Meat Jesse Griffiths

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: Free advertising and who’s writing checks

• 🤠 Local Shop of the Week

• And more…

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

-Ethan

PS. You read this email to meet cool founders here in town, so this week, I’m so excited to introduce you to Jesse Griffiths – chef, author, and founder of the award-winning Dai Due restaurant.

Dai Due’s special because their entire menu is sourced in-season, and locally here in Texas. They incorporate wild fish and game, source their fruits and vegetables from Texas farms, and cook everything in this open-air kitchen over post oak fire pits. It’s amazing.

Jesse started the company with just $230 almost twenty years ago. He sat down to share the full story recently, and you can check that out here. This was one of my all-time favorite interviews, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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.

Tonight is Texas Venture Fest, a statewide celebration of tech + innovation, with events going on across the city. I’ll be hangin’ at Red Fridge with some friends early on. Here’s a map of the other venture fest events going on tonight 👇

Elsewhere, we have…

🗓️ Oct. 4: ClimateTech Coffee: Akash Kanojia is joining the group to discuss renewable energy project financing - he’s got a fascinating background in the energy/finance world

🗓️ Oct. 4: Founder Fridays: Hosted by founders Georges Colbert and Ash Uprety in partnership with LAUNCH, the VC firm founded by Jason Calacanis (another recent Austin transplant)

🗓️ Oct. 5: ATX Newsletter Creators: Michael Daigler is bringing together dozens of newsletter writers in ATX to meet, trade notes, and build connections

🗓️ Oct. 5-6: Bloom Con: Hosted by Black Girl Think Tank, this two day event is designed specifically for black and brown women business owners

🗓️ Oct. 7: Financial Management & AI: Part of a new series focused on sharing AI use-cases for non-profits, brick & mortar, or less-technical businesses

🗓️ Oct. 8: Coffee & Connection: Hosted by the Austin Young Chamber, which is primarily business owners 21-40

🗓️ Oct. 8: Venture Debt 101: Shannon Sibold’s team at MoFo is hosting this multi-part ScaleUp series. I’ve been, and the calibre of founders/info there is excellent

*MoFo is testing partnership with ABR, and I chose them because they do great stuff like this for founders

🗓️ Oct. 9: F50 Global Capital Summit: Specifically dedicated to helping manufacturing entrepreneurs connect with capital in North America

🗓️ Oct 9: Taste of West Austin: If you’re tired of coming downtown for events, West Austin Chamber is hosting this event highlighting local restaurants & food vendors

🗓️ Oct. 9: Texas Women in Business Supper Club: A potluck style gathering hosted by TWIB - their events usually fill up fast, so grab a spot asap

🗓️ Oct. 9: Hill Climbers Happy Hour: This is great - Sam Huntington runs a podcast and weekly group ride for founders hooked on cycling. This week, they’re doing their first happy hour at 6PM over at Brew and Brew. Ping him on Linkedin for more

🗓️ Oct. 9: Supercollider: Marc Bolh, founder of VidaLingua and other leading apps, hosts these Supercollider founder meetups around the city and they look like a blast

🗓️ Oct 9: Lightning Round Funnels: Sara Loretta and Garrett Dailey are hosting a series of lightning talks on funnel-building, running ads, targeting ICPs and more

🗓️ Oct. 10: New Paradigm Venture Salon: Hosted by Nilima Achwal, founder and GP of the New Earth Fund, focused on impact investing. (There’s a sizzle reel!)

🗓️ Oct. 11: All-In Episode 200 Event: Fresh back from All-In Summit, Alice Huang is gathering fans of the show for another one of her wonderful meetups

Last Thing… October 9-11 is Experimentation Live, a conference dedicated to CRO. Looks like mostly huge companies speaking (Disney, Shopify, US Bank, etc.) with some iconic CPG brands mixed in (e.g., YETI, lululemon, Dr. Squatch).

Apparently, they hand-curate intro’s for you too. If you’re interested, you can learn more and find tickets here.

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: Starlight Soiree benefitting UMLAUF at The Domain

• TONIGHT: ACL Live (if you click that, you deserve what you get)

• Oct. 4-6: Rogues Over The Top Pierogi Pop Up

• Oct. 5: Open Canopy - Tour Dozens of Artist Studios

• Oct. 5: Release Party - 20th Annual Bat City Review Literary Magazine

• Oct. 5: Cook-off & Cocktail Competition at Hye Steaks Distilling

• Oct. 5: Paranormal Experience at Pioneer Farms

• Oct. 6: Whiskey Tasting & Cocktail Class at Standard Proof Whiskey

• Oct. 6: Spooky Charcuterie Workshop (for the cheese board fans)

• Oct. 8: Edible Trees Workshop at Zilker Botanical Garden

• Oct. 8: Sharon McMahon - The Small & The Mighty Book Tour (looks great)

• Oct. 8-13: MJ The Musical

• Oct. 9: Bonsai Bar - Drinks and Bonsai Workshop at Austin Craft Brewing

• Oct. 9: Bourbon & Blues at Still Austin Distillery

• Oct. 10: Circular Weaving Workshop

• Oct. 10: Custom Kicks - Learn to Customize Your Jordans at Riches Art

• Oct. 11: Community Outdoor Cinema - Inside Out 2

• Oct. 11: Wild Supper Club at the LBJ Wildflower Center

• Oct. 12: First Annual Mac & Cheese Championship (ummm… what?)

• Oct. 12: Community Art Bash at Elisabet Ney Museum

• Oct. 12: Facundo’s Night Out - Celebrating Austin Weird

• Oct. 12-13: The 32nd Annual Art From The Streets Gallery Show

One Last Thing… I don’t usually share stuff this far out, but I think these are gonna sell out fast.

The Texas Book Festival is next month, and I just heard that there will be live sessions with Matthew McConaughey, and Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell is touring for his new book, which apparently re-frames the concepts in The Tipping Point.

The festival itself is free, and includes appearances from dozens of authors. These two events are ticketed though and you can find info on both here.

Word On The Street

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

• The holidays are coming and I thought it’d be fun to make an ABR gift guide – highlighting all Austin brands. If you run a CPG or physical goods brand and you want a fun way to reach locals, add your info here.

• Raising Venture? Local investor Codie Sanchez is actively writing $250-$500k checks through her fund, Contrarian Capital. You can find their thesis here.

Are you writing checks in Q4? Email me here. I’m happy to help spread the word.

Insights

Thought-provoking ideas and stories published by founders in ATX

1. The Drone Wars Have Begun: DefenseTech founder Steven Simoni launched a new podcast and wow, this was such a fun listen. Two experienced founders, with several previous tech wins, chopping it up over a world most of us never see.

2. Regenerative Ag Headed for $10B: Local founder Jessi Roesch (rhymes with “fresh”) joined the Funds and Founders podcast recently to talk about Downland, the company she’s building to support farmers and ranchers

3. Beating A Frivolous ADA Suit: Maybe you saw the news – founder Twitter was thrilled when Eric Bandholz fought and won one of those predatory ADA suits. He sat down with his attorney the other day to recap the case live.

Local Shop of the Week

Not an ad – just a cool spot you should know

RESTART CBD | 2521 Rutland Dr #150A

A few months ago, I asked the unofficial mayor of Austin, Marc Nathan, to recommend some local CPG brands I should check out. RESTART was on his short-list.

Run by three sisters with deep ties to Austin, they produce a lot of their products right here in town (like their RESTART RITA, which just won “Best Buzz” in Austin Monthly magazine, and is brewed and canned right over at Austin Beerworks)

I sat down with founder Shayda Tarobi Howell the other day, and have the full story for you next week in this newsletter. It’s wild.

Local Artist Spotted In The Wild

This is so cool. A couple of weeks ago, I told you about Gil Bruvel the award-winning local sculpture artist who makes giant faces out of hundreds of intricately stacked pieces of wood.

Well, the other day, during Meta Connect 2024, Mark Zuckerberg introduced a project called Hyperscape – immersive, photorealistic environments you can explore in 3D – and guess whose studio is one of the samples?

That’s right. Good ‘ol Gil.

I first noticed when Meta AI researcher Norman Müller shared this preview on X (you can see Gil’s signature mask pieces in the space). Apparently, if you’ve got a Quest headset, you can actually, “witness the entire assemblage process,” here.

Cool to see an ATX artist on such a cutting edge project. Congrats, Gil!

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