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by Jason Scharf
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- 2 weeks ago1h 11m
What Building in Austin Actually Feels Like Right Now | Will Johnson & Alex Cohen
This was not the episode we planned. Will Johnson, founder and CEO of Gyde, and Alex Cohen, founder and CEO of Hello Patient, came on to talk about innovation in the business of health. Instead it became our off the record conversations, but behind the microphone. An unfiltered field report on what it actually feels like to build a startup in Austin right now. The talent math, hunting for mid-size office space, the venture culture, Austin vs Miami, the press gap, and the political friction. All of it from two founders who chose this city, are hiring here, and are naming what needs to change because they want it to work. Agenda0:00 Why Alex and Will chose Austin5:17 The engineering talent gap 14:10 Who gets hired and the conference hustle 20:58 Miami, Palantir, and competing for wins 26:02 What SF's venture culture has that Austin is still building32:58 Operator density problem and the office gap 41:05 Why selling to Main Street works better from Austin 50:16 More storytellers needed59:16 SXSW's decline 1:05:18 King of Austin for a dayGuest Links and BiosAlex Cohen: X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Hello PatientWill Johnson: X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Gyde -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack
- 3 weeks ago1h 12m
The First Thing Built on the Moon Will Come from Austin | Jason Ballard & Will Hurd, ICON
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 roboti
- Apr 15, 20261h 12m
Reinventing School Is Accelerating Austin's Talent Flywheel | Joe Liemandt, Alpha School
Joe Liemandt built Trilogy, recruited 2,000 Ivy League graduates to Austin, and is now running what he considers the higher-leverage version of the same play, K-12 education. Our host, Jason Scharf, brings a perspective no other interviewer has. He is an Alpha School parent, and he uses that to ask the questions no one else has put to Liemandt. What happens when the app breaks mid-rollout, why diagnostic scores terrify new parents, and whether the motivation model survives past year one. But the bigger story is what Alpha and Austin's growing cluster of experimental schools are doing to the city itself. Families are relocating for schools that do not exist anywhere else. This education frontier is pulling learning scientists, game designers, and startup educators onto the same flywheel. The talent gravity is compounding in two complementary directions. The parents moving in are building and funding Austin's unicorns, and the kids coming out of these schools are the next generation of founders and operators. Agenda0:00 Intro and the Alpha School model 5:44 Good AI versus bad AI in the classroom 11:43 Diagnostic shock and what gifted students miss 16:04 Motivation and life skills versus vocational skills 21:08 Students making real money with AI tools 23:39 Hiring guides at $100K 26:34 The selection effect and founding families 31:51 Running a school like a startup 36:07 Iterating in public 42:27 Motivational models that actually work 47:01 Teaching kids to fail 49:33 Austin as the education capital 55:02 Education as the 20-year talent pipeline 57:52 Millionaires in high school 1:04:37 What college becomes next Guest Links & BioJoe Liemandt, Alpha SchoolJoe Liemandt is principal at Alpha School, a growing nationwide network of K-12 schools dedicated to creating self-driven learners. Using TimeBack™, an AI-driven education OS, Alpha students master academics in two hours per day, allowing them to spend their afternoons developing essential life skills, including leadership, teamwork, and entrepreneurship. His goal is to improve education for 1 billion students over the next 20 years.In the 1990s, Mr. Liemandt dropped out of Stanford to found Trilogy, where he developed the first AI product to achieve $1 billion in revenue. He brings decades of experience in AI and technology to transforming K-12 education. -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack
- Mar 24, 202651 min
We're Living Through the Cyberpunk Era of War | Jim Rebesco, CEO, Striveworks
Directed energy weapons, autonomous drones, and combat AI agents are not just real. They are deployed.Jim Rebesco, cofounder and CEO of Striveworks, breaks down what's driving this moment, and the second and third-order effects most people aren't tracking yet. AI can't be bolted onto legacy systems and expected to perform. It demands a blank sheet of paper. New design philosophy, new economics, new operational infrastructure. The old model of pitching a PowerPoint and billing for development is already crumbling. What replaces it is being built right now.Agenda0:00 We're already living in the cyberpunk era of war 5:34 When do you trust an agent with your credit card 14:04 The blank sheet of paper and the F-16 19:34 From Wall Street algorithms to battlefield AI 24:34 What Gen Alpha already takes for granted 32:34 When science fiction becomes reality 38:34 The $500 drone and the new economics of defense 45:34 The trust stack and the agentic AI revolution Guest Links & BioJim Rebesco: LinkedInStriveworks: WebsiteStriveworks Raises Growth Capital Led By Washington Harbour Partners Dr. Jim Rebesco is CEO and a co-founder of Striveworks, an artificial intelligence company focused on the deployment of AI/ML models at scale. He is a board member for Sayari Labs, a leading financial intelligence company, and has served as a consulting member of the Army Science Board. Prior to founding Striveworks, Dr. Rebesco worked at Virtu Financial, a leading electronic market-making firm, where he led trading and data science teams as a partner in the firm. He was instrumental in building Virtu's capabilities from the beginning in data science and analytics and played a critical role in the firm's IPO in 2015. Dr. Rebesco has been engaged with the Federal Reserve Board, elements within the Department of Defense, the United States Military Academy, and others as a recognized subject matter expert in both Al and its applications to various industries, including finance and national defense. Dr. Rebesco earned his B.S. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology and his PhD in computational neuroscience from Northwestern University. -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack
- Mar 18, 20261h 2m
Innovation Ecosystems Are Inherited | Nait Jones
The hype that landed on Austin in 2021 was correct and at the same time ahead of the curve. Nait Jones, serial founder and former a16z partner who arrived in Silicon Valley in 2011 at the Web 2 moment and moved to Austin during the pandemic, argues that the fundamentals have now caught upJones traces what he calls a spiritual succession. A direct genealogy from Arthur Rock's invention of venture capital through Fairchild, Intel, Dell, and UT research into the current generation of robotics, defense, and energy infrastructure concentrated within a 200-mile radius. The city's defensible moat is where intelligence meets the physical world, the hardware and the software built as one. The result will look nothing like what came before it.Agenda0:00 Intro + Silicon Valley 2011 and the Web 2 Gold Rush 9:17 How The Social Network Changed the Talent Pipeline 11:16 Inside the a16z Partner Meeting 14:48 Spiritual Succession from Arthur Rock to Austin 18:06 The 2021 Hype Was Real, Just Early 20:26 California and Delaware's Self-Inflicted Wounds23:43 The 200-Mile Radius26:26 Permission to Build and the Sunlight Metaphor 30:20 Foundational Models Belong to SF 34:48 Third Places and Connective Tissue 42:29 The Storytelling Gap 45:44 Six-Month Vesting in the AI Era 49:04 Seedance, Suno, and the Creation-Consumption Collapse 54:59 The Barbell of Synthetic Media and Analog Craft 59:27 Copyright, IP, and the Entertainment Layer Cake Guest LinksNait Jones: X, LinkedInAdtwin: Website, LinkedIn -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack
- Mar 11, 20261h 12m
The Western Canon in the Age of Vibe Coding | Carlos Carvalho, President, University of Austin
American universities stopped optimizing for students a long time ago. The University of Austin was built as a direct counter to that failure. Carlos Carvalho, its president, brings a statistician's precision to the diagnosis, tracing the causal chain from dropped standards to credential collapse while building an institution with no tuition and no government money, staking its survival entirely on student outcomes 20 years out. The conversation moves from the financial architecture of a university, through a curriculum that starts with Plato before it touches Python, to the deeper question of what a university owes a civilization in the age of AI and whether Austin is the right place to answer it.Agenda0:00 Intro + Three Years In 9:42 The $300M Bet 15:42 The Conglomerate Problem 21:42 Western Canon First 28:42 What AI Changes About Teaching 34:42 The Bastrop Lab 41:42 UATX in the Austin Ecosystem 48:42 Atoms vs Bits in Texas 53:42 American Exceptionalism as Mission 59:42 The Hit Pieces 1:06:42 The UCSD Math Collapse 1:11:42 Grade Inflation as Decay 1:14:42 AI and the Soul ProblemGuest BioCarlos Carvalho is the President of the University of Austin. Prior to taking on this role, he spent 15 years as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business, where he held the La Quinta Centennial Professorship and founded the Salem Center for Policy. A native of Brazil, Dr. Carvalho earned his doctorate in statistics from Duke University and has also taught at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His research focuses on Bayesian statistics in complex, high-dimensional problems with applications ranging from economics to genetics to public policy. At UATX, he is leading a bold effort to build a new university that stands for American principles and academic excellence.Guest LinksUniversity of Austin: Website, Substack, Instagram, X, LinkedIn -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack
- Feb 19, 202647 min
Bootstrap vs. VC: Speed Costs Control | Rob Taylor, Silverton Partners
The decision to bootstrap a business or raise venture capital is not just financial. It is physics. You are choosing which system to operate within, which rules will govern your company, and whose incentives will shape your options at every inflection point. Rob Taylor has lived both realities. He spent years building venture-backed companies, raising millions in institutional capital. His brother Chris bootstrapped a company for 20 years and owned nearly 100% at exit. They sold their companies the same year and ended up in roughly the same place financially. The question is what do you optimize for, and the nature of that question is changing daily in the age of AI. Recorded live at Red Fridge Society.The Agenda0:00 Intro + Defining Bootstrap vs. VC 7:23 Is Your Business VC-Backable 11:54 The Ecosystem You Gain with Institutional Capital 15:03 The Ownership Curve 20:36 Control and Governance 26:24 Disruption in the AI Era 32:41 How Fund Size Shapes Investment Behavior 37:43 The Bootstrap-VC Overlap 40:54 Choosing Your Partner 45:14 The Incremental Approach to RaisingGuest LinksRob Taylor: LinkedIn, Silverton PartnersRed Fridge Society -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack
- Jan 21, 202651 min
Patient Capital in the Age of the $10B Seed | Brian Smith, S3 Ventures
The current venture market is defined by a dangerous decoupling of capital from reality. While the industry chases $10B seed valuations and trillion-dollar infrastructure bets, Brian Smith and S3 Ventures are executing a "Discipline Arbitrage." They argue that the real returns in AI will not come from the massive CapEx spenders, but from the application layer that solves boring, regulated, enterprise problems. This episode audits the structural risks of the current AI wave and explains why staying as a small fund may be the ultimate competitive advantage. Agenda01:30 Cisco Moment & 28 Bellagios06:31 Applications First, Agents Next19:06 2021 Bubble vs 2025 Reality32:55 Defining Patient Capital44:09 Strategic Advantage of Small Funds53:03 Return to AtomsGuest LinksBrian Smith, S3 Ventures (Website, X, LinkedIn) -------------------Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedInEcosystem Metacognition Substack
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About Austin Next
Austin is building the new tech, cultural, and intellectual stack. The region is a living laboratory to answer a single question: How do you build a global innovation superpower?Host Jason Scharf dissects innovation from the individual to the ecosystem. From the soundstage to the data center to the fab, we decode the mechanics of Austin's innovation ecosystem.As Atoms, Bits, and Intelligence converge, we explore how Hard Tech scale, digital velocity, and creative density collide. This is an audit of the future. We map the physics of the flywheel so builders and investors can navigate the chaos.
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