The Calm After Tech Week

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).

Some of you have been asking about updates on the newsletter class I’m teaching.

Well, we’re about half way through! Signup pages are live, emails are shipping, and lists are growing (some, faster than ABR in its early days!)

As a fun thing, I want to shout out one of the writers in the group 👇

Thomas Anzivino is a local financial advisor who launched Love & Wealth, a newsletter where he interviews people with successful long term marriages who are worth $2m+ and shares their stories/advice for younger couples, like him and his wife, who recently celebrated their first anniversary(!).

Such a cool concept! And there’s more where that came from (stay tuned)

-Ethan

PS. If you want a newsletter for your business, and want help setting it up but didn’t have time for the course, I’m fielding a new “Get Started” offer – a one-time fee that includes newsletter setup, template design, audience interviews, and writing your first two emails (to hone voice).

Space is super limited (I can only do like, two of these per month). But if you’re interested in hearing more, you can grab time on my calendar here.

Upcoming Events

🗓️ Oct. 24: Transatlantic Partnerships in Manufacturing & Defense: A lunch for leaders in biotech, infrastructure, aerospace, and more, hosted by Kai Westervelle 

🗓️ Oct. 27: Austin Enlightenment Society: Kat Stacy’s philosophy group is getting together to discuss cathartic transformation and turning pain into resilience

🗓️ Oct. 28: Startup Equity Incentives: Part of Shannon Sibold’s annual ScaleUp series, for founders growing from 7- to 8-figures

🗓️ Oct. 28: Winning with Agentic AI: This all-day “Agents of Impact” summit is being hosted by AWS and Meta, and designed for senior developers & decision makers

🗓️ Oct. 28: Business After Hours: For those of you out west, tired of going downtown for events, Ray Fryers is organizing this on behalf of West Austin Chamber

🗓️ Oct. 29: AITX: One of the bigger AI meetups, with monthly demos and networking hosted by Michael Daegler and Jake O’Shea

🗓️ Oct. 29: Metropolitan Breakfast Club: Mathias Ihlenfeld bootstrapped Woom bikes to 8-figures at 40 countries before stepping away. Learn the frameworks that guide his thinking, and how they can apply to your decisions as a founder

🗓️ Oct. 29: Innovation For Good: Colleen Schell is hosting a panel on social impact companies, featuring ​MMA fighter, ​Justin Christopher Wren, ​May Xu, and more

🗓️ Oct. 29: Women & Wealth: Local investor, Tamar Hermes is hosting a private dinner to help high-earning women (earning $200k+ via W2 or business) figure out their “enough” number. If you’d like to learn more, you can email her here.

🗓️ Oct. 30: Austin Robotics & AI: Rohit John Varghese, Director of Systems Engineering and Product at a robotics company, is giving a talk on MCP in robotics

🗓️ Oct. 30: Sales OStin: This should be excellent – Michael Tessler who built and sold a company for $1.9B, and M&A expert (and co-founder of Capital Factory) Gordon Daugherty, are sitting down to talk about planning your exit strategy

🗓️ Nov. 1: Austin AI Networking: Finally… A networking event on Sunday night! Joing Cynthia and Brent, and others down at Remedy for drinks and conversation

Other Fun Stuff Coming Up

• Oct. 23-26: Fredericksburg Food & Wine Fest

• Oct. 23-26: SEED Plant-Based Food & Wine Festival

• Oct. 23-30: Austin Film Festival & Writer’s Conference

• Oct. 24: Pink Floyd Concert in the Dark (on a horse farm)

• Oct. 24: Hocus Pocus - Screening on the Water

• Oct. 24-25: Emanuel Ax of Austin Symphony Performs Beethoven

• Oct. 25: Sourdough Basics at Easy Tiger

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

• Oct. 25: Junk Journaling with author Emma Hollingsworth

• Oct. 25-26: Austin Coffee Festival at Palmer Events Center

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

• Oct. 28: Ikebana Japanese Floral Class

• Oct. 29: Custom Kicks - Paint Your Own Jordans at Riches Art

• Oct. 30: Candlelight Concert - Halloween Classics (whatever those are)

• Oct. 30: Black Violin, Live In Concert

• Nov. 1: Live Talk on Woodworking, Design, and Craft

• Nov. 2: Croissants - An Intensive Workshop (umm… yes)

The Swipe File: Brilliant Ads from ATX Brands

I’m learning advertising, so I thought it’d be fun to start bookmarking cool ads from local companies.

This recruiting ad was stirring up chatter on X this week. It’s from Base Power, the energy tech company co-founded right here in Austin by Zach Dell (yes, that Dell). They just took over the old Austin-American Statesman plant on the heels of a $1B raise. Hits you right in the red-white-and-blue 🇺🇸

Share yours: Got an ad you’re particularly proud of? Hit reply and send it to me.

Local Artist of the Week

I belong to this club here in town. It’s called The Rosedale Society, and it’s basically a hidden-away workspace for writers. The people who work there range from nationally recognized children’s book authors, to reporters at major news companies, to screen writers, food writers, and more. (plus little old me)

A couple weeks ago, a few of us went out to Roam Ranch in Fredericksburg for their first bison harvest of the fall.

I’ll be publishing more about that soon, but for now, I wanted to shout out the photographer who came with us to document the day. Her name is Stephanie Saldivar, and her work was excellent.

Stephanie specializes in nature and landscape work, and has an incredibly rich knowledge of Texas and its natural history. She was energetic, thoughtful, and did a fantastic job capturing the spirit of what was going on – especially the people.

If you’re doing any events this fall – particularly ones outside – and you need someone to take excellent candid photos, give her a call.

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