a lot of what has enabled me to be more public facing is I've seen the same things so many times, or I've said the same thing so

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: that I'm, I'm more comfortable in, in projecting that, you know, that feedback or that, uh, persona because it's so practiced

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: [00:08:00] Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Like, like no matter how innovative your idea is, there are still business basics that always come in to play for founders.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I appreciate that. It does take a lot of practice. I feel like even, you know, the conversation we're having right now, um, like I. I'm, I'm not an actual I extrovert either. So this is kind of like very much a learned skill to, um, I think for me, kind, kind of the guiding principle is curiosity. And when I feel like the curiosity is big enough, then I can overcome that kind of like fear or kind of like, I don't know if I can say this.

Um, so I appreciate that. And I also, like, in a way now I'm thinking because you are not a very extroverted person, so you have to be pretty kind of mindful and strategic about where you spend your [00:09:00] energy. Where do you kind of like put your thoughts on? So I feel like in that way, when you are an advisor, like say when we were doing PI programs,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yep.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: um, you it, it comes up as like thoughtful because you are not just saying words.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: And it's more, yeah, I mean it's more grounded, uh, to your point, empathy. Right. So I feel like from that perspective, you play the advisor role really well because of your kind of calmness and introvert kind of mannerism reason.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Oh, thank you. That's, that's really nice to hear. I think you, you also probably recognized that subconsciously or not, a lot of pie was structured in a very, kind of like one-on-one non confrontational way. Like, like I was creating an [00:10:00] environment that was both comfortable for the founder, but also comfortable for me in, in having some of that dialogue

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: founders. Um, not that it was only that we did have some group environment and, and more, um, like more community engagement kind of opportunities. But, but by and large day-to-day programming was structured in a way that I could best conserve my energy and, and provide the most value to the founders who were participating.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, I can now, you know, I'm recalling my experience at PI as we speak. We did have a lot of like one-on-one interactions and also in group setting and even a more relaxing environment as well, just for relationship building such a like peer to peer.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yep.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Um, okay. I feel I should know this and or I should remember this, I is Portland incubator.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: [00:11:00] Experiment.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Experiment. Yes. And, um, I, I do know you, uh, it's taking a break right now. PI is taking a break. Um, I'm curious to learn, you know, like how, what have you been doing since taking a break from pi? I know you are not taking a break as a person, but what's been going on?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: programmatically we've taken a break. Yeah. So, and just to provide some folks some context for that. So was never designed to be anything more than a series of experiments. So the program itself just began as a coworking space that had a bunch of founders sitting in it. And through our observation, we discovered that there was a great deal of value to shared space with founders at an early stage. There was a great deal of peer mentorship that occurred organically with those founders. But a, a gap that we [00:12:00] realized existed was that more mentorship that early stage founders need while they're building their company. And so we iterated on the program and created basically a mentorship. Platform for early stage founders and continued to kind of iterate on that and change that to, to meet the needs of the community. then, um, the most interesting thing, again, taking the kind of positive spin on a very negative situation was testing that in the pandemic. So testing something that had been a completely in real life in-person experience and trying to take that into a virtual environment

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: what that did or how things needed to change to support that. And was okay, like it still provided value, it just wasn't as [00:13:00] impactful as the program had been in person. And then when you coupled that with the changing dynamics of kind of community, the way businesses are built basically we got to this point where as a modern day founder, never easy to build a product or to build a service, but can get to a prototype, you can create a service far more rapidly than people have ever been able in history. And while that efficiency is beneficial in many regards, we found that our founders were able to get to a stage with the product [00:14:00] that. Was devoid of a lot of the learning that it used to take a person to get that far. Now, there were shortcuts or there were

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Uh.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: that enabled them to get to product more rapidly with less real world kind of business experience that they had had in the past.

And so we, we run a very constricted timeframe program.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: And it, it really became obvious that founders, modern day founders now had more questions or gaps in their knowledge than we could solve in that short timeframe. It was very different from helping a founder like figure out how to bring their product to market, or helping a founder, you know, go out and raise money.

Now we had founders coming to us with a variety of issues that we couldn't solve [00:15:00] all of them simultaneously, and we definitely couldn't solve them in three months. And

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: just, it just became obvious there are, the way our program was structured,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: met the needs of the modern day founder that we were encountering in Portland.

So we decided to pause. Program. So to finally get a long way around to finally addressing your question, what we did, we've gone back into customer discovery mode and research and development mode. And so we're just trying smaller, um, you know, discreet experiments to test some of our hypotheses about the community, about founder needs, um, about like we can do that's relevant in a programmatic way to try and figure out what the next iteration of PI might look like.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm, I really appreciate that. First of all, it's, it's [00:16:00] easy to say, oh, I'm so proud of what we do and what we did, and just keep doing it. I think it's lot harder and takes a lot more courage to say, this is not working anymore, so we are not gonna do it anymore. Um, I feel like we see a lot of that kind of like, we ha we just have to grind.

We just have to keep going.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Even though it's like, no, we are actually. This is not working. Why don't we stop? I feel like it's not just a startup community like I feel even in the nonprofit sector or more like service oriented organizations, people oftentimes they fall into the trap that's like, oh, I believe in our mission.

We just have to keep going. It. Yeah. It's almost like we, that that's our only option. And I feel like [00:17:00] maybe we can all just consider, actually, there could be different options and one of the, maybe this is not working, let's take a pause and then we can come back to it.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I think there's a lot of nostalgia, like I don't think it's unique to Portland, the feeling of nostalgia, but I think Portland culturally gets very nostalgic about things and they want that level of consistency remain to, it just feels more comfortable and more safe. The people who've always done the stuff keep doing the same

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: And, and I wanted to catch your point about the nonprofit sector because I think there's a, there's also a, um, an additional motivator

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: that sector. It's like, it's so hard for nonprofits to figure out exactly what a grant making organization wants

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: to land the [00:18:00] funding that they need.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: once you've decrypted that, and once you've figured it out, you, you are really stressed about losing that pipeline of revenue to keep

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: our organizations sustainable. So from a nonprofit perspective, we also felt the pressure. From our grant making organizations who would say, why don't you just keep doing this work the way you've always done it? And we could say, we could say to them, it's not working as well as it used to, or it's not delivering the same value we want it to deliver. And we would get pushback from them as well. They'd say, but we need programs like this and you know how to do this program. So whether

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: working as well as expected, we need you to keep doing it. So like there was, there were weird pressures in that way

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: in a for-profit company that does, that really doesn't exist.

You don't often have customers who say, I'm gonna keep paying for your product even though I don't like it or the [00:19:00] way it works

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hmm. Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: sometimes that happens in the nonprofit world.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, it's almost like a habit, like a old habit, and people are too kind of intimidated to break that habit or change that behavior.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yep.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: And I mean, really, I think that's a really good point. We need to really look at, I mean, if we consider it as a pipeline, then somewhere in the pipeline it's leaking, it's breaking,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, absolutely.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: and maybe we want to identify that leak.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Uhhuh.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Um, yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: it also makes it like it's human nature, right? Like, like if I am, if I am an organization that is delivering sponsorship funding or grant funding to an organization, so long as I've made that decision once and that organization still exists and keeps doing the work the way it's done it before, then I don't have to make another decision.

Either [00:20:00] I don't have to figure out a new way to distribute capital to other organizations. You know, it is just, there's a lot of messy of dynamics in that, for sure.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, dynamics is a good word to describe that, and it can get just very weird and complicated. Um, I, when you mentioned, you know, what experimenting and see how we can create a different version of pie that's supportive and relevant to today's world, I started to become curious about your, um, like these days.

We think about startups and small businesses and investments ventures, et cetera, et cetera. Um, my understanding is that the super traditional way is not really working like the conventional way of doing businesses, uh, being an entrepreneur or like, [00:21:00] um, uh, running a service. It's, it's not like what it used to be anymore.

And I'm curious to see or learn about your thoughts on, um, like businesses and organizations that focus on, uh, social impact and sometimes like a social enterprise kind of organization. I wonder if it could be, uh, an option for the future of pie.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, I, I definitely think there's, there are options available there. I think, you know, where we found ourselves. Pretty consistently is we would wind up in collaborations with sponsors who wanted to do some type of work, and we were following their motivations more so than we were just a, system or a [00:22:00] program that could operationalize what they wanted to see.

And obviously we worked on things that were interesting to us as well. It wasn't like we would take any organization and do what they wanted to do. But, um, I do think what we've learned in this practice, in this programming over the past 15 years or so, is it's really just a, it's a model that leverages community to, to provide that education.

And it can be applied in any number of ways. One. One experiment that we had hoped to run prior to the pandemic and um, the pandemic kind of upset it a little bit, but we wanted to run an experiment where treated organizations like. Startups and

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: through a similar programmatic kind of experience,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and, and a similar cohort experience.

[00:23:00] Right. So I think one of the biggest challenges, and, and you know this as well as I do, is the culture of scarcity in the nonprofit world.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: if you're getting a dollar, that's a dollar. I'm not getting, it's a zero sum game.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: we we're always competing with all the other programs and, and so we wanted to see if we could disrupt that a little bit by creating a, a collegial collaborative cohort of local non-profits that could potentially work together for mutual benefit as well as community benefit. Um. And it's still an interesting idea. I still think it has potential, but the economics of the United States and where grant dollars used to come from and used to flow from, and, and that has largely gone away. Like it's, it's really difficult to figure out like the business of making that work [00:24:00] because when it comes right down to it, I try and always remind folks, A, a nonprofit is just a business classification.

It still has to

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: as a business. Like it's, they, it just has different revenue streams and, and how it operates, but it, it still has to have business fundamentals that function. So, so I feel like our program could readily be like attributed to other pursuits. They don't necessarily have to be tech, they don't necessarily have to be

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: venture scale.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: that's just where we've chosen to focus for the most part.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. I feel, yeah. Um, it might be harsh for nonprofit leaders to hear this. I do agree. I think most nonprofits run on the scarcity mindset, and it's not really their fault. I think it's designed that way,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yep.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: The, the system is [00:25:00] designed for the nonprofits to fight for resource. It's almost like people have to prove that we are worth it.

Like we're worth of your money, we're worth of your, I don't know, charity or like, we're worth of your grants or something like that.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Um, and like you said, it's not a zero sum game and I feel like, uh, yes, non-profit, non-profit is also a type of a business. I also feel um, it's all about the mindset.

It feels like so.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Well, and generally, folks who are driven to engage in nonprofit work, whether they're starting nonprofits or working at nonprofits or those kind of things, have also been conditioned to devalue their time and effort because they're, know, they, and this is a cultural thing [00:26:00] that it's like, well, you're working for a nonprofit to do greater good, so therefore you should discount your hourly rate.

Or you should, your time's not worth as much because you're getting this fringe emotional benefit of the work that you're doing. And that's ridiculous. But

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: how it's,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I think that's a really, really good point. It's so capitalistic

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: yep.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: it's very much, I think people are confused, um, between price and value.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. Yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Like when you say you should discount it, like you are discounting the price, but the value is still there. So you can ask people to give you a discount while still giving you the same, if not more value of their work.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Right,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: really pay people for the value of their work. Um, so yeah, I totally agree. And that's such a capitalistic, I mean, yes, capitalism has a lot of [00:27:00] benefits and it's very, um, it, it's a product that I feel has helped our society and humanity greatly. Um. But again, to what degree?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: right.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: a a lot of things cannot measured by a price tag, and a lot of things have so much value.

You can't just say because you believe in the greater good, it give us a discount. Like it's, it doesn't make sense.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: know.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Um, so. So you started Pie in 2009 and, uh, started Silicone Floris even before 2007. And you mentioned you started as a blog. I know to a large degree. It still is a blog, but I see that as much more than a blog.

Like I feel it's like a [00:28:00] community news resource. Um, so I mean, not exactly a newspaper, but more or less feels like a newspaper.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I feel you share a lot of resources via Silicon Floris. So I wanna invite you to maybe like, why, why did you start it?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Good question. So, um, the, the long, long kind of history about it is I've always been a hobbyist developer. Um, so I have been mucking around with codes since I was in grade school. The first computer I ever used was like a TRS 80 had a, um, like a cassette recorder to save to.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Cool.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and so I've always been enamored of technology as a creative outlet

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and so. [00:29:00] When I went through school, I was an English major, really enjoyed writing. some point in the mid nineties, those two passions kind of collided and I realized that you could write code to put your writing online. And so I started, know, just sharing thoughts and, and, and insights and that kind of thing.

What, what would become blogging in the late nineties. And, uh, so I'd been doing that for some time and I was very used to that form of expression. And I mentioned I started a few of my own companies. Um, while I was in that kind of founder phase here in Portland, I was coming across a ton of people who were building really interesting things that publication was talking about.

And. [00:30:00] Most of them were coming out of open source community. And, and for folks who are listening who might not have the context of open source and, and proprietary, there are, you know, there are several paths to create software in the world. One is where a you know, capitalist entity will build something. They will keep all of the, the code but their product will function and you pay them for access to the function of the

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: And then there's the open source community, which is really predicated on building the best product possible through community engagement. So. No one actually owns the code per se.

It's just people con a variety of people contributing to a code base to build a product that then anyone can use, anyone can take and [00:31:00] and customize it however they want. And so in Portland, at that time, a lot of folks were, were in the open source world,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: starting to solutions that were to become startups.

And I wasn't a talented enough developer to contribute to these projects. So I really just made the decision to open source my writing and my marketing communications. I was like, well, you're not promoting what you're doing, you're doing all this work in the open source world. So I will. Open source my ability, which is marketing, what you're doing to everybody else.

So Silicon Floris really just began as a personal blog and, um, just highlighting what was happening around here and to, to help folks also with some additional context. This is prior to the existence of the concept of social media. I [00:32:00] mean, at the time, blogs were the closest thing we had to social media. There wasn't really, you know, Twitter was still like in its formative stages. You know, Facebook was still kind of on college campuses, but nowhere else. Um, LinkedIn was still just your resume. Like there wasn't that social media. Instagram didn't yet

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: didn't exist until PI was already going.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: And I, I only can reference that because the original community manager for Instagram used to live in Portland and

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Really?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: a pie from time to time

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Okay.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: stuff started going crazy. And they're like, you need to come down to the Bay Area because we've got something going here that we're gonna need to pay attention to.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: but yeah, it originally just started as that, just highlighting other people were blogging so I could take their content and just say,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: here's something [00:33:00] interesting. Go read that. Or I could write stuff up myself. And, um, and written word was my. Choice of expression, like that was my chosen creative expression.

And so it all kind of just fell into place. And for whatever reason at that time, it just really struck this cord with the community and more and more people kept sharing what they were building or events they were programming or that kind of thing. And, and so I really enjoyed just continuing to build that resource then eventually, you know, fast forward to, know. Today, I guess it's like not a lot of people read long form content

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I know

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and so, and I was watching my metrics just like degrade over time and, and I was just like, if I want [00:34:00] people paying attention to the companies in Portland, I need to spoonfeed it to them in a different way. And so I started doing podcasting and YouTube and that kind of thing as a way to that content to the audience in a way that was more easily consumable by them.

But yeah, I still blog. Like I said, that's my favorite way. I just, I write all the time.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, that's actually my preferred way as well. And I resonate with you so much because I also, I, I grew up blogging,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, of course. Was it Live Journal? Were you on Live Journal or were you on

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: oh

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: or?

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I was in China, so what we had was, oh, what it's called one, I think it's 1 6 3.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Okay.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: One year 1, 6 3. It's, um, I think it's still around, but when I was in China like 20 years ago, it was a, [00:35:00] um, it was a multipurpose kind of a media company that provides news and online forum so people can go and talk about like Reddit

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: and uh, and blog and photo service.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Nice.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: so I was using that in college. Oh my god. Uh, to write about things. I hope it's not there anymore.

I'll be mortified if I saw that right now. Um. But yeah, I blocked as a kid and um, and similarly I noticed that people really are not reading or, um, consuming longer form content. These days, not so much. So every time I do write a blog post, while like an article, I always say this is like a three minutes read or like a four minutes [00:36:00] read.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: right.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: don't know if it does anything. Like, to me, three or four minutes is pretty short, so, but I don't even know if people will read that.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. Well, and so much of our like consumption of media has become headline. Based or a short or, you know, short snippet kind of

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: True.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: consumption.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: that's only being exacerbated by AI summaries and, and that kind

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Like, I totally get why no one would wanna sit there and read something that takes 10 minutes to read, no matter how much I put into it.

If Google is gonna summarize the article for them when they search

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: mean, I, I get why it's decreasing and it's unfortunate, but it's the reality of the

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: concern is less about showing up and reading my stuff and spending [00:37:00] time on the site. Like my concern is, hey, this person in Portland or in Oregon is doing something you need to know about. To,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I can get that content in front of them. However we, I can promote those founders that are doing interesting things. I'm, I'm to do that.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: You're so, you're such a like a servant leader.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, yeah,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: It is like, uh, eat that, eat that. Please eat that, please. Um, which I think that kind of like goes back to the story of your beard is

we want your beard. Fine.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: exactly. Fine. That's fine.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Fine.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I don't care,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: think, I don't think of myself as somebody who has a beard. Like I'm always like, I don't consciously, unless I get to my mouth or something. I rarely have ever consciously [00:38:00] about that. So. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me. It's fine if

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: if I look older and wiser because I've got a beard all the better.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Uh, well, fair. Yeah. You, you do look kind of like a, uh

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Little Gadoy

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: mm-hmm. Kind of Oh yeah. Phy, uh, you just need a hood. You need a hood. You know what, like we can,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: hat of

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: yeah. We can actually make you viral to turn you, um, by turning you into a meme.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. That perfect

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. And then more people will listen to you.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Then people will listen to

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: to those Portland startups that,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Um, that's great. I love the backstory of it. Um, and I do agree with you because of the, you know, the current way for people to consume content, it's almost like, what, what are you gonna do? [00:39:00] Like, you have to pivot, you have to change. And I think that goes back, kind of links back to, you know, the next phase for PI as well.

Um, you, you just have to evolve and continue to evolve based on the community's needs. And speaking of community needs,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I feel. Um, like a really big reason for for us to chat today is, of course not. The only reason is that, um, we know the startup community in Portland is having a hard time.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Um, and you are an observer and advisor, a leader in the space.

Um, from your observation and practice in the nice, specifically in the last year or two, what's your kind of takeaway? [00:40:00] What was the takeaway?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, it's, um, it's interesting in that obviously having been here for 30 years, I've seen this cycle before several times. And so I recognize where we are and what's happening, but there's some things that are very different time around. So, um, one of the things that always been really compelling about. Portland and its culture is a culture of curiosity.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: um, we, in, in prior experience, we were often very, very early to new technology. Like we were early to web, we were early to open source, we were early to mobile. Um. And to some extent we were pretty early [00:41:00] with like vr, ar, XR kind of technology as

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: true. Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: And, and not from a, not from a business standpoint, not from a, I'm going to build the next big company just from a, Hey, this stuff seems cool and I wanna muck around with it, and I know there are other people who want to explore it as well. Let's build stuff. Let's do things. Let's, let's creatively explore this technology in some way and with ai, with this era of innovation. Maybe it was the pandemic, maybe it was, we don't have a massive research university in our midst. I don't know what it was, but we totally missed the AI wave. We totally missed that. Creative exploration phase. And so I feel like we are largely playing [00:42:00] catch up right now, trying to figure out how to, how to, engage and utilize this new technology, but we're further behind other communities we're used to being.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: So my hope that because the, what Portland does is it creatively explores something

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and then none, no real business comes out of that. But then the business opportunity happens somewhere else, and all those people who are creatively exploring it suddenly have business context

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: something happens. So it's not, it's not a, a smooth transition by any means, but I'm kind of hopeful that maybe we'll. Understand that business context more rapidly this time around for people who want to explore businesses there. But I'm still missing that creative [00:43:00] exploration collaboration around ai. And, and that's not only Portland's fault.

I think there's a been a broader cultural change you know, the, the prevailing analogy I throw around is, you know, there's this, there's this. that like, oh, if you're not building a billion dollar company, why are you even bothering? And I, I hate that, but I also think that's so prevalent

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: that's also taken some of the fun out of the

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Definitely. Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: people don't want to, people see it as a waste of time or they don't want to, you know, they don't want to like creatively explore something if there's no residual revenue

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: growth potential associated with that. And, and I think that's, again, that's a broader cultural shift

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: we've also been impacted by.

So, [00:44:00] to, to get to your question, where I see Portland right now is a little behind the curve, I also see a lot of people who are very excited about. The potential. Um, there's a lot of really talented folk. We always have really great, smart, talented, creative folks who are eager to get started on something new or eager to start their own next thing.

So I feel like we have a lot of pent up energy that we're going to see a lot more activity in the next 18 months that kind of brings Portland back to something similar to where it was, you know, 10 years ago, like, like more, more community, more tangible community, more recognizable companies or people doing [00:45:00] things. Um, it feels like we're, we're right at the precipice of that starting to happen again.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Wow. Uh, do you wanna call that a prediction or a profit?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: No, I'm horrible with predictions.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: No.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: please don't call it a prediction. I always, I always tell people, um, when I was in college, I did a lot of stuff on the internet, but that was pre web, so it was all text-based. Like you had to remember IP addresses, which are like a string of numbers to

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, that was a hard time. Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: And so I was a, I was an admin on a few servers and I started seeing this www folder showing up on a lot of my servers. And I was like, what is this? What is going on? And people are like, oh, soon we're gonna be able to put pictures on the internet and music and colors and all these kind of things. I'm like, that's stupid.

That'll never work. So, so don't, don't take me for any predictions 'cause I don't know what.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Oh [00:46:00] gosh. Now look where we are. Yeah. Um, so not a prediction, but rather perhaps, um, a hope.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I hope.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: A hope.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Um,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let's say that's,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: that's true.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: what, maybe that's what it is. If we say it enough,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Well, I mean, the thing is, you know, a self-fulfilled prophecy. Yes. At the same time, it's only a self-fulfilled prophecy. If all we do is just hope.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right. If we put actual work, if we act on it, then it's active hope. So that goes beyond a self fulfilled. Prophecy, which a lot cooler. A lot cooler.

Um, and I mean, you're such a doer. You are always doing something. Um, and I do wanna say, you know, like, you can take a break sometime.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. I took a sabbatical from [00:47:00] Silicon Florist when. I think the year it turned 16 years old, I took, I was kind of burned out.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: kind of burned out. I was very burnout

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: mm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I was like, going stop doing this for three months and if I miss it, no matter, I don't care what other people say. Like, again, back to that nostalgia, like people were coming to me being like, oh, you gotta keep doing that.

Like, don't give up on that. I was, I was more introspective and I was like, if I actually start missing writing, doing the research, like if there's something that draws me back to doing that after three months, then great. I'll keep. Doing it. But I was also totally comfortable after 16 years of that as a voluntary hobby to

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: walk [00:48:00] away from it if need be, if that's what I needed for myself. But, um, but it turns out I did miss it. And like, again, part of it was habitual.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: it was just something I gotten used to doing and it was part of something that I had internalized as part of what I do. And, I was, I was happy that I was drawn back to, to doing it again. 'cause I really do enjoy it.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. I mean, I can tell you enjoyed it otherwise, I mean, so many years gone by,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, it's a long time. I, I need to make sense of it though. Like, so much of it, much of the, the original inspiration was also for me personally. remember what was happening or what I'd heard or who

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: right?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: to.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and you get to a certain point where it's an insurmountable amount of content. [00:49:00] Like I'll go back and read posts I wrote years ago and I'd be like, oh, I'd totally forgotten

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: thing.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and I'm really like, one of the projects I want to take on is like. Structuring that in a more meaningful way so that it has broader value for other people or just making it more accessible. Because there are so many questions that people come to me with where they're like, how many, how many startups are there in Portland right now?

And I'm like, whoa, I don't know. I write about 'em every day, but I can't give you a number. Or they'll be like, how much, how much capital has been raised by Portland startups in 2025 that you

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Huh?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: And I'm like, I

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Okay.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I don't know. I write it down

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and I promote it. But that was not my, my, my desire and my motivation was not to create an Excel spreadsheet about all the funding.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: so like there, there are questions

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: are [00:50:00] answered in that data that. I can't see, and no one can,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: in

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: So what could I do to structure that in a way that makes it more valuable to people?

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: You could consider doing like an annual report of some sort. Um, it doesn't need to be long, like,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: That's smart. I like that. Yeah. Just to summarize what occurred kind of thing and what we Yeah. The numbers and that,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: yeah,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: that could be a good habit to get into, to be sure.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: yeah. I think, and also, you know, perhaps you will wanna write a book,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. I mean, I, when I began, so seventh grade, I won an award, a young author's

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: huh? Wow.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I was like, oh, I'm gonna be a writer. And then I worked on my school newspaper in high school a lot and really enjoyed the kind of journalistic aspect of that. So I went to college for [00:51:00] English

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Um, my first job out of college, I was a literary agent because I thought I wanted to go into book publishing and two years in that industry, and I was like, no, this industry is awful.

Like I'm dealing with all these talented authors who can't get published because they're writing things that won't necessarily sell, so

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: won't pick them up. And it just it kind of revealed how

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and, and like not terribly great that industry

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: But yes, always in the back of my mind is like, someday I need to like actually write book or whatever.

So like, I should probably do that at some point.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I mean, only if it gives you joy.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Right, right. Well, I did write, I don't know if we, we didn't talk about this, but uh, or we, we touched on it, but to be more explicit, like [00:52:00] wrote a book on PI called the PI Cookbook. That is really, uh, because with pi, everything's a bad pie pun, but

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: it was really designed to be a user manual for people who wanted to potentially build startup accelerators of their own or improve their programs.

Or also for founders who were thinking about going to a startup accelerator, provide them with smart context about what they were getting into. And that was really enjoyable. Like that was great. And that was an open source project, so we had people contributing to it from all over. so yeah, I've done it.

I've done like an actual book at least once and it's fun. But it's also like we just talked about, do people even read. Anymore Or is it just, just you hold up the book as a proof point

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: thousands of podcasts you appear

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: a book

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. Like, it really depends. I don't know. A lot of [00:53:00] this book, like publishing work to me is all about pr,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. Yep,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: PR and marketing. Um, like even for my, like these humble podcast, I get people coming to me just code emailing, uh, they wanna promote their book.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: believe it. Yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I hear that from, uh, founders I know who've written books or whatever and they're like, writing the book is not the grind. Writing the book is the best part of the whole thing. It's like once you have to go on road shows and

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Oh God,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: your book constantly, they're like, that's the grind.

That's hard. So

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I hear you. Yeah. I don't, but, well, I mean, if you do publish a book, I will buy it.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: thanks.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Um, thank you, Rick. I feel it's, I feel our conversation. It's so fun, and I also think it doesn't really do a justice because you have, you've [00:54:00] had such a long career and you can't just really squeeze everything in less than an hour.

Um, so perhaps a follow up is in the future and, um, in the spirit of joy, fun and abundance, and do something because what you want to do it.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: in the spirit of that, um, my final question is, um, what kind of advice you would give to today's founders in this time?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. Um, it's really first and foremost, like specifically if you're building a product or a service, like yes, I understand that you're creation and you know it's very important to you, but try as best you can, not to be precious about your concept. Like be willing to listen to

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Hm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: people are [00:55:00] telling you about what you're trying to do.

Be willing to take feedback. Remember that a no is no different than a yes. They're just data points to help you figure out your way along the path. And, and, and unfortunately, you have to get that idea out in front of people in order to get that feedback. So, so please. Never be shy about sharing what you're working on, no matter how formative the i the concept or or idea.

It's just really important to socialize those concepts and, and you know, the fringe of that, because a lot of folks are shy or scared to share ideas early is, you know, the sooner you do that, the more often you do that,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: that becomes part of your brand.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: if [00:56:00] you're socializing an idea, if you're socializing a product, then if someone comes to the community with a similar idea or a tangentially related idea, suddenly everybody goes, oh, that's Joe Joe's working on something.

Go talk

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: She's the one who's focused on that,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yes.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: a community like ours

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: You know, like it or not, still thinks it's a town of like 50,000 people. And so they think, oh, if there's one person doing things, they must be the person who does the

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right. Yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: there's a lot of that dynamic

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: so it's really easy to become known as the person who does that thing, but you have to socialize it in order to achieve that.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, I think that's a really, really great advice. Just don't be too precious about your thing. And I mean, that's another point for the abundance mindset. Like [00:57:00] when you socialize it, more people will know about it and more people potentially can help you and, and that's really cool thing.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: yeah, yeah. And another facet of that is, so I, I wasn't forced to do YouTube. It just probably wasn't my first choice of something to do. But I'm really thankful that I did because.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: this is kinda what I want to encourage people to try is like get back to just like, do something that you're bad at.

Like just be bad at something, but do it anyway. Like when you were a kid, you would just do stuff you were, you didn't know how to do, you just do it.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Just do it.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: draw, you couldn't color, you couldn't like, like you just did it because it was enjoyable

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: you were bad at it. So as part of the inspiration to kind of get stuff out in front of people, like enjoy being bad at something and just keep doing it and eventually you will be, get better at doing that thing.[00:58:00]

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I love it because it's such, you know, if you believe in er, um, er and I was just literally having a meeting this morning with someone 'cause I'm going to do more video

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: and I suck at it and. But yeah, I, I have made now, now that it's out, so I really need to do it. Um, I'm, I'm going to do more video and,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Love it.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I'm really bad at it, so

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: it's really hard. Like it's, it's hard. Um, but then at some point, you ju you're like your mind shifts or like you've done it enough times that it starts to feel comfortable and then it's kinda like you talked about your blogging way back when, like it's always fun to go back and look at your old stuff where you're like, wow, this is so bad,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: so bad. [00:59:00] Also, I was a kid. Okay.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Perfect. See, that's what I'm saying.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Oh my gosh. No, it's not, it wasn't even bad. It's cringy.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah. Yeah. You kinda have to embrace the cringe. Especially on YouTube. Like it is really, it is really hard talking to, I mean, at least this, there's some reciprocal humanity, you know, you're having a conversation,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: That's true.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: if you're doing, like, if you're doing just you talking to a camera, it's really challenging to convince yourself that the camera is easy to talk to kind of thing.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I mean, it doesn't talk back. I know that.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: and like, is there actually anybody on the other side listening to this? Who knows?

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Um, fun. Okay. Um, I've had a lot of fun and thank you so much, Rick, today.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Thank you.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Um, and where do people find you? How do they find you?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah, I, um, am on the internet in a [01:00:00] variety of places. Unfortunately, I picked my last name as my chosen username, so, uh, it's T-U-R-O-C as in Charlie, Z as in zebra y, pretty much all over the place. So, um, usually these days LinkedIn is the easiest place to find me and always happy to connect with people there. And, um, yeah, the, the website is silicon florist.com. So. For people who don't get the dumb pun,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Mm-hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: is, so there's Silicon Valley, Oregon was really the first place to take on another silicon moniker after that. So

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Oh,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: was called the Silicon Forest because there was a lot of chip manufacturing and intel and Techtronics up here.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I didn't know that,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: And so I wanted the blog to be called Silicon Forest, but somebody already had that.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: [01:01:00] huh?

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I went, well, if Portland's the Rose City

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: is the Silicon Forest,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Uhhuh.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: be Silicon Florist is the bad pun there. So

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I love that. That's a origin story. Wow.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: bad.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: And you didn't you, okay, so just a few years ago you didn't get the Silicon Flower Restore blog.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I might have it. I have a lot of silicon florist.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Okay.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: that like I have a, I have an addiction to buying URLs that I'm like, oh, I totally have a great idea for this URL then nothing ever happens with

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: I've done that too. I have let go a bunch of URLs over the years because I'm like, no, you are never gonna do shit about it. Just,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: first, my very first blog, and I'm sorry that I lost this URL, I just didn't update it one year. original link I blogged under was hypocritical.com

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: hmm.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: because I had thought if I [01:02:00] was blogging and somebody like, you know, had something to say about my opinion, I was like, well, it's called hypocritical.com, so like if I'm not being hypocritical, what even is the point?

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Right.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: yeah, that was my original URL was hypocritical.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: You gave that one up.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: I gave that one out. I lost it. It was one of those where there was auto renew

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Oh,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: of those where like I missed it by an hour and somebody snapped it up in between the time it, it expired and yeah,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: that's,

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: there's a lot of convenience to the modern day web that didn't used to exist.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: that's a bummer.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: Yeah,

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: sorry.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: on the content's still available on internet archive, like the way back machine, but yeah.

zhou_4_01-15-2026_140450: Oh, wow. Um, with that, uh, thank you Rick.

rick-turoczy_1_01-15-2026_140450: of course.