Austin Next

Serendipity generally looks accidental. These three builders spend a lot of time trying to make it happen. Evan Baehr of Arena Hall, Chris Taylor of Red Fridge Society, and Zac Solomon of ATX Writing Club are building very different physical communities in Austin. We get into fast and slow serendipity, how rooms get curated, why members need roles, and where AI can help without replacing human judgment.Along the way, the conversation turns into a jam session as they actively steal each other's ideas and tricks. The larger question is what kind of physical social infrastructure helps turn connections into relationships, and transform relationships into things that actually happen.Agenda0:00 Three Rooms, Three Bets10:33 How Austin's Networks Cross19:31 Why Members Want a Role23:20 Open City, Fragmented Networks33:55 Fast Serendipity vs Slow Serendipity42:20 When a Writing Club Becomes About Talking46:11 Let the Members Host53:29 Who Gets In?1:04:40 Can the Culture Scale?1:10:54 Austin in Five YearsGuest Links and BiosEvan Baehr is the CEO of Arena Hall, a hospitality and real estate company that builds intentional communities. Its first location is in Austin, Texas, where Arena Hall operates as a civic institution bringing together founders, investors, artists, and public leaders through disciplined hospitality, serious conversation, and long-term commitment.Zac Solomon is the founder of ATX Writing Club, a community of more than 4,400 writers across the Austin area. He also owns The Rosedale Society, a 24/7 creative clubhouse in the heart of Austin where writers can deepen their craft, create meaningful connections, and find new opportunities to make a living from their work.Chris Taylor is a dad, husband, serial entrepreneur, and champion of bootstrapped founders. He bootstrapped and led his SaaS company, Square Root, for 15 years before selling it in 2021. Known for his obsession with company culture, Chris helped Square Root earn national recognition—including FORTUNE’s #2 Best Medium Workplace, Fast Company’s Top Innovators, and PEOPLE’s Companies That Care. Today, he channels that same energy into the Red Fridge Society, a founder community and social club that helps entrepreneurs navigate challenges and celebrate wins together. -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack

I had been thinking Austin needed some kind of frontier-tech week when Andrew Côté announced that he was bringing Deep Tech Week here. I reached out almost immediately, and now I’m helping build it.That gave us the excuse for this conversation, but the rabbit hole went much deeper. We are living through a moment when things that recently belonged mostly to science fiction are becoming companies and products you can actually encounter in the physical world. That is where Andrew’s perspective gets especially useful. He has moved from engineering physics and fusion into shaping what is essentially a storytelling platform around the people trying to make these futures real. Austin is becoming one of the places where that transition is unusually tactile, where the imagined future is starting to become something you can walk into, touch, and build.Agenda0:00 Austin’s takeoff and cowboy futurism10:00 Where physics meets economics17:12 Industry, AI and abundant energy28:18 The geography of deep tech33:29 Underwriting hard tech39:21 Ambition and the sci-fi future46:47 Austin’s factories and permission53:53 Orbit, beamlines and what comes nextCome to Austin Deep Tech WeekThe week opens with a hardware showcase at The American Housing Corp on September 21. The Factory Crawl runs September 22–24, with stops including ICON, Neurophos and Emerald Cloud Lab. We close with a nuclear-powered party at the Aalo Atomics factory on September 25.Explore the full schedule and registerGuest Bio & LinksAndrew Côté: X, Writing, Deep Tech WeekAndrew Côté is an engineering physicist that went from designing superconducting magnets for nuclear fusion to running deep tech week.  -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack

The battlefield is changing faster than the systems built to supply it. Matt Willis runs Army FUZE, a roughly $750M portfolio built to get new technology into soldiers’ hands faster. The deeper question is what an institution as large as the Army has to change when technology cycles collapse from years to weeks. That means accepting more failure up front, shortening the distance between a problem and a decision, getting real-world feedback before a product is fully baked, and building a system that can keep adjusting as the technology and the mission keep moving.  The question now is whether those changes are durable enough to let the Army operate at unprecedented speed, or whether bureaucratic inertia eventually pulls it back toward the old model. Agenda0:00 The new speed of war7:51 Speed, risk, and the 80% solution17:23 Soldiers, marketplaces, and feedback22:22 The tech stack and commercial innovation29:10 New requirements and industrial capacity35:32 Open systems and Operation Jailbreak41:32 Manufacturing and the capital stack46:33 Austin and the defense innovation map52:57 Soldier founders and access to innovation57:13 AI, augmented soldiers, and what’s nextGuest Links and BioMatt WillisUS Army PIT: Website, LinkedInUS Army xTech, US Army SBIR/STTRDr. Matt Willis serves as the Director of Army FUZE, leading the Army’s portfolio of private sector engagements through prize competitions (xTech), the Army Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, the Technology Maturation Initiative (TMI) program, and the Manufacturing Technology (ManTech) program, comprising over $750 million in annual research and development investments.Previously, Dr. Willis served as the Army Director for Laboratory Management at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology (ASA(ALT)) and held various positions across the Army and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Dr. Willis earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and both a Master of Science and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack

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 more of them are choosing a city that now draws the founders and families betting on that future.Agenda00:00 What Sesh is06:05 Why 8VC backed a nicotine company10:44 Regulatory timing and the six-year door16:37 Software margins and owning the factory22:01 Who buys this and why the market is growing29:27 Why some companies need SF and others do not34:32 What Austin talent looks like now42:10 The Elon spillover and the coming IPO wave 48:37 Raising kids in the AI age55:07 Safety, schools, and what comes nextGuest LinksSesh: Max Cunningham, Website, X, Instagram8VC: Jake Medwell, Website, X -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack

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 with the agency it hands them, and turns sharper on what threatens it. Underneath the optimism is a real question about who controls the tools of creation, code, energy, and hardware.The Agenda00:00 What Hack Club Stasis Is 06:28 How Hack Club actually works 13:01 Why hardware, why now 18:05 The case against the credential machine 24:11 Agency and the pressure myth29:33 What's actually worth building 34:38 Open source is quietly closingGuest LinksHack Club021 Ventures -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack

Brett Hurt, serial tech entrepreneur, investor, author, and co-founder of Bazaarvoice and data.world, returns to explore humanity’s path to abundance. They discuss fear’s influence on society, healthier business models, falling birth rates, moonshots, benevolent civilizations, and the “Superfecta” of AI, robotics, quantum computing, and brain-computer interfaces. The conversation also examines capitalism, open source, consciousness, and humanity’s decisive next fifteen years.

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 telling people and the cultural infrastructure need to make it all compound: storytellers, convening spaces, named districts, and a  patronage layer.Agenda0:00 Austin Home as civic editing4:22 Why Austin lives outside15:04 Block parties and Old Sixth21:02 Personality vs. values27:07 Ground floors as infrastructure32:10 The public space czar idea37:01 Why Austin is a design capital41:01 Naming districts that exist45:07 Three roles every ecosystem needs53:37 If you don't tell the story, someone else will58:08 The patronage gap1:03:37 Rising stars, the talent leak1:09:50 Tech and culture flywheel1:15:40 Naming what's already hereGuest Bio and LinksKaren BlashekAustin Home MagazineGroundup IdeasCities and Ambition by Paul GrahamThe City That Lingers by Ryan PuzyckiTokyo is Reinventing the Downtown by Making More Than One by Richard FloridaKaren Zabarsky Blashek is Editor-in-Chief of Austin Home Magazine, a Hearst publication covering the intersection of architecture, interiors, development, and culture in one of America’s fastest-evolving cities. She is also the founder of Ground Up, a creative studio for the built environment. Before returning to her native Texas, Blashek spent 13 years in New York where she led design for Kushner, one of the country's largest real estate developers with projects nationwide. -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack

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 models and high-stakes applications, we get into how vertical AI can transform laggard industries and why Austin might lead the race.The Agenda00:00 Defining vertical AI05:07 Where general AI fails09:36 Vertical AI software, not just chatbots16:44 Pricing logic after the seat model24:04 Underwriting at pre-seed and seed 27:20 Capital intensity and seed-strapping36:48 TAM analysis and the Frontiers Market example41:46 OpenAI's Instacart hire and the gray zone45:55 Austin as a vertical AI hub58:21 Epilogue: Where the models end and applications beginGuest Links and BiosNick Tippmann, TipTop VCNick Tippmann is the Founder and Managing Partner of TipTop Ventures, an early-stage venture fund focused on Vertical AI. Before becoming an investor, Nick spent nearly a decade as a founding team member and CMO at Greenlight Guru, where he helped scale the company from zero to category leader with more than 250 employees, tens of millions in ARR, and a nine-figure investment from JMI Equity.An operator turned investor, Nick now partners with founders building industry-specific AI and software businesses, bringing hands-on experience in go-to-market strategy, scaling, community building, fundraising, and company development. He has also been an active angel investor since 2021, with more than 100 startup investments. -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack

Will Johnson, founder and CEO of Gyde, builds AI-native tools and grows via M&A. Alex Cohen, founder and CEO of Hello Patient, builds conversational AI for clinics. They trade candid field reports on building in Austin right now. Topics include the engineering talent gap, hybrid hiring tradeoffs, competition from Miami, the midsize office shortage, and Austin’s need for stronger storytelling and civic action.

ICON has been telling the same story since 2018. Humanity has a construction problem that solving for regulations and supply-demand incentives alone won't fix. We need fundamentally new ways to build. Jason Ballard, ICON's founder and CEO, and Will Hurd, the former CIA officer, congressman, and OpenAI board member who just joined as President of ICON Prime, came on to lay out what happens when a non-consensus thesis held for eight years starts to materialize in the real world. The conversation cuts across the full stack, housing, AI, robotics, labor, reindustrialization, and space. The through-line is Ballard's argument that breakthrough technologies are never narrow, that building the technology for a moon base solves the housing and building crisis on Earth. Agenda0:00 What ICON is building and why shelter is broken 6:40 The regulation stack and ICON as a technology company 11:40 Customer shapes, business model, and the innovation stack 17:10 AI, ChatGPT from the inside, and the case for optimism 23:40 The spoons-and-ditches fallacy and Hurd's regulation inversion 30:30 What is ICON Prime and the barracks crisis 36:40 Military construction, Afghanistan, and expeditionary printing 42:40 The moon base, Olympus, and in-situ resource utilization 49:40 Eight years of the same thesis and software's limit 56:40 Austin's talent gravity and the ICON diaspora 1:00:40 The moon in our lifetime 1:04:40  National security, espionage, and Austin as a target 1:08:40 Laser on the moon, 2028 Previous ICON Episode with Evan LoomisGuest Links & BioJason Ballard: X/TwitterWill Hurd: LinkedInICON: Website, ICON Prime, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTubeJason BallardJason Ballard has dedicated his life to working on big problems in service to humanity, most recently and notably as the co-founder and CEO of ICON, the construction technologies company using construction-scale 3D printing to tackle the global housing crisis and prepare to build on other worlds. ICON has been named one of the "Most Innovative Companies in the World" by Fast Company and recently profiled on CBS’s 60 MINUTES.  Raising $451 million to date in funding, ICON has delivered communities of resilient 3D-printed homes at high-speed and lower cost in the U.S. and internationally and forged partnerships with world-renowned architects, builders and housing organizations missionally aligned to shift the paradigm of homebuilding. In fall 2022, ICON was awarded $57.2 million from NASA to develop a lunar surface construction system that will target humanity’s first-ever construction on another planetary body. In 2019, Ballard was awarded the Austin Under 40 Award in the Technology category. In 2021, Ballard was named to TIME100 Next as one of the emerging leaders shaping the future as well as Newsweek’s America's Greatest Disruptors: Visionaries and Innovators Who Are Changing the World. Prior to co-founding ICON, Ballard served as CEO of an eco-friendly home upgrade company that normalized sustainable and healthy approaches to home improvement. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Ballard worked at a homeless shelter, in various roles in sustainable building, and as an environmental consultant for ACRT. Ballard is a GLG Social Impact Fellow and served on the Carbon War Room / Rocky Mountain Institute Energy Think Tank. Ballard hails from East Texas and studied conservation biology at Texas A&M University. He also completed a masters program in Space Resources at Colorado School of Mines in 2022. He enjoys astronomy, ultrarunning, chess, comic books, and outdoor activities when he has free time.  He resides in Austin, TX with his four children.Will HurdThe Honorable Will Hurd is a former CIA officer and congressman whose career spans intelligence, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence policy, and public service. He currently serves as Division President of ICON Prime, a space and defense tech company and will lead ICON Prime's strategy and government partnerships as the company scales its robotic construction technology across the national security enterprise and beyond Earth.  He is also the author of American Reboot: An Idealist Guide to Getting Big Things Done. Hurd brings deep expertise at the intersection of technology, national security, and governance to his board roles and ongoing policy work.Hurd began his career serving overseas in the CIA, where he worked to prevent attacks on the United States and disrupt efforts to smuggle nuclear materials into the country. He later held roles at Crumpton Group and FusionX, helping defend critical infrastructure from cyber threats. In 2014, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Texas’s 23rd District, where he served three terms and played a key role in shaping technology and national security policy.Following his time in Congress, Hurd held leadership roles at Allen & Company and CHAOS Industries. He also previously served on the boards of In-Q-Tel and OpenAI.He currently serves on the board of directors for Personal.AI, The Aerospace Corporation, the Council on Foreign Relations, and advisory boards of Palo Alto Networks and the Center for European Policy Analysis.A San Antonio native, Will received a BS in Computer Science from Texas A&M University.  -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack