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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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Today, we’re lookin’ at:
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🗓️ 15+ Founder Events Worth Checking Out
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🎥 An Austinite on TEDs Main Stage
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💰 Insights From Austin’s VC Scene
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But first… Shout out to my buddy Zac for lighting the internet on fire over ATX work culture (or lack thereof) 🤣 This puppy even made its way to Tim Ferriss’ Instagram where it got another 31k+ likes
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If you’re a creator here in town, Zac hosts a writer’s club, and their next get-together is May 25. Check it out!
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-Ethan
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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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TODAY @ 12PM: AI Results Through LLMs (ONLINE): I added this last-minute, but it’s online, and if you’re trying to integrate AI into your BI stack, looks useful
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TONIGHT: Taco Tales: Eat tacos, drink mezcal, and trade stories with experienced operators, like Carlos Oviedo, and guest speaker, Daniel Marcos
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May 17: TWIS Founder Fridays: Hosted by multi-time founder TJ Larkin for fans of the This Week In Startups podcast. Attendance gets you into Jason Calcanis’ TWIST Slack group too.
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May 17: Female Founder & Friends Happy Hour: Hosted the third Friday of every month by Juliette Richert of the Artemis Fund.
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May 17: Female Founder Meetup: Hosted by attorney and CPG founder, Nicole Schwartz. Her firm, Sprout Law, specializes in protecting IP for women-led brands
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May 17: Pitch and Run: Join Zeke Torres and other ATX founders + funders to chat business and get feedback while running 4.2 miles around the lake
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May 20: Pitch Workshop for Founders: Fundraising soon? Capital Factory mentor Wen Zhang can help you polish your pitch. She leads a $320m+ product portfolio, and has helped 300+ founders with their pitch
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May 21: SKU Showcase Pitch: Featuring seven CPG founders from SKU’s spring ‘24 cohort, this is a great place to meet founders, investors, and CPG experts.
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May 21: Technically Ethical: A group of tech enthusiasts (and skeptics), led by Sam Levin, and focused on thought-provoking conversations on how tech impacts our lives. This week’s topic – the “TikTok ban” and its implications
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May 22: The Road to a Successful IPO: Hosted by Shannon Sibold, an M&A attorney at Morrison Foster
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May 22: Austin AI and ML Group: Join Microsoft’s Daniel Janik, along with dozens of other AI & ML builders
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May 22: Shopify and Ecomm Happy Hour: Talk shop with Cameron Shaw, Patrick Pitman, and other local founders in the ecomm space
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May 22: Turn Up! CPG Happy Hour: Hosted by Bill Murphy, founder of Willpower Mezcal, and local super-connector Marc Nathan, along with founders and operators from Austin’s top CPG brands. Seriously, Marc knows everyone – I wrote more about him here
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May 23: Wake Up! CPG: Another from Marc (for the early-risers)
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May 23: Trends in Tech – Fraud and Bot Detection: Guest speaker Henry Legard will take you behinds the scenes of how his company, Verisoul, “uses AI to analyze risk signals such as network, device, browser, email, user behavior, and more to determine if online accounts are real, suspicious, or fake”
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May 23: Female Founder Happy Hour: Led by Vas Daskalakis, founder of Africa.ai, who recently relocated to ATX after 6 years building in Kenya
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May 25 @ 9AM: Founder Paintball: There’s no RSVP page for this one, but Chad Sakonchick, founder of BetterLegal, is getting people together for paintball. Chad and I met back when I ran community at Hampton, and he regularly hosts great founder meetups here in town. DM him on Twitter if you wanna join.
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Other 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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May 17: Yoga for Dismantling People Pleasing
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May 18: Fierce Whiskers Bourbon Birthday Bash
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May 18: CelebrASIA – art, food, culture, performances
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May 19: Kitten Yoga – Benefits Austin Pets Alive
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May 19: Flamenco Night at El Raval – live music & performances
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May 19: A Return to Better Living – Shooting Club Dinner & Wine Tasting
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May 19: ATX Food Truck Festival (Seafood & Crawfish)
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May 21: Welcome to Austin Social Meetup
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May 21: Pepper Palooza – Hosted by Les Dames d'Escoffier
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May 23: A Night Up In Flames – Cooking Class
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May 23: Oysters & Wine: Prince Edward Island Tasting Experience
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May 23: Barrels and Bites Whiskey Tasting
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May 23: Mid-Afternoon Dram with High West Distillery
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PS If you’ve got kids, and are looking for a good summer camp option, Austin Chamber recently highlighted this list of local STEAM programs from iCode.
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We Need More Builders: An Austinite on TED’s Main Stage
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Every week, I like to share stories and insights from the people building here in Austin. Given the recent unrest on campuses, I found this TED talk from local founder Daniel Lubetzky particularly great.
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You may know Daniel as the founder of KIND – the multi-billion dollar CPG brand – or as a frequent shark on Shark Tank.
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What you may not know is that he’s also the son of a holocaust survivor, and built OneVoice, the largest grassroots movement of moderate Israelis and Palestinians in the world.
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His recent work is focused on elevating moderates, and giving them tools to dismantle extremism in their communities. That’s so refreshing!
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If you’re a normal person, wondering where the hell all the reasonable people went these days, and what can be done about it, you’ll enjoy this talk. His stories are absolutely gripping.
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One of my favorite lines 👇
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The fact that I stand here today – that I exist – because of an act of humanity [from] a person that was not a very good human being, haunts me.
But it also arms me with hope and conviction that every human being can turn away from hate.
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| Daniel Lubetzky, TED 2024 |
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Daniel’s out there doing the hard work. Which is to say, he’s optimistically working to heal divides, rather than deepen them.
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His approach makes me proud to serve the founder community as a whole, which I think generally holds a very similar mindset.
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I also highly recommend his recent Letter to College Students, co-authored with Lonnie Ali (wife of Muhammad Ali).
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Shout out to Brett Hurt, local founder of data.world, who turned me onto Daniel’s talk via his recent article, An Appeal to America’s College Protestors
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Word On The Street
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Lots of interesting insights coming from the VC side this week. Here are some stories and resources from local investors you may like…
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1. A Roundup of Investors: Raising soon? Last week, Opportunity Austin released this un-gated guide to the ATX startup ecosystem, including lists of ATX-based investors, and people who invest in ATX startups.
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2. Swimming with Allocators: Local investor and podcaster Alexa Binns interviewed Austin’s Chris Schelling, author of Better Than Alpha and managing director of private investments at Caprock (a multifamily office with $8B+ AUM).
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3. VC Is Dead! Long Live VC: In part 2 of his 3-part series on the state of VC, Joe Merrill, from Sputnik, continued his examination of how psychological biases, economic incentives, and regulatory changes are driving investors toward late-stage funds regardless of the cost.
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This one’s packed with interesting and recent data (like zis 👇)
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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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Thank you to all the incredible local founders and leaders who share great insights and events. You can follow and connect with them here…
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Zac Solomon, Carlos Oviedo, Daniel Marcos, TJ Larkin, Juliette Richert, Zeke Torres, Wen Zhang, Sam Levin, Shannon Sibold, Daniel Janik, Cameron Shaw, Patrick Scott Pitman, Marc Nathan, Henry LeGard, Vas Daskalakis, Chad Sakonchick, Brett A. Hurt, Daniel Lubetzky, Joe Merrill, Alexa Binns, Chris Schelling, Bill Murphy
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