Tons of AI Events This Week

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).

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

With SXSW coming up, the event calendar starts getting a little wonkey. But this week, we’ve still got…

• 🗓️ 20+ Business Events (lots of AI stuff going on)

• 🍷 The Next Installment of Din + Juice (a local favorite)

• 💰 Heads Up On Fundraising Opps, and a New Product I Think You’ll Dig

• And more…

Did someone forward this to you? You can sign up here if you like it.

-Ethan

PS. You read this newsletter to meet cool people in Austin’s startup scene. With SXSW coming up, I’ve gotta re-introduce Marc Nathan.

A long-time founder, investor, mentor, and connector, he’s the senior director of market development at Michael Best & Friedrich, but most people know him as “that guy who knows everyone.” Seriously, he’s everywhere…

Two big things you gotta know about him:

• First, if you’re curious about SXSW, but not sure where to start, my best advice is to keep an eye on his google doc – this thing gets updated with tons of cool stuff as we get closer and is pretty much the only resource you need

• Second, if you’re in CPG at all, get his events on your calendar. They have some of the highest concentrations of experienced founders I’ve found anywhere in Austin, and are a great place to get connected

Upcoming Events

🤖 AI Madness: Alright, nerds. If AI is your thing, you’re gonna love the next ten days – AITX, The Austin AI Alliance, ML Ops, and AI Founders Hang & Cowork are all meeting. There are also multi-day summits for Leaders In AI, and the Edge AI Foundation (consider this happy hour if you can’t make the full summit). AITX is hosting their second annual Hackathon (followed by the Hack Fair showcase). And Geoff Woods, best-selling author of The AI-Driven Leader, is hosting a wine-tasting / discussion.

Elsewhere, we’ve got…

🗓️ TONIGHT: Perfecting The Pitch: Kevin Koym, the founder of Tech Ranch (one of the top three impact-focused accelerators in the world), is giving a talk on how to get investor/grant buy-in on your vision

🗓️ TONIGHT: Health Tech ATX: If your company is innovating in the healthcare space, this group’s for you

🗓️ Feb 21: Female Founders & Friends: Hosted the third Friday of every month by Juliette Richert of the Artemis Fund

🗓️ Feb 21: TechBio Transformers Meetup: Join Aaron Feller and a bunch of other people working at the intersection of biology, software, and AI over at Lazarus (they’ve got a Slack group too!)

🗓️ Feb 21: AWT Kendra Gives Back: Austin Women In Tech is hosting an event at Kendra Scott’s flagship store on S. Congress. There’ll be wine, networking, and 20% of proceeds benefit Austin Women in Tech.

🗓️ Feb 25: The State of Austin Music: Something a little different – Will Bridges, owner of the legendary Antone’s Nightclub, is doing a panel with a few other people deep in the local music scene

🗓️ Feb 25: 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

🗓️ Feb 26: CISO XC: By CISO’s for CISO’s, this is the inaugural event of a conference series dedicated specifically to execs in cyber security. If that’s you (or if you’re recruiting for a role like that), check it out

🗓️ Feb 26: Hyper-Local SEO: Grok may have killed Google for most things, but not local search. Not yet at least. I know a bunch of you own local restaurants and shops and thought you might like this SCORE event with Ashley Rodriguez

🗓️ Feb 27: Consumer VC WakeUp: Dropping this here in case anyone skimmed past it in the intro. Marc Nathan’s events are some of the best in town for meeting CPG veterans

🗓️ Feb 27: Austin Hardware Meetup + Demo Day: More and more, Austin is becoming a hub for hard tech (see Proto Town). Nick Frank is getting a bunch of cool people together to demo products over at Re:3D (which itself sounds f*cking rad)

🗓️ Feb 27: What She Said: What She Said is a community and referral platform for women in business. Join Sarah Catherine Baker, Heather Trumpfheller, and others for drinks, networking, and… tattoos?

🗓️ Feb 27: Your Startup Sucks: This one’s just a good time – founder's pitch a panel of VCs and comedians, and get absolutely roasted. Still time to sign up to pitch if you dare

🗓️ Feb 27: Nerd Nite: Like a local version of TED – this month’s version is all about love and includes two talks: Dr. Marci Gleason on “How Couples Navigate Big Transitions,” and Dr. Tim Clark Newton on "“Love and Placebo”

Last Thing… This was popular last week, so I wanted to call it out one last time: My buddy Matt McGarry, is hosting a newsletter marketing summit Feb 27-28 here in Austin, and he’s wrangled some of the best speakers in the industry.

Ticket prices went up recently, but code ‘ABR100’ will get you $100 off here

“Who is this best for?” These are heavy-hitters. If you’re scaling a media company, or investing at least 6-figures in your brand’s content strategy this year, I think this is a great bet. If you’re just at the idea stage, stay home and write.

Hosting something cool? Email me the details below and I’ll try to share it in the newsletter or on LinkedIn.

Coming Up In March…

Last week, the most popular link in this email was The Great American Poisoning, by Justin Mares, local founder of brands like Kettle & Fire, and TrueMed.

Well, Justin’s running the health track at an event called Edge City Austin, a six-day pop-up village and unconference focused on how things like AI, biotech, and community design can shape the future.

Looks like some other killer speakers too, including Brendan McCord (local founder of Cosmos Institute whose insights regularly land in this email) and remote talks from Vitalik Buterin and Balaji.

Code ECJUSTIN10 will get you 10% off here

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: Whiskey Blending Lab at Kinfolk

• Feb 20-23: Nunsense - The Mega-Musical

• Feb 22: The 512 Coffee Club - Coffee, Cold Plunge, and DJ

• Feb 22: Cake Decorating Class with Charcuterie and Wine

• Feb 22: Sip & Sculpt Pottery Class at Blue Owl Brewing

• Feb 22: Tom Segura Live at Moody Theatre (he’s a local!)

• Feb 22-23: HyperReal Short Film Festival

• Feb 23: The History of Gin in Six Cocktails at DrinkWell

• Feb 23: Dirty Dancing in Concert

• Feb 25: Texas Table - Feast for a Cause at Lenoir

• Feb 28 - Mar 2: The Tale of Robin Hood with Chambers’ Theatre Company

• Feb 28 - Mar 2: NASCAR at Circuit of the Americas

One More Thing… I’ve mentioned this series in the past, and I’ll do it again because it’s that fun. Din & Juice is a pop-up dinner series hosted by the local founders of Soto Vino wine. Live music. Big family-style tables. Guest chef. And of course, plenty of wine.

This month’s theme is "la famiglia… a true mob-style Italian feast, where wine flows like loyalty, and every dish tells a story.” Snag tickets here (and don’t forget to dress the part).

Fundraising Soon?

This is your last week to apply for Morrison Foerster’s semiannual Pitch Day coming up April 23rd. Participating founders get coaching ahead of the event, and an opportunity to pitch a panel of VCs.

To apply, send a non-confidential pitch deck to [email protected] by Friday, February 28th.

Cool Product To Check Out: The Loom-Killer

The other night, my buddy Chad Sakonchick sent me a video of this new product he’s working on. It’s a competitor to Loom, built from the ground up to be way more useful, and I’m pretty stoked on it.

For one thing, the UX is way cleaner (no more moving those damn controls around while you record).

But more importantly, the whole thing is geared around leaders who use Loom to delegate. It doesn’t just record and transcribe your video. It creates a navigable summary, with clickable time-stamps, to-do’s, and more. Plus it does it all locally, so there’s an added layer of security.

I didn’t even realize how bad Loom was dropping the ball till I watched this.

Beta tests are opening up soon, so if you’re curious, check out the vid, and you can get on the list here, or email Chad here. Chad also hosts a bunch of cool founder events around town, so connect with him if you want in on those.

Launching something cool? Drop me a line here to let me know!

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