Austin Tech Week Is Approaching

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).

There’s an absurd number of events going on this week, so we’ll keep this intro short. But we’ve got a bunch on tap this week:

• 🗓️ Events (too many)

• 💡 Insights (including new podcasts from your local multi-time unicorn founder and a professor of bioastronautics)

• 📈 Founders You Should Know: These two are taking down LinkedIn one profession at a time

If someone forwarded this to you, and you like it, you can sign up here.

-Ethan

PS. I’m teaching a class for a small group of business leaders who are serious about starting newsletters. If they send an email all six weeks, they qualify for their money back. Here’s the standing so far (“This feels like a higher stakes bananagrams,” as one person put it.)

If you want to hear about the class next time it’s available, just click this and I’ll review the click data and handle the rest.

Upcoming Events

Outside of Tech Week, we’ve got…

🗓️ TODAY: Focus Founders Coworking: Bill Widmer runs a community for founders working through their ADHD. If that’s you, go meet him and the crew at Cabana Club

🗓️ TODAY: Quantum ATX: This panel is full of rockstars, including William (Whurley) Hurley, who sold multiple companies, and is currently CEO of Strangeworks

🗓️ TODAY: Acquire & Invest Happy Hour: Dan Jensen and Henry Carter’s monthly happy hour for people who buy businesses.

🗓️ Oct. 18: Haunted EDM Party: I mentioned Bill’s Focused Foudners group above – they’re cohosting this at a private ranch up in Georgetown

🗓️ Oct. 20: SMB Land: Andrew Overby is hosting this causal meetup for SMB owners, over at Cosmic Saltillo

🗓️ Oct. 21: Trail Talks: This walk & talk event series is hosted by my buddies, Pat Kiloren and Sam Huntington, both of whom run excellent podcasts here in town

🗓️ Oct. 21: Schnitzel & Champagne: This event, hosted by Shiri Yaniv, is focused on storytelling and how it drives business success

🗓️ Oct 21: Inside Austin Tech: Hear from four heavy hitters in Austin’s tech community, including Michele Missmar, who leads Tech & AI programming at SXSW

🗓️ Oct. 21: Google AI - The Agentverse: A hands-on workshop at Google HQ, showing how to build agents using their latest tools

🗓️ Oct. 21: SKU October Happy Hour: CPG Folks – SKU is hosting a rare community happy hour over at Hotel ZaZa’s rooftop bar and pool deck

🗓️ Oct. 22: ICC Investor Forum: The US India Chamber of Commerce is hosting panels of startup- and growth-stage investors, alongside dinner and drinks

🗓️ Oct. 22: Side Hustle Live: Tomer Soran and Darby Rollins are hosting another great installment of this Shark Tank-style stage show with entrepreneurs and comedians

🗓️ Oct. 22: Not The End of the World: Jay Boisseau, founder of The Austin Forum on Tech & Society, is hosting an online discussion of this book on sustainable innovation

🗓️ Oct. 22: Founder Coffee Tasting: Chris Taylor is hosting this mid-morning coffee and conversation over at The Red Fridge Society

🗓️ Oct. 23: Trusting Your Instincts: Marina Kay teaches breathwork to women in leadership roles. This session is designed to bolster confident decision-making

🗓️ Oct. 23: Storytelling That Gets To Yes: Wen Zhang is joining Texas Women in Business to talk about storytelling that drives action. If you don’t know Wen, you must meet her. Her story’s exceptional

🗓️ Oct. 23: From Dorm Room to 8-Figure Exit: A fireside chat with Bolun Li, who launched Zogo from his college dorm at 19, and bootstrapped it to an 8-figure all-cash acquisition before graduating

🗓️ Oct. 23: Women, Wealth, and Wine: A guided wine tasting, led by wealth advisors Kieu Lê Turk and Hayley Swaim incl. 5 wines and “5 Financial Moves to Make Now”

🗓️ Oct. 23: Nerd Nite Austin: Like a local version of TED, for nerds, by nerds. This month’s topic is all spookey-stuff, ranging from the history of fake blood, to a scientific inquiry into the best order for watching the old Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror specials

🗓️ Oct. 23-24: Face Value: Shout out to Mallory Yohannan for putting this on my radar – ideal for anyone selling specifically to Gen Z women

🗓️ Oct. 24: Founder Pickup Basketball: Every month, Nick Schenck hosts a pickup game for founders at Ramsey Neighborhood Park starting at 5PM. Drop in, or email him here to get on the list for future dates

🗓️ Oct. 24: White Collar Fight Night: Very unique - a night of music, networking, and a ticket of five different boxing matches between local CEOs and founders.

Other Fun Stuff Coming Up

• TONIGHT: Late Night Talking - An Evening of Silly Conversation

• Oct. 17: Fest of the Senses at the Science & Natural History Museum

• Oct. 17: Jay Lenno, Live

• Oct. 18: Dadspace Run Club

• Oct. 18: Real Ale Beer and Bike Ride

• Oct. 18: Succulent Terrarium-Making Class

• Oct. 19: Whose Slide Is It Anyway - Improv Comedy Powerpoint Show

• Oct. 19: A Night of Comedy & Woodworking with Nick Offerman

• Oct. 21: Reel Science - Documentary Lecture

• Oct. 22: ImproVintage - Improv Comedy Inspire By Vintage Finds

• Oct. 22-26: SEED Plant-Based Food & Wine Festival

• Oct. 25: Dia de Los Muertos Afternoon Tea at Tiny Minotaur

• Oct. 25: The 42nd Annual Viva La Vida Parade

• Oct. 25: Photography Workshop - The Secret Behind Great Portraits

• Oct. 26: Class in a Glass - Comparative Wine Tasting

• Oct. 26: Austin Steam Train - Sunset Wine Flyer

Insights

Thought-provoking ideas and stories published by founders in ATX

1. What Is Liberal Education: This was a wonderful lecture from Loren Rotner, Associate Provost at UATX, which gets a reputation as being a “right-leaning” college, but in truth, is seeking to re-establish the tradition of the liberal arts without the dogma.

2. Join, or Die On Earth: Speaking of UATX, Dr. Eliah G. Overbey, Assistant Professor of Bioastronautics, just launched this new podcast all about medical research in space as part of her candidacy for the upcoming SERA civilian space mission.

3. The Anti-Vibecoding Discussion: This one’s pretty technical (read: “above my pay grade, but I think you’ll like it if you’re an engineer”). Nicholas Fernandes graduated from Gauntlet’s AI bootcamp, and returned to give this talk on vibecoding in an actual engineering environment.

4. For My Brick & Mortar People: I really enjoyed MacK Seale’s recent interview with Mark Ryski, whose new book is all about converting foot traffic to sales in a retail location. (His point, about scheduling labor based on conversions rather than traffic, reminded me of this image)

5. Quantum Computing, AI, and Abundance for All: Multi-time unicorn founder Brett A. Hurt has a new podcast called Love Conquers Fear, in which he explores optimistic takes on the future of AI. In this ep, he’s joined by fellow serial ATX founder, William “Whurley” Hurley, founder of Strangeworks, whose CV is so fascinating I can hardly summarize – Design @ Apple, Master Inventor @ IBM, Exits to Accenture & Goldman, (and that doesn’t even include red-teaming casinos or the Board of Awesomeness)

Local Founders You Should Know: Replacing LinkedIn One Profession At A Time

This piece was such a blast to write – Adam Ryan and Becca Sherman, two of my old colleagues from The Hustle, are now co-founders of Workweek here in Austin. They basically build high quality professional networks (think, LinkedIn, but just for your industry).

We’d kind of lost touch over the years, aside from bumping into each other at parties, but Adam and I reconnected a few months ago via BoostATX, a peer group for growth-stage founders that I help organize.

We caught up recently, and got a chance to talk all about the biz, and honestly, it was cool to see how much they’ve done. Not only have they built millions of dollars in enterprise value, but their users are like… way more active than LinkedIn (79% of MAUs are active on a weekly basis, compared to LinkedIn’s 55%).

Check out the full story for more on how they’re building 👇

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