One of the biggest changes over the last few years in the Austin region is the influx of new venture capital firms and the raising of record funds by our homegrown firms. We spoke with long-time local VC, Brian Smith Managing Director of S3 Ventures about how the funding environment…
Surprising when we started exploring the subject, but this has turned into one of our most popular episodes. The regional innovation ecosystem is more than downtown and more than just Austin. The entire metro from Bastrop to Dripping Springs and San Marcos to Temple is maturing and changing. We are…
We are traveling back to our very first episode with John Sibley Butler of UT Austin. Professor Butler has been a part of the ecosystem for decades and takes us through a journey from the beginning of the ecosystem to what it is today. We can't explore what's next before…
Michael and Jason take a moment to reflect back on what we learned in 22, the new questions we are asking in '23, and some surprising additional elements we are adding to the show. Support the show and check out our sponsors: Austin Private Wealth (https://austinprivatewealth.com/) Austin Next Links: Website…
Bringing back the wooly mammoth, computer aided design for biology, is this a sci-fi novel or just a taste of what’s going on at the intersection of biology, technology, and Austin. Our next guest is Ben Lamm, CEO and Founder of Colossal Biosciences, Founder and Board Member of Form Bio,…
Austin Next did our first live recording on LinkedIn Live. Jason was joined by Jawad Ali (Austin Medtech Connect), and Dennis McWilliams (Santé Ventures) for a discussion on how we actually define the bio sector here in Austin, what makes us unique, our challenges, and more. What's next Austin? Episode…
The Informa Tech AI/IoT/Quantum Computing conference landed in Austin November 2nd and 3rd. Austin Next was there, listening, learning, and supporting the conference. With speakers ranging from chess champions and NFL quarterbacks to Austin’s Mayor and UT’s Athletic Director, everyone was here to talk and learn about changes and the…
Steve Case is one of America’s best-known and most accomplished entrepreneurs and philanthropists. Case co-founded AOL in 1985 and under his leadership and vision, AOL became the largest and most valuable Internet company of its time. Moving beyond AOL, Case formed Revolution, a DC based investment firm focused on innovation…
Bob Campbell is a visionary senior business leader with a track record of building successful businesses while advising corporate and government leaders on management and policy issues. He is a management consultant; corporate board member; non-profit board member; private equity advisor, and active angel investor. We talk about his long…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bretthurt) • Brett Hurt Twitter (https://twitter.com/databrett?lang=en) •…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…