Most Recent Episodes
Recent
EP 181: What This Unlikely Deal Shows About New Austin | Max Cunningham (Sesh) & Jake Medwell (8VC)
Sesh looks like a consumer brand. 8VC looks like the last fund that would back it. That mismatch is the fastest way to see what Austin is becoming.
Sesh founder Max Cunningham and 8VC's Jake Medwell start with the logic that makes the deal make sense. Sesh holds a legal moat most competitors can't cross for years, and it earns software-like margins on a physical product. From there the conversation opens into a bigger question about where ambitious companies belong, and why…
What This Unlikely Deal Shows About New Austin | Max Cunningham (Sesh) & Jake Medwell (8VC)
Sesh looks like a consumer brand. 8VC looks like the last fund that would back it. That mismatch is the fastest way to see what Austin is becoming.
Sesh founder Max Cunningham and 8VC's Jake Medwell start with the logic that makes the deal make sense. Sesh holds a legal moat most competitors can't cross for years, and it earns software-like margins on a physical product. From there the conversation opens into a bigger question about where ambitious companies belong, and why…
From Austin's Countercultural Vibe to Building its Lasting Culture
A clip from our episode "Austin: From Counterculture to Culture | Karen Blashek, Austin Home Magazine"
Expensive Wine is Losing the Dinner Party
A clip from our episode "Love Conquers Fear: The Last Barrier to Abundance Is Our Own Fear | Brett Hurt"
EP 181: Live from Hack Club Stasis: The Teenage Hardware Frontier Lands in Austin
A custom board that ran two thousand dollars five years ago now costs fifteen and ships in two weeks. That collapse is why a hundred teenagers flew to Austin to build in the physical world instead of code in the digital. The organization behind it is Zach Latta's Hack Club, the hackathon was created by seventeen-year-old Meghana Madiraju, and Blake Liberman of 021 Ventures is why it happened in Austin.
The conversation ranges from how that collapse happened to what teenagers do…
Live from Hack Club Stasis: The Teenage Hardware Frontier Lands in Austin
A custom board that ran two thousand dollars five years ago now costs fifteen and ships in two weeks. That collapse is why a hundred teenagers flew to Austin to build in the physical world instead of code in the digital. The organization behind it is Zach Latta's Hack Club, the hackathon was created by seventeen-year-old Meghana Madiraju, and Blake Liberman of 021 Ventures is why it happened in Austin.
The conversation ranges from how that collapse happened to what teenagers do …
What is Austin missing to be a design capital?
A clip from our episode "EP 179: Austin: From Counterculture to Culture | Karen Blashek, Austin Home Magazine"
EP 180: Love Conquers Fear: The Last Barrier to Abundance Is Our Own Fear | Brett Hurt
Brett Hurt returns to Austin Next for the fourth time, more than any guest in the show's history, to argue that the hardest problem in front of us is psychological. Abundance is already on a clear technological path, and the thing most likely to stop us is the fear center we carried off the savannah.
He walks through the four technologies he calls the Superfecta: AI, robotics, quantum computing, and brain-computer interfaces, and why they land together rather than in sequence. T…
Love Conquers Fear: The Last Barrier to Abundance Is Our Own Fear | Brett Hurt
Brett Hurt returns to Austin Next for the fourth time, more than any guest in the show's history, to argue that the hardest problem in front of us is psychological. Abundance is already on a clear technological path, and the thing most likely to stop us is the fear center we carried off the savannah.
He walks through the four technologies he calls the Superfecta: AI, robotics, quantum computing, and brain-computer interfaces, and why they land together rather than in sequence. T…
The Two Things Austin Asks of You
A clip from our episode "Austin: From Counterculture to Culture | Karen Blashek, Austin Home Magazine"
EP 179: Austin: From Counterculture to Culture | Karen Blashek, Austin Home Magazine
Austin's counterculture is still the ethos. The next chapter is what gets built on top of it. Karen Blashek, the editor-in-chief of Austin Home Magazine, took over a 21-year-old design publication with no editorial background and turned it into one of the city's most consequential platforms for naming what's already happening.
We ask why Austin's design talent operates one neighborhood away from its tech talent and neither knows the other exists. What the city is …
Austin: From Counterculture to Culture | Karen Blashek, Austin Home Magazine
Austin's counterculture is still the ethos. The next chapter is what gets built on top of it. Karen Blashek, the editor-in-chief of Austin Home Magazine, took over a 21-year-old design publication with no editorial background and turned it into one of the city's most consequential platforms for naming what's already happening.
We ask why Austin's design talent operates one neighborhood away from its tech talent and neither knows the other exists. What the city is …
EP 178: Revisited: How Specificity in Vertical AI Rewrites Industries | Nick Tippmann, TipTop VC
Updated re-release. A year ago we left one question unresolved. Where do foundational AI models end and where do the applications begin? Nick Tippmann returns in a fresh epilogue. A year on, the tension has only sharpened.
Specificity is the differentiator when inches matter. Nick Tippmann, founding partner of TipTop VC, explains how vertical AI is rewriting the software industry by going deeper instead of wider. From the transition beyond SaaS to the gray zone between foundational…
Revisited: How Specificity in Vertical AI Rewrites Industries | Nick Tippmann, TipTop VC
Updated re-release. A year ago we left one question unresolved. Where do foundational AI models end and where do the applications begin? Nick Tippmann returns in a fresh epilogue. A year on, the tension has only sharpened.
Specificity is the differentiator when inches matter. Nick Tippmann, founding partner of TipTop VC, explains how vertical AI is rewriting the software industry by going deeper instead of wider. From the transition beyond SaaS to the gray zone between foundational m…
What is the Origin of the Anti-Data Center Sentiment?
A clip from our episode "The First Thing Built on the Moon Will Come from Austin | Jason Ballard & Will Hurd, ICON"
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About the Host
Founder & Host
Jason Scharf is an Austin-based investor, writer, and host of Austin Next, focused on how ecosystems form, compound, and evolve. He has spent nearly two decades pursuing his life’s mission of catalyzing innovation, with experience across Illumina, BD, and Amgen. As an early-stage investor, he focuses on the Bio Innovation Tech Stack and the Business of Health. Through the Austin Next podcast and Ecosystem Metacognition Substack, he explores Austin’s startup and tech scene, Bio & Health, hard tech, venture capital, talent, culture, and what their convergence makes possible.