Austinpreneur

If you missed out on this year's Women in Tech Summit at Austin Startup Week 2019, don’t worry because we have you covered! Vanessa Liu was able to sit down with us after her keynote speech to talk about how to break down borders with innovation and the 5 lessons she learned while being an entrepreneur:

1. Know your strengths
2. Map your interests to your strengths
3. Shape your success
4. Ask for help
5. Collaborate

Fun Fact: Vanessa’s mom created Lizzo’s Bedazzled Tequila bottle

You probably didn’t know that the Parking and Garage Industry has an annual revenue of close to $10 billion. With the world becoming more connected as our technology is rapidly advancing, it’s no surprise that parking would be next on the list to innovate. Today, parking garages are becoming Mobility Hubs where it's not just a place where you park your car. Juan Rodriguez opened our minds to how he and his team at FlashParking are looking to revolutionize the parking industry. “Think about charging… Think about getting your car washed. Think about Amazon dropping off a package inside the trunk of your vehicle. Think about Goodyear installing new tires” all of this and more can be done at a Mobility Hub.

He worked for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, worked at Realtor.com during the Dot Com Boom, started the first social impact company in the world with Ethos water, created All for Good, and is now the CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt is a highly accomplished entrepreneur that is now dedicating his time to fighting for justice and fair treatment for all.
We had the pleasure of hosting Jonathan at Austin Startup Week 2019 and sitting down for a podcast to chat about his work with the ADL, social entrepreneurship, and intersectional justice. He left us with three tips on what to do when facing intolerance:

1. Speak out
2. Share facts
3. Show strength
   
   

In 2014, Jeff Cavins and Jennifer Young sold all of their belongings and set out on the road to live in a camper for 7 months. This all started after they became fed up with sitting in fluorescent-lit rooms and selling companies for other people. Jeff explained, “I looked at Jen and we shared this look with one another and decided: We can’t do this anymore— let’s do something that’s related to the outdoors.”
Today, Jeff and Jennifer run Outdoorsy, an RV rental experience marketplace with headquarters in San Francisco, CA and Austin, TX and operate in 14 countries around the world. What started as a simple thesis to get out of the office and appreciate the outdoors, became an impactful business and marketplace for everyone.

Around 50% of all expenses that startups make require a credit card, but did you know it’s next to impossible to get a company card from the banks when you’re starting a new company? While at Y Combinator, the founders of Brex “[Henrique and Pedro] noticed that all the YC companies that got funding of $120,000… needed a credit card— not as a financing tool but as a payment instrument.”
Larissa Rocha, employee #1 at Brex, stopped by the podcast and told us that “banks wouldn’t give a [startup] a card because they didn’t have a financial history, so they would then go after the founder for a personal guarantee, which is not ideal.”
Now, with over $2 billion in valuation and investors such as Peter Thiel, Brex is the premiere next-generation financing for the startup community.

A lot of first-time entrepreneurs are scared when it comes to selling their products. “If you don’t believe in [your company] enough to get out of your comfort zone and go have a conversation with someone and try to get them to pay money for it…. [ you’re not going to make a sale and scale the business].” We had the opportunity to learn this and more from Jake Dunlap, CEO and Founder of Skaled Consulting when he dropped by the podcast to chat with Nick Spiller about sales, marketing, and how being a bad employee lead Jake to start his own company.

When you think of the Internet of Things, you think of millions upon millions of devices connected online spread across the globe. These are devices that use Wifi, Bluetooth, and cellular data to connect to the internet, and it can get pretty pricey depending on what ISP you have. But what if there was a cheaper, more efficient alternative network to run these devices? Helium is the world’s first peer-to-peer wireless network providing a decentralized infrastructure for IoT devices. Dive deep into the world of a decentralized wireless network with special guest host and Lead Analyst of Multicoin Capital, Ryan Gentry, and Chief Operating Officer of Helium, Frank Mong.

    Dr. Jason Dempsey is the co-founder of MILLIE, a company that empowers veteran and military spouse real estate agents to help military families through the moving process. Dr. Dempsey served as an infantry officer for 22 years, completing 2 tours in Afghanistan and 1 in Iraq during which he completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at Columbia University. After his distinguished military career, Dr. Dempsey became an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

    Dr. Dempsey stopped by the podcast after his keynote speech at the Veterans in Tech Summit to discuss the state of Veteran Entrepreneurship and what the future looks like.

One of the toughest questions that entrepreneurs deal with is, “how do I get venture capital funding for my startup?” In Scott Kupor’s new book Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Scott writes that “Whether you’re trying to get a new company off the ground or scale an existing business to the next level, you need to understand how VC’s think.” But why is Scott sharing these secrets? It’s all about improving the relationship between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs. During his time in Austin, Scott stopped by the podcast to chat with Joshua Baer about Startups in Austin, his new book Secrets of Sand Hill Road and how to navigate deals with VC’s.

One of the hardest things to do when operating a startup is working with a big corporate company. Luckily, we got the chance to sit down with Booz Allen Hamilton's Principal and Managing Director of the Innovation Hub in San Francisco, Adam Porter-Price. He gave us some great tips on how to close the deal— for both sides of the table!

1. Get out of your own way
2. Understand the time cycles that you're operating
3. Be patient
4. Don't take every single meeting, make it meaningful
5. And, last but not least: You better have a deal on the table