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).

People ask me how this newsletter makes money, and are often surprised by the answer: It’s not ads.

I have nothing against them. It’s just rare that I find another company I’m willing to put in front of you like that.

No, the main way this email has always made money is through consulting.

Business owners find me via the newsletter. A small sub-set of them want help making their own. And I either teach them what I’ve learned after nearly a decade in the space, or do the work for them, up to and including weekly publishing.

I only work with a handful of later-stage founders, so up to this point, the two worlds felt very separate.

But as AI becomes ubiquitous, I’m finding they’re more related than I thought.

ABR has always been about connecting you with people in town I think you should know. The key word there being “people.” I use no AI writing this email each week because I want it to be a place you feel like you can always go to find real humans and what they’re up to.

And increasingly, that’s what my consulting work is about too – helping founders find the thing that makes them truly unique, the thing that can’t be AI-ed away, and telling that story to their audience over time.

More and more often, it’s something related to their humanness.

So the more time I spend in these two different worlds, the more I realize they’re really one in the same – my work is focused on connecting real people with other real people (typically so both people can make more money).

I’ve never really had a tagline for this email, but two words have been echoing through my mind recently: Radically human.

Today’s issue is no exception.

-Ethan

🗓️ TODAY: Longevity Global ATX: First meeting of the ATX chapter of Longevity Global, and the panelists – Cheryl Sew Hoy and John Forrest – are badass

🗓️ Mar. 6: Founder’s Tour - Inside St. Elmo: Part of a new series I’m organizing, Bryan Winslow will take us behind the scenes at his company, St. Elmo Brewing

🗓️ Mar. 6: Cocktails & Conversations: There is no link for Nathan Ryan’s event But it happens at 5PM on the first Friday of every month over at Remedy, on Nueces

🗓️ Mar. 8: SheBuilds on Lovable: Emily Jansen and Michelle Mayes are hosting this for International Women’s Day – come with an idea, leave with a working prototype

🗓️ Mar. 10: Women Who Breathe: A much-needed pre-SXSW event from Marina Kay who runs breath-work clinics specifically for high-performing women in leadership

🗓️ Mar. 10: The State of VC and Growth Equity: It’s worth hopping on the waitlist for Chris Taylor’s latest panel with Jim Curry, Ben Freeberg, and Jani Tuomi

🗓️ Mar. 11: StartupMania: I don’t cover a lot of seed/pre-seed events but this one sounds fun – 64 founders duke it out in a March Madness-style pitch competition, plus panel sessions, workshops, private lunches, roundtables, a startup concert and more

🗓️ Mar. 12: GAACC Women’s Club: Dana Such is joining to share her journey and discuss the “life-first” mindset she’s used to pursue meaning in her business

🗓️ Mar. 12: Acquire & Invest Happy Hour: Always a fan favorite – Dan Jensen, Yvette Owo, and Henry Carter’s monthly happy hour for people who buy businesses.

🗓️ Mar. 14: From Chaos to Clarity: CLA is hosting a brunch panel for senior finance, ops, and tech leaders, focused on finding clarity amid increasing tech noise

Other Fun Stuff Coming Up

Every morning, I spend a little time clicking through the LinkedIn profiles of founders across Austin, and a few times a week, I find someone so crazy, I’ve just gotta have ‘em in here.

Rhys Andersen is exactly the right kind of crazy. His story is wild.

The founder of Method Mfg, his company does precision manufacturing for aerospace and other industries, but he didn’t come from a machining background. In fact, he taught himself the trade in his spare time while working in the oil fields, and willed the company into existence in the face of setback after setback.

Today, they’re one of the suppliers for NASA’s Artemis lunar EVA suits (among other things) meaning that the first humans back on the moon in 50+ years will carry with them components milled right here in Austin.

It’s a wild story, best told by the founder, so without further ado, here’s Rhys…

Method Mfg makes aerospace parts many manufacturers won’t touch, because they’re too complex or too critical. We produce precision components for rockets, satellites, space suits, and even hammers designed for lunar exploration. Our mission is simple: help hard-tech companies accelerate innovation by combining robotic automation with deep manufacturing capability.

The idea started after a New Year’s Eve conversation with a friend who worked at a semiconductor company. After doing some research, I confirmed that there was no local manufacturer capable of producing the large, complex machined components required for semiconductor automation systems. So I decided to build a company that could make the parts no one else could.

I bought the largest machine I could find and afford, and then built a building around it.

Knowing absolutely nothing about CNC machines, the problems started immediately. The machine, sourced from Craigslist and shipped from a dirt-floor pole barn in Odessa, wouldn’t even turn on. I ended up fully restoring it: installing a new control, building doors, and chasing endless electrical issues.

When I finally got it running, my planned cofounder and trained machinist moved to Maine for work. That left me with a choice, either teach myself machining or own a 36,000-pound paperweight in a brand-new shop. 

Over the first year, while working two weeks on and one week off in the oil field, I gradually taught myself machining and focused on building a customer base, until COVID forced me to double down. One week after purchasing our second machine, and just three months before our first child was due, I was laid off.

It would have been far easier, and probably far more practical, to start with small, simple components and gradually work up in size and complexity. Large components are riskier, harder to quote, harder to machine, and there are fewer buyers.

But I believed it was more important to be different than try and compete directly with every other shop in the area.

Our “largest machine in Central Texas” even though it was 20 years old, slow, and operated by someone who barely knew what he was doing, opened the door to all of our early work. That decision shaped everything that followed. It forced us to solve harder problems early and built our reputation around capability.

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester.

Every part of our modern life is based on our ability to measure things, and this book does an incredible job following the thread of how successively refining that ability has put a man on the moon and a thousand songs in your pocket, in a way that feels deeply relevant to manufacturing today.

I used to believe that at some point I would “figure it out,” and things would get easier.

What I’ve learned instead is that if you’re actually growing, you don’t eliminate problems, you unlock harder ones.

At some point, I stopped asking when things would get easier and realized, this is the work. I solve problems. Accepting that changed how I lead, plan, and measure progress.

I’m certainly over that limit by this point, but I’ll say a pair of running shoes.

Running has been my longest-held and most consistent tool for improving every aspect of my life. And this is coming from someone who as a kid used to hate running, jogging, skipping, or any form of athletic movement.

It’s where I think, decompress, and remind myself that progress comes from consistency, not comfort.

Yes, we met at “Bacon Night” in a small-town bar in Montana. Sadly, the promotion and the bar didn’t last, but we’re still going strong.

She’s the single biggest reason I’ve been able to keep going. She’s been in the thick of it from the beginning, including moving into a shop’s back office and showering in a Rubbermaid tub after my first business partnership imploded.

Beyond being a survival partner, she’s been instrumental as a sounding board and cheerleader in every part of my entrepreneurial journey, and now works alongside me in the company.

Pedernales Falls State Park.

I like to get outside, and trail running and hiking are my go-to ways to think and reset. Pedernales is pretty incredible, you can stitch together a long, uninterrupted route, and even on weekend mornings I’ll often go hours without seeing another person.

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