Meet Shayda Torabi Howell

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!).

This week, we’ve got a few things on-deck:

• 📅 Upcoming Events

• 📣 Word On The Street: Grants, Free Ads, and a VC internship for your kid

• 💡 Insights: Including J-Cal’s new investing newsletter

• And more…

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

-Ethan

PS. You read this email to get connected with cool local founders, so today, I want to introduce you to Shayda Torabi Howell and her sisters Sydney and Nika.

Their story’s wild. In 2015, Shayda was hit by a car, and couldn’t find any relief from the debilitating pain until she started experimenting with combinations of THC and CBD.

That led to co-founding RESTART CBD, which has now grown into a 7-figure business with a nationwide DTC footprint, dozens of SKUs, multiple Best of ATX awards, and their second shop on the way.

These three are crushing it in an extremely complex industry (wait till you hear their story about Square). Shayda gave me the full scoop recently, and you can read it here.

Upcoming Events

Running a business is tough. Here are a few great places to meet cool people going through the same sh*t you are.

🗓️ Oct. 18: Coffee Connectors Meetup: At last! Devin Ambron and Paris Bland have returned to us from their summer travels, and are back to hosting their coffee meetup. Tehy specifically curate intro’s so please be sure to RSVP ahead of time

🗓️ Oct. 18: All-In Episode 200 Meetup: Fresh back from All-In Summit, Alice Huang is gathering fans of the show for another one of her wonderful meetups

🗓️ Oct. 18: Female Founders & Friends: Hosted the third Friday of every month by Juliette Richert of the Artemis Fund

🗓️ Oct. 19: Nerd Nite: This is like a mini-TED event, hosted by Mickey Delp and Amy Cavender “for nerds by nerds.”

🗓️ Oct. 22: CTO Talk (online): Local founder John Davison is doing a virtual fireside chat with Jesse Farmer, co-founder of Everlane, which did ~$200m in revenue last year

🗓️ Oct. 22: MoFo Pitch Day: Shannon Sibold’s team at Morrison Foerster are hosting a bunch of founders and VCs for a Shark Tank-style pitch.

🗓️ Oct. 22: Tacos & Topics: Join Hugh Forrest, co-president of SXSW, for the reveal of more than 350 panels at the 2025 conference

🗓️ Oct. 22: Book Discussion - Digital Empires: This book sounds fascinating, and with Jay Boisseau moderating, the discussion will be too

🗓️ Oct. 22: TWIB Happy Hour: Texas Women in Business is hosting their monthly happy hour at Taylor Spencer’s Five Star Jewelry in Westlake

🗓️ Oct. 23: C-Suite Conversations: Angela Shaw is moderating this panel of leaders from four of Austin’s different chambers of commerce

🗓️ Oct. 24: WakeUp! CPG: Co-hosted by Marc Nathan and Aaron Griver, this is one of the best CPG events in town every month

🗓️ Oct. 24: Financial Literacy & Negotiation: Texas Women In Tech is hosting this conversation with Melissa Aarskaug, global VP at GLI, and three other financial leaders

🗓️ Oct. 25: Pickup Basketball for Founders: Every month, Nick Schenck hosts a pickup game for founders at Ramsey Neighborhood Park starting at 5PM. Drop in, or email him here if you want to get on the list for future dates.

🗓️ Oct. 25: Shark Tank Watch Party: Local founder, Destin George Bell, is pitching on this episode, and his company, Card.io is hosting a watch party at Austin Marathon HQ. There’ll be free food and drinks, cool founders, and of course… Pickleball.

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

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: Supermoon Crawl at The Contemporary Austin

• TONIGHT: Behind the Frame - Art History Talk at Riches (they’re dope)

• Oct. 19: Austin Record Convention (largest in the US)

• Oct. 19: Vintage Market at Kinda Tropical

• Oct. 19: Candlelight - A Haunted Evening of Halloween Classics

• Oct. 20: Grapes to Glass Wine Tasting Series

• Oct. 20: The Return of Flamenco Night at El Raval

• Oct. 21: TrailFit - Fall Fitness Series at Auditorium Shores

• Oct. 23: Audiophiles at Pershing: Snoop Dogg

• Oct. 24: Trick Chats - Behind The New ATX Music Documentary

• Oct. 24: Unveiling of Museum of the Moon

• Oct. 25: Hive to Honey Tasting at 75 Oaks

• Oct. 25: Austin’s 11th Annual Art Dinner at The Contemporary Austin (including the first-ever Art Dinner After Party from 9:30 to late)

• Oct. 26: Herbs in the Garden Class at Zilker Botanical

• Oct. 26: First Annual Howler Fest (craft beer, music, and dogs)

• Oct. 26: Screen on the Green - Nightmare Before Christmas

Last Thing… This one’s a bit of a haul, but on the 26th, the Open Fire Meetup is gathering 100+ BBQ influencers and pit masters from 20 countries out in Hondo.

More than a dozen teams will compete in an open-fire cooking competition, and your ticket includes a taste-test from all of ‘em. Plus there’s music, vendors, and stuff for the kids.

Alejo Frugoni is hosting, and other heavy hitters like Tony Ramirez, Breanna Stark, and Derek-freaking-Wolf (3.4m followers) are all gonna be there.

Word On The Street

A roundup of cool local opportunities to grow your business, wealth, or personal brand

• Is your kid looking for internships? 8VC, which is run by Joe Lonsdale (local founder who may have started more billion-dollar companies than anyone else in the world) is accepting applications for their fellowship programs

• The Amber Grant awards three $10k grants every month to women-owned businesses (one smb, one startup, and one wildcard). Shout out to Nicole Schwartz for surfacing this in her newsletter, which is excellent

• Got a CPG Brand? Submit your product for the holiday gift guide that Marc Nathan, Bill Murphy, Emily Prebble, and I are conspiring collaborating on. A fun way to hype some cool local brands ahead of the holidays. Submit your info here

Insights

Thought-provoking ideas and stories published by founders in ATX

1. A Newsletter to Teach Kids Money: Recent Austin transplant, Jason Calacanis, is launching Kids Investment Club, a newsletter designed to teach his kids about investing and money. Nothing published yet, but the plan is to get it rolling in the fall. In the meantime, here’s a video where he breaks down the idea.

2. There’s Power In The Words You Don’t Say: One of my favorite weekly reads is a newsletter from Katy Ward, an artist in town who also runs a copywriting firm. She recently published this piece on four habits that weaken your language, and by extension, your life. Favorite line 👇

3. “Great philosophers are entrepreneurial…” University of Austin, the innovative new college co-founded by billionaire Joe Lonsdale, published this excellent lecture on Homer’s Odyssey, and its applications today.

Note: If you (like me) are a bit rusty on your Greek classics, the version assigned to UATX students is free on Spotify Premium (and is a wonderful listen). You don’t need much. Most of the discussion revolve around the first 25-50% of the book.

4. STR Investors: Ben Wolff runs an 8-figure STR portfolio, and recently published this piece on the thinking behind some of the design decisions at their most recent unit. His whole specialty is “experiential properties” – the kinds of spaces that drive social media posts, and direct bookings. So it was interesting to see how he thinks through that during site design.

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