Big Sister AI Snags $100k Top Prize

Welcome to this issue of The Austin Business Review, a weekly roundup of great events, insights, and opportunities for business owners in ATX (plus some cool stuff for your life outside work).

Did you have a good week? Did you get a lot done?

Well one of your neighbors somehow found time to… [checks notes]… ship 8 different version updates to Grok, open-source Grok 2.5, sue Apple, snag a 5-star safety rating on Cyber Truck, land his 400th rocket on a drone ship, land a skyscraper in the ocean, launch a company to troll Bill Gates, and overtake Waymo’s service area here in Austin.

If you need me, I’ll be floating in the lake, contemplating my own ineptitude.

-Ethan

PS. Did someone send this to you? If you like it, you can subscribe here.

Upcoming Events

There are tons of business events in Austin. These are the ones I think are most worth your time.

🗓️ TONIGHT: Austin Hardware Meetup: Speakers from four different physical product companies are joining Nick Frank and his crew to talk shop at Antler HQ

🗓️ TONIGHT: Cloud Closet Conversations: Caroline Lakshmanan is hosting a panel on how tech is making people rethink their relationship with fashion, including insights from four founders in the space

🗓️ Aug. 29: $100M Leads Book Discussion Group: I’m hosting this event, for anyone who’s using Alex Hormozi’s book, $100M Leads, to grow their business

🗓️ Sept. 2: Code In Flux: Long-time engineer and founder, Tony Llongueras, is giving a talk exploring the trends and challenges facing coders in this new era of software development

🗓️ Sept. 3: Founder Coffee Tasting: Join Chris Taylor and other founders at The Red Fridge Society for some great coffee and conversation to kick off the day

🗓️ Sept. 3: TWIB Online Connect: Texas Women in Business’ in-person events always fill up fast so if you haven’t made it to one of those yet, try this

🗓️ Sept. 3: Marketing Automation & AI: Local founder, Eddy Hernández, is giving a demo on n8n, showing how to build agents and automate workflows. I know Eddy, and have seen his work first-hand, so this should be good

🗓️ Sept. 3: Texas-Korea Exchange Mixer: What caught my eye about this is that many of the speakers are deeply rooted in either manufacturing or local economic development.

🗓️ Sept. 4: Headshot Social Hour: Hosted by Austin Woman Magazine, enjoy wine, networking, lite-bites, and a guided photo shoot

🗓️ Sept. 5: Coffee & Connect: For those of you out west who are tired of going downtown for events, West Austin Chamber is hosting their monthly coffee meetup

🗓️ Sept. 5: KSWELI Open House: For UT students – Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute is hosting their fall open house, including speakers like Mariel Jastrebsky, Sr. R&D Scientist at Poppi (a local brand which sold to Pepsi for ~$2B).

Something adventurous… If you’re looking for a fun way to make new connections, I’m organizing a shooting event September 26th for readers of this email. Think of it like Top Golf, but cooler. There’ll be a morning coffee chat, about two hours of social shooting, a delicious lunch, and you’ll be home before rush hour.

You don’t need any experience – the whole thing is set up to be very beginner-friendly, and your ticket includes all the equipment you need. Though if you’re a seasoned pro, you’re welcome to bring your own gear, and we’ve got people there who can give you a run for your money. Join us!

Other Fun Stuff Coming Up

This is a great weekend for classic movies, with hole-in-the-wall screenings Nightmare on Elm St., Adams Family Values, and The Sandlot, plus a double feature of Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2, hosted by Hollywood film legend and Austin local, Robert Rodriguez

Elsewhere, we’ve got…

• Aug. 29: PowerPints - Like TED (but add beer)

• Aug. 30: Grand re-opening of Waterloo Records in their new location

• Aug. 30-31: Austin Cactus & Suculent Society Fall Show at Zilker Botanical

• Aug. 31: Linoleum print-making workshop at Contra Common artist loft

• Aug. 31: Mixology 201 Masterclass Series at The Roosevelt Room

• Sept. 1: Zilker x Cuveé Cold Brew Plunge

• Sept. 2: The Witcher in Concert

• Sept. 2: Bonsai Bar at Austin Beerworks

• Sept. 4: Blancs & Francs - Wine of the Loire Valley

• Sept. 4: Pasta making with Chef Erin at Blue Owl Brewing

• Sept. 5: Sunset Cruise Dinner & Wine Tasting

• Sept. 6: Croissants - An Intensive Workshop

• Sept. 6: Lattes & Lillies - A Floral Design Workshop

• Sept. 7: The Art of French Pastry

• Sept. 7: The 35th Annual Hot Sauce Festival

• Sept. 7: After Hours Moonlight Paddle

Word On The Street

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

🔥 Nominations for the Inno Fire Awards are open until October 6th

🎨 Artists… There’s an open call for photographers who want to showcase at Contra Common’s upcoming fall exhibit. Vendors can also apply to showcase at their September art fest.

🎤 Pitch Competition: Startup Grind is hosting a pitch battle here in Austin in mid-Sept. Winners will compete nationally, pitching to VCs. Applications are open until Aug. 29

💸 Central Texas Angel Network is is about to open cycle five for 2025. It kicks off with their Founder Angel Speed Dating, on Aug. 29

📣 Final Call For Pitch Decks – Morrison Foerster’s Pitch Day Competition is an official part of Austin Startup Week this year. Winners get coaching directly from their team (which has helped with billions in fundraising) and submissions are open through Monday Sept. 1

Insights

Thought-provoking ideas and stories published by founders in ATX

1. Billionaire Breaks Silence: The big thing making waves this week is that Joe Liemandt, billionaire founder of Trilogy software, did his first major interview in 20+ years. It’s fascinating. He’s a driving force at Alpha School, which uses AI tutoring to crank out Top-1% students in 2 hours a day, and Gauntlet, the AI coding bootcamp I wrote about here.

2. Consulting Contracts 101: I’ve been enjoying Lauren Wambold Patel’s newsletter for consultants. It’s technical, and gets into the nitty gritty. This week, she published a deep dive on contracts, including tips on rates, and important clauses to include. Great read for anyone doing services work.

3. Fresh Book Recommendations: I found two great reading lists this week – one from local author Ryan Holiday, and the other is the faculty orientation list from UATX, the innovative new college co-founded by local billionaire Joe Lonsdale. Both have great recs I haven’t seen before.

Reader Spotlight: Big Sister AI Snags $100K Top Prize

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned a new Reader Q&A I was experimenting with. The goal is to showcase cool founders in town, and share some of their experience with everyone.

Well, this week, we’ve got a good one.

Local founders, Valentyn and Lucy Yaromenko, just took first place and a $100k grand prize at the Texas AI Challenge up in Dallas, for their company, Big Sister AI, which helps you understand performance variations among your sales team.

The way they say it is, “Moneyball for sales,” which is great.

I know the Yaromenko’s a bit. They’re active in the founder community here in Austin, and host a regular event called Sales OStin, which has appeared in this newsletter several times. But until now, I’d never known much about their journey…

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1. Okay, what's the backstory on Big Sister? And how’d you get your first customer.

The idea for Big Sister AI was born from 19 years of frustration on the front lines of sales. I built the #1 sales consulting firm in Ukraine, helping hundreds of companies build elite sales systems. We were great at fixing their processes and tech stacks, but we always hit a wall.

We could see what happened in their CRM, but we could never truly explain why. Why was the performance gap between reps on the same team sometimes 4-5x?

It was maddening. Leaders were making their most critical decisions—who to coach, how to improve—based on gut feelings and guesswork. I started calling it "sales astrology," and it was quietly killing their revenue. That obsession to measure the quality of human interaction led me to Austin three years ago to launch an AI startup to finally solve that problem.

Our first customer came from my consulting network. They were a B2B service company facing the exact problem of inconsistent team performance. They trusted me, and they felt the pain daily. I didn't sell them a polished product; I sold them on the mission to solve this "black box" problem together. They signed up based on a raw demo and a shared belief that there had to be a better way than guessing. Their feedback was foundational for us.

2. What’s one unconventional decision you made early in your business that you believe set you apart from competitors, and how do you think it shaped your trajectory?

Choosing the name "Big Sister". In a world where tech surveillance is associated with "Big Brother," we deliberately chose a name that reflects our actual philosophy: to empower, not to control. My partner and Co-founder, Lucy Yaromenko, and I built our entire company around this idea of "AI + Human" symbiotic intelligence.

When we started, the conventional path was to build AI that did the work for you. We chose to build AI that makes humans better at their work. Instead of another dashboard that leaves managers data-rich but insight-poor, our AI's primary job is to pinpoint the "why" behind performance and help fix the human factor. We provide scorecards like in sports and deliver actionable insights for every user. This shaped our entire trajectory, forcing us to build a product based on trust and a new, data-driven methodology for managing sales. It's why our main go-to-market channel is partnerships—we're a professional-grade tool, not a mass-market commodity.

3. What’s one belief about entrepreneurship you held when you started that you’ve completely abandoned, and what made you change your mind?

Coming from a 19-year career where I had built a successful consulting business, I held a strong belief that deep domain expertise was 90% of the battle. I thought that if I knew more about sales than anyone else and built a technically superior product, success was almost guaranteed.

I’ve completely abandoned that idea. Moving to Austin and immersing myself in the startup ecosystem here, particularly at Capital Factory, was a real education. I saw brilliant founders with incredible products who struggled because they couldn't tell a compelling story. Expertise is just table stakes. The other 90% is storytelling, networking, and building a narrative that connects with investors and customers on an emotional level. I had to learn that the story you tell is just as important as the code you write.

4. If you were to recommend one under-the-radar Austin spot to another founder for brainstorming or unwinding, where would it be and why?

The Contemporary Austin - Laguna Gloria. It's a beautiful, inspiring place that combines art and nature right in my neighborhood of Tarrytown. For a founder, it’s the perfect escape. You can walk the grounds to clear your head, get inspired by the sculptures, and find a quiet bench by the water to think through a complex problem. It’s a place that reminds you of the importance of vision and creativity—the same things you need to build a business.

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