Austin Next

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.

Agenda

• 0:00 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 & Bio
Jim Rebesco: LinkedIn
Striveworks: Website
Striveworks 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. 

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Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
Ecosystem Metacognition Substack

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 up

Jones 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.

Agenda

• 0:00 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 Wounds
• 23:43 The 200-Mile Radius
• 26:26 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 Links
Nait Jones: X, LinkedIn
Adtwin: Website, LinkedIn

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Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
Ecosystem Metacognition Substack

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.

Agenda
0:00 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 Problem

Guest Bio
Carlos 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 Links
University of Austin: Website, Substack, Instagram, X, LinkedIn

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Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
Ecosystem Metacognition Substack

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 Agenda

• 0:00 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 Raising

Guest Links
Rob Taylor: LinkedIn, Silverton Partners
Red Fridge Society

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Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
Ecosystem Metacognition Substack

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.

Agenda

• 01:30 Cisco Moment & 28 Bellagios
• 06:31 Applications First, Agents Next
• 19:06 2021 Bubble vs 2025 Reality
• 32:55 Defining Patient Capital
• 44:09 Strategic Advantage of Small Funds
• 53:03 Return to Atoms

Guest Links
Brian Smith, S3 Ventures (Website, X, LinkedIn) 

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Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
Ecosystem Metacognition Substack

The market is mispricing the human brain. Some Investors view Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) and other neurotech as the next iteration of the medical device, a slightly better stent or a more advanced catheter. This is a category error. As Matt Angle (Paradromics) and Connor Glass (Phantom Neuro) articulate its not a product, its the next modem.

The parallel is the internet in 1993. We are moving from a low-bandwidth, text-based era of biology into a streaming, high-fidelity era. This shift requires a convergence of disciplines, Material science, analog engineering, and machine learning, mirroring the semiconductor boom of the 1960s. Austin, with its unique trinity of industrial scale, software speed, and risk-tolerance, has emerged as the global command center for this revolution

The Agenda:

• 0:00 - Intro 
• 02:48 - Electrical Input and Output of the Body 
• 08:13 - Navigating the Valley of Death via DARPA 
• 16:54 - Moral Hazard of Regulatory Caution 
• 23:45 - BCI as the Next Internet 
• 37:51 - Capital Stack and the Platform Shift 
• 50:31 - Declaring Austin the Global Neurotech Capital 
• 55:23 - Convergence of Semiconductor Disciplines

Guest Links
Matt Angle: LinkedIn, Paradromics (Website, X, LinkedIn)
Connor Glass: LinkedIn, Phantom Neuro (Website, X, LinkedIn)

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Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
Ecosystem Metacognition Substack

Cix Liv challenges the Silicon Valley consensus that humanoid robots belong in the warehouse or the battlefield. By explicitly rejecting the “Terminator” military arbitrage and the “Jetsons” domestic servant model, REK validates a new thesis: entertainment is the only sector where the reliability is acceptable and economically viable. 

The discussion dissects the unit economics of robot combat, the “context window” required for mainstream sport adoption, and why American “lawyer culture” is fundamentally losing the hardware war to Chinese “engineering culture” explored in Dan Wang’s Breakneck This is a forensic look at building “Real Steel” without government grants or safe software margins.

The Agenda:

• 00:00 - Beta Testing Robot Roadshows
• 05:06 - Defining the Real Steel Concept
• 07:14 - "Context Window" of Violence vs. eSports
• 16:59 - State of Bipedal Balance & Chinese Hardware
• 26:02 - Robot Soldier vs Real Steel Decision
• 33:01 - B2B SaaS Brain Drain
• 37:01 - Unit Economics: Reliability Arbitrage
• 45:04 - Tech Stack of Tele-Operation
• 52:07 - Dan Wang’s Breakneck Thesis: Engineer China vs Lawyer US
• 57:37 - Bringing Detroit to Texas

Guest Links

REK: Website, X, Instagram, LinkedIn

Follow Cix: X, LinkedIn

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Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
Ecosystem Metacognition Substack

The venture capital model of the last two decades, characterized by the "30-minute rule" and the race to a quick IPO, is obsolete. We are witnessing a fundamental decoupling of capital from geography and a restructuring of how liquidity is manufactured. In this episode, Andrew Romans of 7BC Venture Capital argues that we have entered a new era where geopolitical friction is forcing a renaissance in hard tech, hedge funds have permanently altered the growth stage, and the "Series A" playbook has been rewritten by the realities of a market where companies stay private indefinitely.

Highlights

• 01:05 Why 30 Firms Control the Market
• 09:49 "Stay Private Forever" & The Secondary Market 
• 19:51 Geopolitics, Supply Chains, & Defense Tech
• 30:30 Hedge Fund Tourists & Founder-Led VCs
• 37:11  The Death of the "30-Minute Rule" 
• 47:35 Beyond "Silicon Hills" 

Guest Links
Andrew Romans: LinkedIn, X
7BC Venture Capital
Fireside with a VC: Apple, Spotify, YouTube

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Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
Ecosystem Metacognition Substack

How do we nurture and protect the most human endeavors of creation and discovery?  Zachary Levi joins us to discuss calling, technology, and a creative Ark in Austin. We move from one’s life mission to concrete plans for land and film incentives. The central question of our time is whether we ride the AI tsunami or get swept under it.

Highlights

• 00:00 Opening and Zachary Levi’s journey to Austin
• 05:53 Calling vs discovery
• 13:48 Build the ark and fix Hollywood
• 25:13 Community, work, and purpose
• 30:20 Why Bastrop for Wyldwood
• 38:05 Austin’s energy and first principles
• 46:57 Film incentives and ROI
• 54:00 AI reshapes studio vs creatives
• 1:10:40 Purpose through creation and discovery
• 1:19:07 What’s Next Austin?

Guest Bio
ZACHARY LEVI has proven himself a triple threat- he is an accomplished actor, singer, and dancer that was displayed with his Tony- nominated performance for “Best Leading Actor in a Musical” in the critically praised Broadway production, SHE LOVES ME. In August 2024, Zachary starred in HAROLD & THE PURPLE CRAYON for Sony, based on the wildly popular children’s book written by Crockett Johnson.

He will next star in both MGM/Amazon’s SARAH’S OIL as well as Joe Carnahan’s real-life survivor thriller, NOT WITHOUT HOPE. Zac is also set to appear in HOTEL TEHRAN, a new thriller from writer-director, Guy Moshe.

In March 2023, Levi reprised his role as Shazam! in the Warner Bros. DC franchise, SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS. Directed by David F. Sandberg, this was the follow-up to the first installment, SHAZAM! which held the #1 spot at the box office for weeks following its April 2019 release.

In 2021, Zachary portrayed iconic NFL MVP and Hall of Fame quarterback, Kurt Warner in AMERICAN UNDERDOG for Lionsgate directed by Andrew and Jon Erwin. Zac will return with the Erwin brothers for another Lionsgate film THE UNBREAKABLE BOY, based on the true story of the most inspiring boy who touched and changed the lives of those around him in theaters February 21, 2025.

In a fan favorite recurring role, Levi took home a SAG Award for “Best Ensemble in a Comedy Series” for season two and three of Amazon Studios’ Emmy winning series, THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL. The first season of the show won six Primetime Emmys, two Golden Globes, as well as a Peabody Award and two Critics’ Choice Awards. The second season won one Golden Globe, three Screen Actor Guild Awards, one PGA Award, two Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, one Critics Choice TV Award, and TV Program of the Year at the AFI Awards.

Additional previous film credits include: CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET; TEDDY’S CHRISTMAS; APOLLO 10 ½: A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD; THOR: THE DARK WORLD; ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS: THE SQUEAKQUEL; and TANGLED. The song “I See the Light,” written for TANGLED (performed by Levi & Mandy Moore) was nominated that year for an Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Original Song. The pair performed the duet at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards ceremony. “I See the Light” also won the Grammy Award for “Best Song Written for Visual Media” at the 54th Grammy Awards.

Levi is best known for his fan favorite performance as Chuck Bartowski in the hit NBC series, CHUCK. Other previous TV credits include the Netflix mini-series ALIAS GRACE & HEROES REBORN.

In June 2022, Levi made his author debut with his memoir, RADICAL LOVE: LEARNING TO ACCEPT YOURSELF AND OTHERS, which shares his emotional journey through a lifetime of crippling anxiety and depression to find joy, gratitude, and ultimate purpose

Guest Links
Zachary Levi: X, Instagram
Wyldwood

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Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
Ecosystem Metacognition Substack

Austin exports culture the way it exports tech. Terry Lickona, longtime executive producer of Austin City Limits, argues Austin is a music incubator, not the music industry, and that’s a feature. We map venues, economics, the tech crossover, and what keeps the scene original. 

Highlights

• 01:12 Austin Music Today: vibrant, original, authentic.
• 06:49 Streaming’s role, why touring pays.
• 11:30 Arena bookings, pricing, club spend 
• 18:30 Venue design and experience
• 25:55 Music districts and competition for your dollar
• 36:25 How ACL books talent and stays eclectic.
• 44:31 The “Live Music Capital” narrative and exports.
• 53:25 AI in music: Tool vs crutch
• 58:55 What’s Next Austin?

Guest Bio
Since 1978, Terry Lickona has been the producer, now executive producer, of "Austin City Limits." Celebrating 38 years on PBS, ACL is the longest-running popular music series in American television history. In 2003, the President of the United States awarded ACL the National Medal of Arts, the nation's highest honor for artistic excellence. In 2012, ACL received a rare institutional Peabody Award for excellence and outstanding achievement. Terry has also produced other specials and series for public television, cable, domestic and foreign syndication, home video, and DVD - over 800 programs, with artists ranging from Ray Charles and Johnny Cash to Juanes, Coldplay and Neil Young to Willie Nelson, Arcade Fire, Radiohead and Pearl Jam.  October 2012 also marks the 11th anniversary of the Austin City Limits Music Festival, one of the most successful music festivals in the country. In 2011 Austin City Limits Live at The Moody Theater opened its doors in downtown Austin as a world class live performance venue combined with a state of the art studio soundstage.

Lickona has been the co-producer of the Grammy Awards Show on CBS since 2012.  He served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences from 2005-2006. He also currently serves on the Board of the Latin Recording Academy.

A native of Poughkeepsie, New York, he has lived in Austin, Texas since 1974.

Guest Links
Austin City Limits: Website, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X

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Austin Next Links: Website, X/Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn
Ecosystem Metacognition Substack