City of the Violet Crown

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: Fast Grants for Daring Ideas

• 🐶🍷 Local Shop of the Week: Best Damn Wine In Austin

• And more…

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

-Ethan

PS. Today’s the last day to submit your CPG brand for our Holiday Gift Guide. We’ve got 50+ cool Austin brands in there so far. So take 5 minutes and apply here to be included.

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.

🗓️ Nov 1: Coffee & Connections: For those of you out west, tired of going downtown for events, the West Austin Chamber is hosting one of their regular coffee gatherings

🗓️ Nov. 1: Hylio Fundraising Launch Party: Hylio makes precision autonomous agricultural drones, and the founding team is hosting a party ahead of their crowdfund

🗓️ Nov. 3: Mrs. Texas Watch Party: Texas Women in Business is hosting a watch party to support Elaine Mingus, owner of Curb Vulture vintage furniture, who’s competing as Mrs. Austin

🗓️ Nov. 5: Technology Transactions: Shannon Sibold’s team over at MoFo is hosting this exclusive workshop on IP licensing, M&A, and common transaction risks

🗓️ Nov. 6: Barrel-Aged Notes: The first installment of John Davison’s new social club, built around whiskey, jazz, and entrepreneurship. Guided tasting + good music and great conversation. Can’t wait for this one.

🗓️ Nov. 6: Investors Only Poker: Such a fun idea from Justin Schoenfelder and Abhinav Sinha – a 40-seat poker tournament, $250 buy-in, five startups in the room, and the winner invests the pot in the pitch of their choice.

🗓️ Nov. 6: Founders & Funders Reverse Pitch Night: Local investor Jeff Erickson is hosting this fun twist on Shark Tank – VCs pitch their investment thesis to a room full of 100+ founders.

🗓️ Nov. 6: AI Dev Tools: If you’re a technical founder, you may enjoy this roundup of live talks, hosted by Sourcegraph

🗓️ Nov. 6: 3X Your Marketing with Custom GPTs: Longtime CMO Russ Rivers is showing how to build a content marketing “GPTeam” (love that term)

🗓️ Nov. 6: Metropolitan Breakfast Club: If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ve seen me highlight events at Antonelli’s Cheese before (they do a ton). Well, co-founder, Kendall Antonelli is speaking at the Metropolitan Breakfast Club about things she and her team have learned in 14 years since opening the shop.

🗓️ Nov. 6: Invest In Your Future: Founder Michaela Lindsay is speaking about value-aligned investing at the Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute

🗓️ Nov. 7: Open Coffee (Downtown): Since 2009, Damon Clinkscales has been hosting this laid back bi-weekly coffee chat for founders and investors

🗓️ Nov. 7: The Art & Science of Building AI-Enhanced Features: Microsoft Senior User Researcher, Connor Joyce, is giving a framework for product success that helps determine when and how to integrate AI for best user outcomes

🗓️ Nov. 7: Intro to Programming Quantum Computers: Tom Bishop, who sold two different companies to IBM, speaks very highly of Jay Boisseau’s quantum workshops

🗓️ Nov. 7: Health & Longevity Q&A: My buddy, Chris Taylor, is hosting a Q&A with Dr. Mike Hasegawa, founder of BodyTime, which is an executive longevity practice here in town. The talk is focused largely on cold therapy, and he’s planning to demo the ZeroIcePod for those interested.

🗓️ Nov. 7-8: Generative AI & ML Ops Summit: From the reviews, one thing people like about this conference is the focus on ops – so not just research, but actually getting ML stuff into production

🗓️ Nov. 8: Morning Marketing Mixer: Amy Jackson and Destinee Berman both run performance agencies, and are starting this series for marketing leaders in ATX

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.

• Nov. 1: Taste of Patagonia at YETI HQ

• Nov. 1: Music to Draw To with DJ Kid Koala (BYO Creative Projects)

• Nov. 2: Wine Tasting & Tarot

• Nov. 2: Muertos Mercado at the MexicArte Museum

• Nov. 2: The 4th Annual Hot Sauce Hootenanny

• Nov. 3: Sinner’s Brunch - Jo’s 25th Anniversary Party

• Nov. 3: Kitten Yoga Benefitting Austin Pets Alive

• Nov. 3: Dane Cook Live

• Nov. 7: Huang Yi, Ink (he performed at TED a few years ago)

• Nov. 7: WhiskeyX - Showcasing 60+ Whiskeys, Music, Food, and more

• Nov. 7: Blind Bourbon Tasting at Mama Merlot’s Speakeasy

• Nov. 7: Old School Austin Community Cake & Bottle Swap

• Nov. 7: Alternative Atelier - Mocktails & Record Swap

• Nov. 7: For Wine Fans: Dinner with the Founders of Ride & Ridden

• Nov. 8: Raise A Little Hell: Beer + Devil’s Reserve at The Rustic Tap

• Nov. 8: Meanwhile Brewing’s Four Year Anniversary Party

• Nov. 9: WeStrive Games

• Nov. 9: Special Release: Buorbon-Aged Sotol at Desert Door Distillery

• Nov. 9: Book Signing with Food Influencer Justine_Snacks

Last Thing!… The Brewtorium is hosting an Art + Beer Night Market on November 9th, featuring 50+ artists (and of course… beer). Great place to get that drinking shopping started for the holidays.

Word On The Street

Local opportunities to win funding, grow your business, or build your brand

Last Call for Cosmos Ventures: Local investor, Brendan McCord, launched Cosmos Institute to offer, “fast grants to build prototypes at the intersection of technology and human flourishing.”

If you’ve seen Johnathan Bi’s fantastic (and very viral) series on history’s greatest books, he’s one of the recipients.

Applications close Nov. 1 at 11:59PM, so if you’ve got a provocative idea you want to fund, apply now.

Insights

Thought-provoking ideas and stories published by founders in ATX

1. People are raving about Tim Ferriss’ interview with John Batiste. It’s worth watching the video over coffee this weekend. It was shot in Batiste’s studio, and is just wonderfully done.

2. Real Talk on Selling An Agency: Shout out to Jaclyn Schiff, who appeared on the Curious Blend podcast to talk about building and selling her company, Spoke. This was a cool find – Curious Blend is a brand new local pod run by Keller Davis, who owns Createscape Coworking over on the east side.

3. Content Marketing After Dark The other night, my buddy Alex Garcia jumped on a live-stream to talk all things content marketing with Oren John and Colin Landforce. Very hands-on and tactical. If you’re investing in short-form video, definitely check this out.

Local Shop of the Week

Not an ad – just a cool spot you should know

The Austin Winery | 440 E. St Elmo Rd

I was rummaging through the fridge at The Meteor recently, looking for a bottle of Soto Vino, when I came across this one from The Austin Winery.

It’s a blend of Tempranillo & Graciano, and honestly, I have no idea what that means. But here’s what I do know…

The name is an homage to Austin (long before we were weird, we were The City of the Violet Crown).

More importantly, the label is a tribute to Henry, the dog that co-founded the winery, and served as trusty side-kick there for almost a decade before going to the vineyard in the sky (I’m not sobbing, you’re sobbing).

I bought it immediately.

It’s delicious (of course). Can’t think of a better wine for every fridge in Austin. I’m having a hard time tracking down more, but it looks like it’s still on the menu at the tasting room. So if you see it in the wild, trust me, snag it.

Good boy, Henry.

Fun Fact: While looking into the story above, I learned the Austin History Center cites the first use of, “City of the Violet Crown,” as May 5, 1890 in the Austin Daily Statesman.

But I actually found one that pre-dates that. On January 3rd, 1888, the Statesman published these lines…

Funny enough, the story was all about how business and investment were flooding into Austin from the coasts, and the city should seize the opportunity. Yet another example of how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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