Austinpreneur

When you say simulation, some people tend to give blank stares and others simply question what that actually looks like. Matt Confer from Abilitie says that the big problem for his company is: “How do you convince people to get out of their day job and invest in training?” He explains, “You have to make it super immersive and they need to see [the program] in action.”That’s exactly what Abilitie, a Leadership Development Simulation, does— and they do it well. Abilities has developed an award-winning simulation that trains corporate leaders and university students the same way pilots, military personnel and people in the medical field are trained; training by doing. Ever wonder what the key skills are to be an effective decision maker? Matt breaks it down with three simple steps:

1. Challenge the constraints
2. Instead of a post-mortem, embrace a pre-mortem
3. Check the basics

Listen to the episode to find out more! 

Have you ever had a bad experience while moving to a new city? It could be anything from disliking the neighborhood or even the home itself that you moved into. It all comes down to the sociology of home buying. According to Vi Nguyen, Co-Founder & CEO of Homads, “How you settle into a city is how you will perceive the city later on.” Homads is helping both Austinites and travelers find that perfect place to call home-sweet-home. When it comes to home buying or renting, it’s easy to get lost in the woes of moving your life to a new location.

Around 85% of people tend to be unhappy with where their original relocation AND roughly 87% of people who had a relocation specialist wish they had MORE help. In comes Homads, who use machine learning to find you that perfect home. Whether its month-to-month or a forever home, Homads will find you the perfect place.

Ever wonder how you can successfully get press to cover your company? It's not about cold emails— but rather, running into the right people in public or at events. People can tell their story and convey their message easier in-person than they can over an email or a phone call. Brent Wistrom from AustinInno stopped by the podcast and said, “It's like the Mark Cuban thing. If you can tell me in two sentences why I'd be interested, then I'm probably going to want to do that story.”

Brent is the Senior Staff Writer over at AustinInno and covers the Entrepreneurial and Startup Ecosystem in Austin. If you’re looking to pitch a good story, it’s all about having a connection with the city of Austin. Brent’s two successful tips for an interview are:

1. Not reading off a pre-written corporate script
2. Having a good reason for doing what you're doing

If you have a great story for Brent, be sure to email him at [email protected] and let him know Austinpreneur sent you! 

On this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast we talked with David Robinson, Jr., Associate at Blueprint Local. Blueprint is a new platform for investors who want to focus on deploying capital in opportunity zones.
David gave us the 411 on opportunity zones, discussing how investing in these areas can help make an impact across local communities while also providing major tax incentives for the investor. David also had some great advice to offer Texas entrepreneurs who are trying to raise funding.

On this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast, we’re joined by Ben Metcalfe, Principal at Ridge Ventures. While he’s a VC now, his career contains many other notable achievements, too. Back in the day he was a founder, working on a startup called WP Engine. He also ran public policy and innovation at Uber for a while.

Ben came along with us on the Texas Startup Roadshow, and we were fortunate to be able to chat with him for a bit. Tune into this episode to hear our discussion about Ben’s journey from Founder to VC, why authenticity is key to Austin’s startup ecosystem, and the two things every entrepreneur seeking funding needs to keep in mind.

Chicago Ventures has a great thesis: Entrepreneurship and innovation are not constrained or restricted to a few select coastal markets. But, unfortunately, as entrepreneurship and innovation have become more distributed, capital has remained concentrated in those coastal markets.
Cities like Austin and Dallas have all of the structural conditions to produce great venture scale outcomes. But there hasn't been enough early stage capital to match the quality of the founders that these ecosystems are producing. That’s why, in 2013, Chicago Ventures started investing in Texas.

On this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast, Peter Christman, Principal at Chicago Ventures, came on the show to talk with us a bit more about Chicago Ventures, how they’re investing in Texas, and what they learned on the Texas Startup Roadshow.

During the Texas Startup Roadshow, we toured facilities for Complexity Gaming, one of the nation’s most elite and long standing esports organizations. They currently manage 11 esports teams and have won over 130 championships.
While there, we got to sit down with Cameron Kelly, Chief Marketing Officer at Complexity. In this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast, he’s giving us an inside look at how Complexity is leading the industry by putting player wellness first, using AI and machine learning to measure player aptitude, and leveraging the power of gaming to create impact and change in the world.

What’s next for VR? What will happen to screens in the future?
On this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast we sat down with John Arrow, Founder and CEO at Mutual Mobile, to talk about these issues. John is an ambitious goal setter and expert when it comes to predicting the future of technology. In this episode, John talked about a range of topics including: why titles are self-confining, the future of VR, what he hopes to achieve over the next decade, and what he thinks will happen to screens.

JJ Castillo had been a filmmaker for most of his life. And he planned to continue doing it for the rest of his life. But that was before the DK2 (Developer Kit #2).

Interested in VR, JJ had been playing around with 360 photos and videos. But he’d only been watching these videos on his computer. Then one day a friend let him watch the videos on his headset. That’s when everything changed. JJ realized that VR was all he wanted to do. Forever. 

Today, JJ is Founder and CEO of Viewer Ready, an Austin based company that creates content using VR and AR technology. Their clients have included Anheuser-Busch, The NBA, Dell, and Tiff's Treats. He came on the show to talk about his story, his plans for the future, and what he learned from filmmaking about incorporating storytelling into VR experiences

She has a PhD in physics. She’s also worked for McKinsey.
He was a US Diplomat and an entrepreneur.
Today they’re running one of the newest accelerators in Texas.
I’m talking about Oksana Malysheva and Joe Merrill, Co-Founders and Partners at SputnikATX. They came on this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast to share a bit of their expertise.
These are some of the topics we talked through:

What SputnikATX is all about

What makes them different from other accelerators

How they’re focusing on diversity, equality, and inclusion