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Welcome to this week’s issue of Austin Business Review, a weekly roundup of great events and insights for business owners in Austin (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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This week, we’ve got a few things on-deck:
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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. I’m thinking of doing short daily emails Mar 8-16 for SXSW, but I don’t know if that’s helpful or just overwhelming. If you want a daily rundown of the business-specific get-togethers popping up around town that week, click this. I’ll look at the click data, and if enough people want it I’ll do it.
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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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Feb 16: Female Founders Friends & Coffee: Hosted by the Artemis Fund, the first female-focused VC fund in Houston
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Feb 17: Austin SMB Social: Hosted by Shawn Allard. If you don’t know him from Twitter yet, Shawn owns Novel Ice Cream in Arizona. He’s been building an incredible M&A community there, and is now organizing similar events in Denver, ATX, and more
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Feb 20: FIESTA: It stands for “Founders, Investors, Entrepreneurs, Startups, Techies, Austin-Newcomers” and it’s hosted by Cherie Werner, a legend in the ATX events world
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Feb 22: Wake up CPG: If you’re in CPG, you’ve got to meet Marc Nathan. He hosts this event, and writes the Texas-Squared startup newsletter. If you’re new in town, check out his Austin CPG resource deck
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Mar 8: LinkedIn Marketing & Lead Gen with AI: If you’re trying to grow your LI following this year, bookmark this. Olga Bondareva will show how to optimize your profile, generate content ideas, and get your LinkedIn Top Voice badge
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If you’re hosting something you think is a fit, let me know here!
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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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Feb 9-10: Austin Chronicle moving sale – snag office furniture and ATX memorabilia
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Feb 9-11: PrintExpo – Shop original print artwork from 100+ artists
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Feb 10: The Lights Fest – Sky lantern festival
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Feb 11: The Floating World – Never before displayed historic block art of Edo Japan
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Feb 12: Interview with Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive
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Feb 12: ATX Short Film Showcase – Catch 7-8 local short films in one spot for $15
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Feb 13: Community hours at Thinkery – where kids explore STEAM
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Feb 17: Galaxy Whiskey Gala… It’s for the children (sort of)
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Feb 22: Nicole Cardoza – Black Magic Tour
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Feb 28: Pour the Record Club, 4-course dinner with wine and vinyl pairing
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Nicole’s a magician, story-teller, and founder of Reclamation Ventures, which has written more than $500k in impact grants to founders in the wellness space.
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Two Opportunities To Grow Your Thought Leadership In 2024
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I cut my teeth working for a business newsletter called Trends, where we wrote about emerging business opportunities and how to tackle them.
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You never quite shake that habit of watching for signals.
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So here are two things I’m noticing recently that you may like if you’re trying to build your personal audience this year…
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1 . We Are So Back! The (Re)Birth of Founder Blogs: Unless you follow him closely, you may not have noticed, but Tim Ferriss has kicked up publishing on his blog this year.
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For a long time, the site mostly just released show-notes for his podcast. But recently there’s been a surge of original and guest posts that are blog specific, which is awesome.
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He’s not the only one. Another local media founder, Sam Parr, revitalized a personal blog he started years ago, and Jason Cohen, local founder of WP Engine, has been publishing more on his blog too.
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All these people have a track record for being ahead of the curve on content, so consider this your early tip-off: Blogs are coming back.
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It makes sense too. As the internet continues into it’s Dark Forest stage, there are more and more reasons to take your readers off social media, and onto owned assets like a personal blog, where you can share ideas without the algorithm interfering.
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2 . Twitter Spaces: God, am I really about to call it X? Ugh… Fine. If you’re less of a writer, more of a talker, I’d be looking at Spaces as an alternative to podcasts.
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Big reason: X is clearly trying to compete with Youtube for creators.
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Last week, the platform made headlines for the way it’s courting Mr Beast, and Elon is using his personal reach to hype long-form creators there.
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Penny2X is the first account I’ve seen specifically billing himself as an X Spaces Host. I’m sure there are others. There will be many more…
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First-movers to any new platform typically get a visibility advantage. There’s fewer competitors, and platforms juice virality in order to attract creators.
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Early dedicated Spaces hosts will get both of those, plus the benefit of the fact that the platform’s already got a massive audience, and is the No. 1 app in the app store right now.
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Word On The Street
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Cool ideas and stories published by founders in ATX
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Deciding Between BIG Investments: Some investments require years of your life, significant capital, and so much attention that you can’t do much else. This piece from 2x unicorn founder, Jason Cohen, explores how to value those and decide which to pursue. Hint: Expected Value is not the answer.
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How I Learn With AI: Michael Daigler leads the AITX community here in Austin. This piece shows how he used AI to build an app for VisionPro with no prior VisionOS experience. Even if you’re not a coder, this piece will help you use AI to learn anything better.
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Letter to Investors: In 2023, Codie Sanchez invested $12.1 million on acquisitions through her HoldCo. This year, they’ll 2-3x that. She made her entire investor update public, and it’s worth checking out for her acquisition profile, thoughts on the rising value of attention, and the new “it’s-worse-than-you-think” framework her team uses to vet partners and employees.
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Have you hired your Chief AI Officer yet? Multi-time founder and CEO of data.world, Brett Hurt, lays out the case for how “2024 will be the year of the AI executive,” and says leaders need to write this JD now and start hiring. Also worth reading: His VP of AI ops is a guy named Brandon Gadoci who writes an excellent blog about how they’re using AI to increase productivity internally.
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I asked Brandon what he thought the main KPIs for this role would be, and how leaders should think about measuring success as they head in:
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Local Artist of the Week
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One of my favorite things about being here in Texas is hiking through hill country early in the morning, when the fog hasn’t quite lifted. So I was instantly hooked by these paintings from local artist Aileen Fitzgerald, who was recently featured in Luxe.
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The technique requires 20-50 very thin layers of watered down paint, followed by dry-brush work, and one of my favorite things about her story is that she’s only ever taken one art class, and the teacher there told her she was doing it wrong.
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Guess not, because you can now find her prints in stores like Pottery Barn, Amber Interiors, and Four Hands. She also sells original pieces direct through her website, and keeps a studio on 8th street where she hosts exhibits.
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Local Shop of the Week
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Not an ad – just a cool local shop you should know!
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Antonelli’s Cheese | 4420 Duval St., Austin
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Husband & wife team, John and Kendall Antonelli are celebrating 14 years since opening their local cheese shop.
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Today and tomorrow, starting at 11AM, the first 75 customers in the door are getting a free wedge of cheese.
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They also host a bunch of cool events that typically sell out fast. Here are a few upcoming examples:
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Keep an eye out for their new tasting room opening on South Lamar too. Fourteen years of successful brick & mortar is amazing. Congrats, John and Kendall!
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That’s all for this week. If you liked this, do me a favor and forward it to another business owner here in town you think might get some value from it.
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You can also email me here if you’re hosting something for local founders that might be a fit for the newsletter.
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Until next week,
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-Ethan
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Did someone forward this to you? If you like it you can sign up here for free.
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