Austin Next

We continue our dive into the Houston innovation ecosystem from an investor point of view. Dougal Cameron is a co-founder and the managing director of Golden Section, a venture capital firm, engineering organization, and early-stage venture partner serving business software companies from ideation to $5M in revenue. We talk about the types and scale of startups, the Houston LP market, and how our...

Austin Next is still on the road and today we are visiting another point of the Texas Triangle. Houston has been on a tear the last few years growing from $400M in annual startup funding in 2018 to crossing the $2B threshold last year.  There is the Texas Medical Center, the Ion, Rice University, and many more influential and growing institutions.  Today we dive into the Houston innovation ecosyst...

Today we continue our visit to San Antonio and working to discover the unique innovation ecosystem here in the Alamo City. And no discussion would be complete without talking about the investors here. Juan “Sebastian” Garzon serves as Executive Director for Alamo Angels and Programs Manager for VelocityTX. In these roles, Sebastian supports early-stage companies by providing them access to funding...

A lot of conversations today talk about the competition & cooperation between San Antonio and Austin. Two growing cities separated by a strip of Interstate 35. Cities with very different histories, different experiences…but both growing innovation systems. For our San Antonio visit, we start with Port San Antonio, It’s the Alamo City’s large and dynamic technology and innovation campus. A 1,90...

Lately, we've been talking and writing a lot about networking. Why is it so important to us? People are social animals. And no matter how much we can get done remotely, we need a connection with other people. But just as important networking groups are where the creative collisions happen. These collisions are critical to an innovation culture like Austin's, these collisions are often where we fin...

The US and perhaps the world’s economies seem to be headed for a rough patch. Given the growth of the Austin/Central Texas area over the past couple of years, the question is how resilient is the Austin economy, and are we ready for what comes next? Today, we’re joined by Roland Pena, Senior VP Global Technology & Innovation with Opportunity Austin at the Austin Chamber of Commerce and we dive...

A lot of things have changed since we last had Thom Singer on the podcast. We talk about Thom's new role, what the networking environment looks like now, and how that impacts the creative collisions between the foundations of Austin. What's next Austin? Episode Links Our first conversation with Thom Singer Austin Technology Council Austin Technology Twitter Thom Singer Thom Singer Twitter --------...

Today, the Austin Next team and the Boom ATX podcast team get together. Lee Snedaker and Glenn Hart have been talking about Austin for about as long as we have. And they have the advantage of much deeper knowledge about Austin’s history and culture. We had a wide-ranging discussion, from real estate to startups, from music to restaurants, and much more. ------------------- Austin Next Links: Websi...

The growth of our ecosystem and the critical mass of startups coming to Austin leads to unique opportunities to experiment with support infrastructure. One of those experiments is the Draper Startup House, a global entrepreneurship ecosystem including a network of co-living houses and a pre-seed “pop-up” accelerator program. Today we are joined by the co-founders Katie Russel and Daniel Wiegand to...

We are back with Part 2 of our discussion with Brett. In this episode we cover the expanding Austin region, identifying talent, the intersection of philosophy, politics, and innovation, and of course what comes next. What's Next Austin? Episode Links: Brett Hurt Brett Hurt Twitter The Entrepreneur Essentials data.world data.world Podcast Catalog & Cocktails Don't Mess with Texas Innovation Tex...

Brett Hurt is a serial entrepreneur, launching Bazaarvoice, Coremetrics and now data.world. Over that time, he's learned a lot about software, people, software and soul. His latest company, data.world, is a B Corp, or as he calls it, Capitalism 2.0. Brett invited us to his home to talk about growing up in Austin, and the tension between the creative and the capitalist class.  Episode Links Austin...

Clearly the Austin entrepreneurial ecosystem has been growing dramatically for the last several years. And, with that growth has come a lot of new investors. Whether it be VCs building larger funds, entrepreneurs reinvesting earnings, incubators and angels willing to help startups, there are a lot of people getting involved.  Today we are talking with CS Freeland, co-founder and executive director...

Often how we live, work and play is determined by where we live, work, and play. The buildings we occupy can range from condos and offices in the central business district, to the wide-open spaces needed to test drones and farm equipment.  Today with speak Todd Runkle on how Austin is evolving, how innovation districts play a role, and the growth of Central Living Districts. Where we are and how w...

We met and talked to Peter Rex, who with his team at Rex LLC owns substantial real estate in Austin and across the United States. Since 2018, Peter has focused a lot of his time and energy on Rex Tech Ventures, his technology incubator and PropTech software companies. Rex Tech has now grown to ten companies and together they are looking to solve some of the most difficult problems in the real esta...

One of Austin’s superpowers is that we live in the future. We are both inventing the future and it’s being deployed here in Central Texas. We’re joined today by Jeff DeCoux founder and CEO of the Autonomy Institute to talk about one of our key challenges to build this future and that's infrastructure.  A 21st century technical foundation is the bridge to What's next Austin? ------------------- Aus...

The road to being an entrepreneur has many twists and turns.  Starting that journey from a nontraditional starting point, in this case the music world, can create even more unexpected challenges.  Today we are talking with Casey McPherson and hear about his journey from accomplished musician to genetic disease advocate and life science leader.  We learn about the role of creatives in an innovation...

What an amazing year it has been. This week it's just the two of us reflecting back on where the podcast has been, what we have seen in the ecosystem, the insights that our guests have shared, and what comes next for both the podcast and Austin. Austin Next Newsletter Survey What's next Austin Next Podcast? ------------------- Austin Next Links: Website , X/Twitter , YouTube , LinkedIn Ecosystem M...

Cities are changing as rapidly as ever due increased migration patterns, new hubs of innovation, and an evolving way we work. What does the city of the future look like and is Austin the new leader of that trend? Today we bring in Cullum Clark the Director of the George W. Bush Institute & SMU Economic Growth Initiative and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at SMU. We talk about Austin’s trans...

We see all of these best of city lists.  Best places to live, most affordable, growing tech employment, and so on. How does Austin stack up when looking at our overall startup environment?  Today we are bringing on Farshad Fahimi (Director of Data Strategy), who is going to walk us through Startup Genome’s annual ranking of the global ecosystem.  We discuss the big observations in this year's repo...

Infrastructure is one of the key issues impacting Austin’s rapid growth. Whether it’s water, roadways and transit, or power, we must ensure that we have the resources to handle our growth. Today, we focus on power… Joining us is Christy Cardenas Managing Partner Grit Ventures.  Grit Ventures focuses, in part, on new energy sources, distribution systems, and transportation.  We talk about the curre...

Austin has been growing at breakneck speed. Over the past year, we were #1 in percentage population growth and #3 in employment growth. This doesn't event tell the whole story. The entire metro from Bastrop to Dripping Springs and San Marcos to Temple is maturing and changing. We are establishing numerous innovation hubs that operate independently from each other and come together into mesh networ...

Our region not only builds futuristic technologies, but they are deployed and tested here as well. More and more when you hear autonomous vehicles, rockets, drones, and personal flying vehicles you think Austin. Today we are speaking with Brad Bentz, Co-Founder and Partner at ATX Partners a local venture firm that recently raised $150M for their 3rd fund, and now has over $300M under management. A...

With the changing nature of work, new regional ecosystems flourishing, and massive domestic migration the demands to our infrastructure are changing and evolving. One of the most fundamental parts of this equation is the question of how we move people and goods from point A to point B. We have seen a surge in new technologies such as mass electrification and driverless vehicles and new modalities...

Texas has long been a home for the semiconductor industry. I guess it started with a little company named Texas Instruments, but today in the Austin area, we have Samsung, NXP, Micron, AMD, and Intel, But, this growth doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it takes a lot of people doing a lot of work. So today, we’re going to take a deeper look into this part of our ecosystem and try to better understand whe...

Capital is the fuel that drives the innovation ecosystem. Grants can make up an important component in funding and catalyzing innovation. The biggest source of grants is of course the US government through numerous agencies and programs. Today we talk with Elizabeth (Ela) Mirowski a Program Director for the SBIR/STTR program at the National Science Foundation. We talk about the programs available...