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 (with no AI, because… humans)
This week, we’ve got:
🗓️ Events (stacked, as always)
🪴 Willie Nelson’s Playing Live Nearby
🎓 The Latest Insights From Alpha School
🎨 A New Local Art Project I Love
And more…
Did someone forward this to you? If you like it, you can sign up here!
-Ethan
PS. It was fun hearing from people in last week’s reader poll. Turns out, you’z all are about 80% business owners and investors. Interestingly, that split has been about the same since from day one of this newsletter. For round two, I’m curious… 👇👇👇
How big was your company last year?
If you’re an employee reading this, just know your boss likes you more than everyone else.
Upcoming Events
🗓️ TONIGHT: Distiller Series: Chris Taylor is bringing in Jeremy Spencer & Jen Bailey, co-founders of the brand new, Austin-based Baja Rum, for a tasting + Q&A
🗓️ TONIGHT: PitchSpark Launch Party: Investor, Cody Todd, is hosting to celebrate the launch of his new a gamified deal flow app for founders and investors
🗓️ TONIGHT: Onboarding as a Revenue Strategy: Anastasia Chihai and Giano Fiore are hosting this panel on how to shorten ramp time and train stronger SDRs
🗓️ TONIGHT: Off The Grid ATX: Amie Paxton is hosting a curated intro group for CPG founders looking to connect with local investors
🗓️ Apr. 24: Unlock Grant Funding: For those of you working with nonprofits, Jessica Wilson and Allison Canales are leading a session on finding mission-aligned funders
🗓️ Apr. 24: ATX Off The Record: This one’s for mothers craving real-talk about the process of navigating changes in careers/creativity/partnership after having kids
🗓️ Apr. 24: Ladies Executive Golf Society: Is hosting a Swing & Social to celebrate the Masters over at Butler Pitch & Putt
🗓️ Apr. 25: AI Video Production & Digital Twins: Steve Mudd is teaching a hands-on workshop on how to build your own AI avatar and generate finished video with it (WILD example from him here)
🗓️ Apr. 25: Founders & Funders Social Dance: No pitches or panels. Just laid back music and a li’l two-steppin’ with Kevad Belle, Andrew Lane, Zeke Torres and others
🗓️ Apr. 26: The AI Implementation Club: Chrissy McDannell hosts a dedicated focus sprint to ship that AI project you’ve had in mind for weeks
🗓️ Apr. 28: AITX Turns Three: Shout out to Michael Daigler and Jake O’Shea for hosting Austin’s AI community for the better part of half a decade
🗓️ Apr. 28: When AI Meets Cyber Risk: Former CIO of the $1B+ Southwest Key Programs, Chirag Shah talking about what cyber breaches cost $10-$100m companies
🗓️ Apr. 28: Express Checkout Austin: CPG Founders – Joey Spanjers is co-hosting this happy hour with Jenna Movsowitz and Nate Rosen, cofounders of Express Checkout
🗓️ Apr. 29: Work Together Wednesdays: Okay, this is sick. Brett Clark owns Austin Boats & Busses. She’s firing up the luxury tour bus for a co-working day out to wine country and back.
🗓️ Apr. 29: ReCap Yacht Party: Ben Lehrer of First Water Finance and Lou Gonzalez of Valiant Capital, are getting a group together for a cruise out on the lake
🗓️ Apr. 29: AI & Robotics: Jiaheng Hu will be speaking about the latest in self-improving robots (check out his recent paper on the topic here)
🗓️ Apr. 29: Sip & Sync: Texas Women in Business is hosting this guided round-robin networking event that benefits Book Drive 4 Kids
🗓️ Apr. 29: ProductTank Austin: Joyjit Roy and Nidhi Mahajan are talking about the latest in agentic workflows for product leaders
🗓️ Apr. 30: Leadership Champions Reception: Stuart Reilly, the General Manager of Austin Energy, is joining for a fireside chat on his journey and Austin’s future
🗓️ Apr. 30: TED 2026 Watch Party: Dr. Ronke Komolafe, who runs TEDx South Congress is hosting a pre-release watch party of TED 2026 talks!
🗓️ Apr. 30: Live Music Night: Morrison Foerster is hosting their annual networking shindig down at ACL with special guest Bob Schneider
🗓️ May 1: Coffee & Connections: For those of you out west, tired of going downtown for events, the West Austin Chamber is hosting their monthly coffee gathering
🗓️ May 1: Matcha & Mingle: A panel discussion and networking mixer with the Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce and Austin Young Professionals
🗓️ May 1: Cocktails & Conversations: There is no link for Nathan Ryan’s event, but it happens at 5PM on the first Friday of every month over at Remedy, on Nueces
One More Thing…
This is a little further out than I typically cover, but I bet this thing is gonna fill up fast – HICAM is about to kick off a workshop series on how to set up and use OpenClaw.
Part 1 takes place May 8th from 5-7PM, and is designed to get you up and running, with a technical overview followed by hands-on setup with Jordan Hill, founder of the Organized AI community here in town.
Other Fun Stuff Coming Up
Apr. 24: After Hours Music & Art at the Blanton Museum
Apr. 24: Emo Orchestra at The Paramount (a day to remember, indeed)
Apr. 24: Rome – Cookbook Launch with NYT Bestselling Author Katie Perla
Apr. 25: Latte Art 101
Apr. 25: Tour de Carl - Bike Bar Crawl Hosted by St Elmos
Apr. 25: The Soulful Murder Mystery (Touring Nationally)
Apr. 25: Return of the Jedi – Screening Live at The Historic Paramount
Apr. 25-26: The Austin Blues Festival
Apr. 25-26: City-Wide Vintage Sale & Plant Show
Apr. 26: Home Bartending 201 - Masterclass at the Roosevelt Room
Apr. 26: Free Beer! Mini Beer Fest with the Pink Boot Society
Apr. 29: Texas Winemaker Happy Hour at Dai Due (Read my deep dive)
Apr. 29-30: Author David Sedaris Live at the Paramount
Apr. 30: Third Annual Hat Trick Invitational at Butler Pitch & Putt
Apr. 30: Japanese Whiskey Tasting
Apr. 30: Dinner on the Titanic (bro… too soon)
Apr. 30: Water Color Pet Portraits & Pressed Flower Workshop
Apr. 30: PowerPints - Drink Beer and Learn Stuff
Apr. 30 - May 3: Doc Days - Non-Fiction Documentary Film Fest
May 1: Wine & Hot Air Balloons in Fredericksburg
May 2: Art of Mixology - Tequila, Texas & Tacos
May 2: Roots & Vines - Dinner with Lise Asimont of Dot Wines
May 2: Willie Nelson & Family, Live at the Whitewater Amphitheater
Mothers Day’s Comin’ Up…
And the Ghost Pepper Glass Studio is teaming up with Thirsty Blooms to offer a two-part vase-making and floral workshop with start dates available Apr. 29 - May 6.
In part one, you’re paired with an instructor for an intro to glass blowing where you’ll shape and customize your own vase.
It takes a couple days to fully cool, but when you come back for part two, you’ll get a hands-on class in flower arranging with Sophie Chkaiban of Thirsty Blooms. Go check it out!
Insights
Thought-provoking ideas and stories published by founders in ATX
I’ve really been enjoying Jason Scharf’s latest interview with Joe Liemondt, president of Alpha School. So much so, that I bailed on the rest of my podcasts for the week and have been re-listening to this one.
The implications are fascinating.
Between this, and Joe’s interview with Patric OShaughnessy last summer (his first in 25 years), one theme has repeatedly caught my attention: Many American students are years behind their actual grade level in certain subjects, and conventional schools aren’t set up to fix that problem..
Alpha’s different. If an 8th grade student is performing at 4th grade in math, they’ll drop him down to that level to learn the things he’s missing, then accelerate him through the ranks until he’s very often performing beyond his current grade level within the year.
“It takes our students, on average, between twenty and thirty hours to catch up one subject, one grade level,” Joe said in this latest chat. “Fourth grade math is twenty-two hours. Fifth grade math is like, twenty-six hours.”
“So when you hear ‘I'm a couple years behind,’ you're like, [errrmm] you're like, fifty hours behind.”
I love this insight.
I love how it absolutely robs the problem of its perceived complexity and intractability. We’re not talking about an unsolvable crisis. We’re talking about a few weeks of focused work. This is exactly the kind of innovation that makes me excited and optimistic about the future.
And it’s got me thinking about two questions related to business:
What are my catch up topics? The areas where I think I’m performing at an 8th grade level, but am actually stuck at 4th grade and don’t realize it. And related to that…
What would it look like to go back and spend 20, 40, or 60 dedicated hours getting better at those specific things? Where would that get me?
It’s a great conversation and I recommend you check it out. And hit reply, and let me know what you think of the questions here. If there was an alpha school for mid-career business owners, what would the catch-up topics be?
Local Artist + Founder of the Week
Okay, you knew I’d be a sucker for this the second I heard about it. Meredith Marmande is the creator of Local Lines, a brand new hyper-local coloring book series, where the material is designed to help you explore cool aspects of your community, and the colored-in drawings function as coupons at shops and farm stands around town.
Just… Awesome.
Her first series within the brand is called Green Thumbs, with 100+ pages of illustrations and local gardening tips, plus recipe ideas from local cooks, and highlights of local nurseries, food banks, farmers markets, and more.
She sat down recently to share the story behind the books, along with some of her favorite under the radar books, cafes, and community gardens. Check out the full piece here👇👇👇
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
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