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Welcome to this issue of Austin Business Review, a weekly roundup of great local events and insights for Austin business owners (plus some other cool stuff for your life outside of work).
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My name’s Ethan and I’m the one writing this (holler at me here!).
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We’ve got a bunch going on in this issue, including:
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🗓️ Events (including an ABR coffee meetup with a twist)
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🤖 The second cohort of Gauntlet AI Launches
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💰 An inside look at founders’ finances
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🍷 Summer Tip from a Sommelier
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And more… Did someone forward this to you? If you like it, you can sign up here.
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-Ethan
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PS. Starship was on the launch pad the other day, doing final preparation static test-fires ahead of its 9th test flight, slotted for sometime next week.
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This test will be a little more special than the last – it’s taking off from Starbase, Texas, which is officially its own city (as of May 3rd). The news is so fresh, it looks like Google Maps hasn’t even updated yet.
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I’ll be writing the next issue to you from down there. Feel like I gotta see this one.
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Upcoming Events
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Running a business is tough. Here are a few great places to meet cool people going through the same sh*t you are.
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🗓️ May 16: SMB Coffee Club: Shawn Allard is gathering SMB owners to meet, grab coffee, and do focused work on their most-important-thing for the morning
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🗓️ May 16: Female Founders & Friends: Hosted the third Friday of every month by Juliette Richert of the Artemis Fund, and Angie Neas of JustWorks
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🗓️ May 16: The Urban Betty Story: Texas Women in Business’ May luncheon is with Chelle Neff, local founder of the 4x Inc 5000 beauty salon, Urban Betty
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🗓️ May 16: The Mother Year: Not strictly business-related, but author Chelsey Scaffidi, and Sarah Hollingsworth, founder of PoppyList, dish on motherhood
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🗓️ May 17: Entrepreneur Ruck: An annual tradition, hosted by Connor Tomkies. Bring your own rucking gear, or borrow some from the rucking sponsor (Squatch)
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🗓️ May 17: Brunch & Breakthrough: Lidija Newman is hosting this workshop with Kat Harris, focused on helping high-achieving women develop even more momentum
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🗓️ May 19: Cover Your Ass: Remington Pierce is facilitating this panel with three different lawyers, talking about building a strong legal foundation at your scaleup
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🗓️ May 20: SKU Spring Showcase: Watch CPG founders graduating the SKU program pitch to investors live, plus a talk from Sean Riley, founder of DUDE wipes
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🗓️ May 20: Austin Coaches Collective: Hosted by Erin Laverone, the name says it all – this group’s for professional coaches, looking for peers to knowledge-share with
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🗓️ May 20: Navigating AI & Privacy: More lawyers! Robert Brown, and Paul Hurdlow discuss AI & privacy laws from an executive’s perspective
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🗓️ May 21: Food As Medicine: Metropolitan Breakfast Club is hosting Joi Chevalier, founder of The Cook’s Nook, and dietician/culinary expert Lindsey Schoenfeld for this talk
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🗓️ May 21: Modern Wisdom Fan Meetup: John Cioffredi is gathering fans of the pod to discuss Ep. 894, on Designing Your Life for Peak Creativity
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🗓️ May 21: Austin CTO Club: Every month, William Baxter curates a discussion for senior tech execs. This month’s topic: Build vs Buy – What’s your decision process?
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🗓️ May 22: Time Anxiety: Chris Guillebeau, author of the best-selling $100 Startup, is at Book People talking about his latest release, all about beating time scarcity
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One More Thing… I’m hosting a little coffee meetup May 23rd, with a twist. The great thing about Austin is that everyone wants to grab coffee. The tough thing about Austin? Everyone wants to grab coffee.
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I don’t know about you, but I owe like 20 people coffee.
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So, I’m officially announcing the ”We-Should-Get-Coffee,” Coffee – a chance to finally catch up with cool people in your business sphere, while making some new connections too. Here’s the idea:
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Go to your inbox
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Ctrl + F “grab coffee” and find people you want to catch up with
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Send ‘em this link, and come hang out
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Finally see your friends. Introduce them to new people. And if it’s cool, we’ll make it a regular thing 😉 Come!
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–– Powered By Hampton ––
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An Inside Look at Founders’ Finances
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As a founder, it’s tough to get answers to questions like…
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How much should I pay myself?
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How much cash should I be holding?
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What’s a reasonable monthly burn for my family and I?
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You can’t Google them. Can’t really post about them online (you’d look like a jerk). And the more money you’re making, the harder this is to talk about with friends.
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Luckily, Hampton gets it.
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Every year, they survey their community of founders, with net worths ranging <$1m to $100m+ and break down exactly how people manage their money.
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Financial goals. Portfolio. Burn. And more. Check it out to see how your approach stacks up.
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Fun Stuff Coming Up
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…because if you’re anything like me, you work too much already. So here’s some fun stuff to do around town that’s not necessarily related to business.
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TOMORROW: SKULLastic Book Fair at Texas Beer Co.
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TOMORROW: The Grape & The Plate – Pop Up Culinary Experience
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May 16-18: Second Annual Affordable Art Fair
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May 17: Onnit Gym Social at Barton Springs
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May 18: Free Parking Lot Pig Roast at Foreign & Domestic
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May 18: Wild Spirit, Wild Places Takeover at Desert Door Distilling
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May 20: Raicilla Tasting (similar to tequila) with the Founder
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May 21: Close Encounters of the Third Kind Playing at Austin Film Society
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May 22: Kickoff of Paramount’s Classic Summer Film Series
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May 22: Photography Fans – Madelyn Wigle is Live at First Light
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May 22-25: Hot Luck Live Food & Music Festival
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May 23: Cake Classes TX – Fancy Cake Decorating Class
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May 23-26: Major League Pickleball Tournament (still room to play)
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May 25: Home Bartending 101 at Roosevelt Room
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One Last Thing… On May 24, AO5 Gallery is hosting The Art of the Cocktail, an evening of cocktails paired with mixology-themed art from people like the Bisaillon Brothers and Adam Scott Rote.
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Rote’s work sounds fascinating. Among other things, he does portraits of movie stars (and has a whole series that incorporates actual fragments of the old Hollywood sign). He’s worked with everyone from Clint Eastwood to Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro to Doris Day, and dozens ad dozens more.
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Al Pacino said his portrait of Scarface was the best he’d ever seen. So… Check the event out here if it sounds like your jam.
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Word On The Street
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A roundup of cool opportunities to grow your business, wealth, or personal brand
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The Launch of Classifieds: I’m thinking of turning this into a classifieds section, where for a small fee, you can get the word out to readers about something in your company. A round you raised, an award you won, a hire you’re trying to make, that kind of thing.
We’ve got more than a thousand local founders and business leaders in here, so if that’s interesting, let me know by pre-ordering one above. It’ll help me get a sample of what people want to share. You won’t be billed until we pull the trigger on placement.
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The Second Cohort of Gauntlet AI is accepting applications. An intensive, ten-week program, teaching how to build with AI. 100 hours a week hands-on, guaranteed $200k+ job offer on completion. You can apply to participate above, or apply to hire graduates here.
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Speaking of AI, Google launched its AI Futures Fund. Not Austin-specific, but I know a lot of you are working on AI projects, so worth checking out. Includes early access to new models, support from Google’s engineers and researchers, equity funding options, and more.
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🍷 Summer Tip From A Sommelier
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Over the weekend, my buddy Zac Solomon and I co-hosted this dinner called, A Movable Feast. More than a dozen founders, writers, and artists gathered to talk about making money while making art.
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It was fantastic. Except for one catastrophe…
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Five bottles of great white wine, forgotten in the freezer until the end of the night (a whopping eight hours after dinner started), until they’d frozen, and perfectly uncorked themselves, without spilling a drop. “Salvageable,” I thought, “but not for long”
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Now this may surprise you, but I’m not, in fact, a five-bottles-of-white-per-week kind of drinker. So I reached out to the only person I trust with opinions on wine, Chris Taylor at the Red Fridge, to see if I could unload it there during a talk I’m giving there Friday.
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“Friday is probably pushing it,” he said. “Even if they’ve been in the fridge. [But] fun fact. Mario recommends for your fav summer whites/rose to make ice cubes of it, then you can use those ice cubes in your wine on a hot day!”
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Who’s Mario, you ask? Who is this genius?
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Mario Matavesco, The Personal Sommelier. Chris has him out a few times a year to do tastings and wine classes down at The Fridge (there’s one tomorrow), and I always enjoy ‘em, because he clearly knows a ton about wine, and yet, isn’t too snooty to admit that Costco is a great place to buy it.
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Anyways, there’s your story/tip for the week. I have nine ice trays worth of Austin Winery’s Ocho in the freezer, and with heat the way it was this week, maybe you should too.
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We’re doing another dinner in June. Keep an eye out here if you want to join.
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That’s all for this week!
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Email me here if you want to share any feedback, or let me know about an event you’re hosting.
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Until next week,
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-Ethan
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