June 19, 2025

Welcome to this issue of The 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).

My name’s Ethan and I’m the one writing this (holler at me here!).

This week, we’ve got…

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-Ethan

PS. Have you met someone interesting via this newsletter? If so, I’d love to hear about it. Hit reply and let me know!

Upcoming Events

🗓️ TONIGHT: Startup Grind Summer Social: Join Paris Bland, Mia Ong, and other local founders down at Easy Tiger South

🗓️ TONIGHT: Enter The Tiger: UFC Fighter Max Griffin is launching a clothing line to support charities. Join him at this fireside chat

🗓️ June 20: Female Founders & Friends: Hosted the third Friday every month by Juliette Richert of the Artemis Fund, and Angie Neas of JustWorks

🗓️ June 20: TWIB June Luncheon: Meet Nicole Pletka, president of Austin Women In Tech, who also spent years leading project teams at AMD

🗓️ June 21: A Moveable Feast: My buddy Zac Solomon and I are hosting a dinner discussion focused on creativity and money

🗓️ June 21: PowerPints: Not strictly business related, but there’s beer and power-points. Eight speakers, five-minute presentations, niche topics

🗓️ June 22: Get Sh*t Done: Join Alice Huang and other local founders for a focused work session to kick the week off strong

🗓️ June 23: AI + You (Online): Noopur Gupta is joining Austin Women In Tech to show how to create stunning business decks with AI

🗓️ June 23: Behavioral Happy Hour: Erin Laverone and her co-hosts gather founders, coaches, and others to talk behavioral design, UX, and behavior science

🗓️ June 24: Innovations to Rebuild Ukraine: Venture Fellow, Yan Shapiro, is hosting several thought-leaders to discuss growing relations between Ukraine and Texas manufacturing, construction, ag, medTech, and more

🗓️ June 24: Being Human in the Age of AI: The Austin Technology Council is hosting a breakfast roundtable with leaders from 3M, Accenture, and more

🗓️ June 24: Facilitation Lab: Every month, Douglas Ferguson and Erin Warner host this hands-on meetup where leaders hone their group facilitation skills

🗓️ June 24: Business After Hours: For those of you out west, tired of going downtown for events, the West Austin Chamber is hosting their monthly happy hour

🗓️ June 24: Art + Business: Lisa Sretenovic and Alissa McCain from Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts will answer your questions live

🗓️ June 24: Brett Cooper, Live: An inspiring media founder, after leaving Daily Wire, her new company landed 1.4M followers in two months

🗓️ June 25: CPG Co-op (Online): Emily Ingle Kealey, former CPG founder and current owner of The CPG Co-Op, is organizing a zoom mastermind for CPG founders

🗓️ June 25: Future Forum: The LBJ Presidential Library runs this group that meets monthly for cocktails and conversation over at the Butterfly Bar

🗓️ June 26: Navigating the AI + Privacy Landscape: Robert Brown, partner at Latham & Watkins, is leading a panel on recently-enacted privacy laws

🗓️ June 26: Better Business Mixer: The Asian Chamber is hosting reps from SCORE, Austin Small Business Division, and others, to teach about resources available via SBA

🗓️ June 26: Nerd Nite: Like a mini TED, for nerds, by nerds

🗓️ June 27: Katie Sturino, Live: The founder of Megababe (8-figure CPG brand) is launching her first fiction book, and doing a talk at Book People

One More Thing… Speaking of books, Sahil Bloom is coming to town June 30, to talk about his NYT best seller, The 5 Types of Wealth. It’s very good.

I’ve known Sahil a while and always respected his work. But book writing is a different beast from writing online, and when I heard about this, I wondered if it’d just be one of those books-that-should-be-an-essay.

Answer: No. I think Sahil was supposed to be a book author all along.

Other Fun Stuff Coming Up

One More Thing… Katie Rice is an author here in town, and founder of Sobremesa, a magazine that celebrates food, photography, writing, and community. She’s hosting a party for the release of Issue No. 4 over at Keep Looking Shop, a spot on E. 12th, dedicated to keeping print alive. There will be free cake 

Word On The Street

Heating Up The Cold Brew Industry: Last week, I met the founders of Cold Cycle Coffee, who patented a machine they say brews up to two gallons of cold brew in 30 minutes (rather than 12-24 hours) with 50% less beans.

That’s like a 40-100x efficiency gain for coffee shops. This ain’t investment advice or an ad (just a cool local company to know), but two things to call out here:

Insights

Thought-provoking ideas and stories published by founders in ATX

1. Crafting Community Through Cheese: The other week, I highlighted John and Kendal Antonelli, long-time owners of Antonelli’s Cheese (which does bunch of awesome food events). Turns out, ABR reader, Adam Flagg, who runs the Austin Eras podcast, had just wrapped a great interview with them, and they’re even more impressive than I thought.

Here’s a cool fact: There are less than a thousand certified cheese professionals in the entire world. Eight of them work at Antonelli’s Cheese.

2. Rock Star to Writer: I really enjoyed this piece by Leila Sales, interviewing famous musicians who’ve gone on to write novels. I’ve seen a similar trend in entrepreneurship:

3. Not A Damn Chance: I’ve been looking for something new to listen to, and was stoked to find this new pod, co-hosted by legendary Austin chef Phillip Frankland Lee (Pasta Bar, Sushi By Scratch) and Neen Williams. They’re the co-founders of NADC Burger, and the whole thing is about gritty stories of people overcoming long odds.

(Fun Fact: It’s produced by YMH, the studio owned by Austin comedy power-couple Tom Segura and Christina Pazsitsky)

Meet Your Neighbors

You read this newsletter to connect with fascinating business owners here in town. So this week, meet Kelley Flatley, founder of Palette, a studio concept that’s hosting art classes paired with sommelier-led wine tastings.

We met at a recent dinner, and I was fascinated by her thoughtful approach.

Kelley comes from the world of high-growth companies. She spent almost a decade at Chubbies – helping grow from their first ~15 employees all the way up through the acquisition and IPO.

Then this year, she took a leap.

Palette is more than a classed-up paint ‘n sip. It’s actually designed to help you explore and understand your personal taste – a skill that’s becoming more important as AI makes irrelevant everything else (she has fascinating thoughts on this).

If you’re ever intimidated by ordering wine, because you don’t really know what you like or why, this is designed to fix that.

Her upcoming summer series includes:

Say hi to her on LinkedIn. Ask her about “creativity gyms.” And follow Palette on IG for a heads up on more events.

That’s all for this week!

Email me here to share any feedback, or let me know about an event you’re hosting.

Until next week,

-Ethan