The Luckiest 2,000 Square Feet In Austin

PLUS: Some Definitely-Not-Investment-Advice From A Unicorn Founder... Improving Accuracy of LLMs by 400%... Local Brands For Your Next Cookout... And more...

Author

Ethan Brooks
May 23, 2024

Welcome to this issue of Austin Business Review, a weekly roundup of 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 a few things on-deck:

  • 📅 Upcoming Founder Events

  • 📣 Word On The Street

  • 🍻 Hometown Hits: Cool local brands for your next cookout

  • 🤠 The Luckiest 2,000 Square Feet In Austin

BUT FIRST…

You read this to get tapped into Austin’s business community. So I want to introduce you to Jason Scharf.

He’s the host of the Austin Next podcast, and one of the first people I met when I started writing this. He knows practically everyone here in town.

He also…

One of Jason’s recent events included a Q&A with health-tech legend, Garheng Kong, who founded HealthQuest Capital, which has $2B+ AUM, more than a dozen portfolio IPOs, and many more exits/acquisitions

If you haven’t heard the podcast yet, a couple episodes I recommend…

Finally, he spoke with Carta’s head of insights about the state of funding, complete with this 20-page report (un-gated) 🔥 

He’s a great guy to know, so give him a shout on LinkedIn!

-Ethan

Upcoming Events

If you’re into crypto, the big thing next week is Coinbase’s Consensus conference running May 29-31. It’s spawned a bunch of spinoff happy hours and meetups too which you can find here and here.

Other non-crypto events include…

  • May 23: Founders Feast: Inaugural dinner party hosted by Mianya Ong for fellow founders here in ATX

  • May 24: Pitch and Run: Chat business with Zeke Torres and other ATX founders while running 4.2 miles around the lake

  • May 24: Entertainment Business Meetup: Meet 2x Oscar-winning director, Bill Gutentag, and others in the entertainment space

     

  • May 25 @ 9AM: Founder Paintball: My buddy Chad Sakonchick, is getting other founders together for paintball here. Open invite! DM him on Twitter if you wanna join

  • May 28: Business Owners Council: Tim Hamilton, founder of Praxent, is sharing lessons from their unexpected growth

  • May 28: Re-evaluating Ex Machina: Re-watch the film together, then stick around for Q&A with a panel of AI developers and technologists

  • May 28: AITX Monthly Meetup: Join Chukwudi Kanu and dozens of other local AI builders

  • May 28: Tech + Tequila Talk: Special guest Carlos del Castillo Negrete, a researcher at Texas Advanced Computing Center, will discuss the role of AI in solving the world's toughest challenges

  • May 29: The Arms of the Future: Hear Dr. Jack Watling on the future of land warfare based on his research at the Royal United Services Institute and experience in Ukraine

  • May 30: ATX Product Mega Meetup: A collaboration between 6 product meetups here in town – will include a panel and breakout sessions focused on how PMs can integrate AI into their work

  • May 31 - June 2: Three Day Think Tank: Hosted by David Gonzalez, your ticket includes on-site accommodation and the chance to pose your toughest questions to 8- and 9-figure founders.

  • June 1: Mansion Party: Related to the event above, this evening, curated by Courtney Confare, includes panel discussions and pickleball with some fascinating founders out at the Gatsby mansion on the lake. Code “ABR” gets you reduced early-bird pricing

Fun Stuff Coming Up

…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.

  • TONIGHT: Movies on the Lake - Top Gun

  • May 24: Sober Society Launch Party at Civil Goat

  • May 25: ATX Writing Club

  • May 25: Jimmy Eat Brisket (Punk Rock + BBQ Party)

  • May 25: Stoned vs Drunk vs Sober Comedy Show

  • May 25: UV Night Walk & Happy Hour

  • May 26: Austin Soul Food Festival

  • May 26: Roosevelt Room Rum & Sugar Cane Spirits Master Class

  • May 26: Live F1 Watch Party at Hopsquad Brewing Co

  • May 27: Sushi Making + Saki Pairing Class

  • May 28: Sober Supper Club at Casa de la Luz

  • May 29: Behavioral Science of the Grocery Store

  • May 30: Hot Girl Golf

  • May 31: Chocolate Making Class

Word On The Street

Thought-provoking ideas and stories published by founders in ATX

1. More Accurate LLMs: This one’s pretty technical. But a bunch of you are… well… pretty technical! Brett Hurt’s team at data.world published research showing a 4x improvement of LLM powered question answering systems.

2. Pitching Sprouts: Caroline Grace wrote this wonderful case study on how one founder took her company from farmers markets to a retail deal with Sprouts.

3. An Interesting Investment: Yada, yada… not investment advice… Etc, etc… But check out this post by unicorn founder Amir Husain about the Pakistani sovereign bond. A 7.375% coupon, and Goldman predicts they’ll grow to the world’s 6th largest economy by 2075. (Lots of interesting debate in the comments)

Amir’s personal growth models for the Pakistani economy, shared for kicks on LinkedIn

Hometown Hits: Cool Local Brands For Your Next Cookout

This is not an ad 💸 I’m just tired of showing up to cookouts with the same damn case of White Claw. So I asked a couple local experts about cool Austin CPG brands that are good for summer parties.

Who are these mystery experts?

Whenever I have a question about CPG stuff, my first stop is always Marc Nathan. He’s the author of the Texas Boxed CPG newsletter, and hosts a bunch of cool CPG founder events here in town.

He also pointed me to Stef Shapira, who runs The Rind, a PR firm for CPG brands.

They recommended a bunch, but these are the ones that caught my eye first:

  • Restart Rita: Low-dose CBD/THC seltzer, released in Feb. by Shayda Torabi and her sisters, all long-time co-founders of Restart CBD 

  • OpenEye Chai: Sustainably sourced chai concentrate (just mix 1-1 with milk), founded by Anna Claire Eddington during the pandemic

  • LeRoy and Lewis: Award-winning BBQ (maybe you’ve been to their truck at Cosmic?) They’ve got 2 sauces and a dry rub you can buy at their brand new brick and mortar on Emerald Forest Dr.

How ‘bout you? Do you have a favorite local drink or other CPG brand that you buy for parties? If so, let me know here! I’m gonna try a bunch this summer and maybe I’ll write about ‘em

The Luckiest 2,000 Square Feet In Austin

At the top of this email, I mentioned Jason Scharf, and the health-tech events that he curates. He invited me to one recently, hosted at a new social club called The Red Fridge Society.

This place is so cool.

Backstory: A guy named Chris Taylor built an enterprise SaaS called Square Root here in ATX. This red house was their first office. After selling the company for 8-figures, he bought the house back, and is turning it into a hub for seasoned founders/investors.

Why I Like It: It reminds me of my time at Hampton. There are a lot of communities out there for early-stage founders. Surprisingly, not as many for those who are deeper in their careers (when, ironically, the challenges are way bigger).

Chris has a lot of experience building communities for those kinds of people and he says the goal is to make this, “the luckiest 2,000 square feet in Austin.” I love that.

He’s also a hell of a barkeep.

If your company’s remote, and you’ve been looking for a spot to work where you can also meet founders of bigger, more established startups, try to make it to one of the happy hours he hosts here. He posts them on his LinkedIn

That’s all for this week!

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

Until next week,

-Ethan

Thank you to all the incredible local founders and leaders who share great insights and events. You can follow and connect with them here…