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).

Well… It finally happened.

For the first time ever (as far as I know) I had a reader buy a full-year subscription to the Austin Business Journal thinking it was me.

I blame myself. You’ve heard of the cobbler’s kids having no shoes. Well in this case the cobbler is me, and the kid is the visual branding of this newsletter. We gotta make it undeniably unique. So over the next few weeks, I’m gonna be taking myself through the same process I use with clients to help develop their newsletters.

I’ll post each step, along with templates and resources over on LinkedIn, so if you’re working on your own content, and want to refresh it, feel free to follow along.

If you’re looking for my premium subscription (which comes with a private LinkedIn group, and exclusive live knowledge-shares), you can find it here.

And to my great and worthy opponents friends over at ABJ… You’re welcome 😉

Here’s what we’ve got this week:

Did someone forward this to you? If you like it, you can sign up free here!

-Ethan

PS. If you have a second, will you let me know your answer to this poll? I’m updating all my audience stats as I head into sponsor conversations, so it’s helpful to show them how badass readers are…

🗓️ Apr. 17: Community Builder Walk & Talk: Kick the day off with a 45- minute walk along the lake with Kristen Pavle, Lilly Checkoff and other local community builders

🗓️ Apr. 17: Female Founders & Friends: Hosted the third Friday of every month by Juliette Richert of the Artemis Fund

🗓️ Apr. 17: Founders-Only Pickleball: Part of John Davison’s new, “Meet A Founder Friday” series. All levels of pickleball experience are welcome!

🗓️ Apr. 17: Lion In The Changing Jungle: Vidya Moorthy is joining Texas Women in Business April luncheon for part two of her series on evolving geopolitics

🗓️ Apr. 19: AI Implementation Club: Chrissy McDannell hosts a dedicated focus sprint to ship that AI project you’ve had in mind for weeks

🗓️ Apr. 20-21: Commerce Roundtable: If you’re in DTC, you probably know about this one already! And if not, now you do 👊

🗓️ Apr. 20: Ecomm Cowboy Steak Dinner: Colin Dougherty is hosting this dinner for DTC operators, overlapping with people in town for Commerce Roundtable

🗓️ Apr. 21: Founder Coffee Tasting: Drop by The Red Fridge Society for laid back coffee and a chance to hang with other founders

🗓️ Apr. 21: Estate Planning Workshop: Kyle Robbins is hosting this gathering and workshop at Steiner Ranch

🗓️ Apr. 22: Building Teams The Outthink: This month’s Tech Council Roundtable Breakfast focuses on building teams that use AI without sacrificing human ingenuity

🗓️ Apr. 22: Employee vs Contractor: Vanessa Gonzalez is teaching this workshop on what small business owners need to know about properly classifying their workforce

🗓️ Apr. 22: Sip & Shoot Headshot Series: The Guad Haus is this cool little meeting & event space that opened recently and hosts creative mixers and networking events

🗓️ Apr. 23: Wake Up! CPG: Marc Nathan’s events are some of the best in town for meeting CPG veterans

🗓️ Apr. 23: Tacos with Torchy’s Founder: Chris Taylor is bringing Mike Rypka, founder of Torchy’s, out to The Red Fridge Society for breakfast and a founder talk

🗓️ Apr. 23: Distiller Series: Another one from Chris Taylor, this time with Jez Spencer & Jen Bailey, co-founders of the brand new, Austin-based Baja Rum

🗓️ Apr. 23: PitchSpark Launch Party: Investor, Cody Todd, is hosting to celebrate the launch of his new a gamified deal flow app for founders and investors

🗓️ Apr. 23: Onboarding as a Revenue Strategy: Anastasia Chihai and Giano Fiore are hosting this panel discussion on how to shorten ramp time and train stronger SDRs

🗓️ 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. 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. 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: 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

Other Fun Stuff Coming Up

Katherine Allen is the founder and CEO of Flo, a SaaS company focused on recruiting and performance management for law firms. The company went through Y-Combinator back in 2019, and raised a $4.2m seed round led by LiveOak Ventures, right here in Austin, a few years later.

By 2024, 70% of students at elite T14 law schools were users, as were almost all of the Vault Top-10 ranked firms in the country.

We first met in 2025 – right around the time she finalized her Series A – through a program I helped run called BoostATX, an invite-only peer group for Austin founders scaling from 7- to 8-figures in revenue.

Back then, Flo was called Flo Recruit, because they were focused on that first step of connecting hires with law firms. About two weeks ago, word came out that they expanded into performance management and officially rebranded as well.

It seemed like the perfect time to check in with a founder spotlight, so check out her story here! 👇👇👇

There’s a lot to love about the story of Nicole Ruiz and Lucas Prado, founders of BEEST Snacks (high-protein snacks that use real food).

There’s an American success story: After getting their start in Bolivia, they took a leap and moved their brand and their entire life here to the US.

There is drama – like the time they landed their first big retailer, and their only two production employees demanded part of the company or they’d walk.

There’s also a love story.

Last month, they won KeHe’s Trend Finder Golden Ticket, which opens a path to national distribution, and a few days ago, they got the news that they made No. 42 in RangeMe’s Top 50 list of most in-demand brands retailers are ordering, beating out ~90k others from around the country.

Check out their recent interview for more on how they’re building this BEEST of a brand from scratch 👇👇👇

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