Health insurance incumbents have simply not innovated in 40 years. The industry is ripe for disruption.
Well, Will Young, Co-Founder and CEO of Sana Benefits, is certainly disrupting the industry for the better. He came on this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast to talk about the industry, his business, and other topics including how his team thinks about UX and UI and why they’re focused on a holistic design approach.

Anna Robinson was a partner at McKinsey. Then she had a health scare. Spoiler alert: She’s doing well now!
But that experience was an “aha!” moment for Anna and it gave her real clarity. She realized that it’s so important to figure out what you care about the most. For her, that was mentoring and empowering women in the workplace.
So, she founded a company dedicated to making a difference in these areas. On the latest episode of the Austinpreneur podcast, Anna talked about her organization, CERESA. We covered topics like Anna’s journey to entrepreneurship, what makes CERESA different from other mentorship models, and they’re unique approach to matching mentors with mentees.

On this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast we turned things around a bit and interviewed Joshua Baer. Yes, the Joshua Baer.
Most of you probably know him as Founder of Capital Factory and this podcast. But he’s also a very successful serial entrepreneur and investor.
You’re of course familiar with the success he’s had since founding Capital Factory. But in this episode he took us back a bit and walked us through his earlier entrepreneurial journeys. He talked about what it was like to run a software company during the dot-com boom (and bust), what it was like to pioneer the wild west of email marketing, and gave us an inside look at how he took his company from dorm room to successful acquisition.

829,000 Instagram followers. 2,600 employees. 100 stores.
Over a $1 billion dollar valuation.
And this all grew out of a little spare bedroom in a startup house outside of the Austin city limits.
Who are we talking about? Kendra Scott. She’s an incredible entrepreneur with an amazing success story. And she came on this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast to tell us all about it.

Think about the starving artist — they’ve been around for centuries.
Artists today truly want to be out there.
But a lot of times they don't think of themselves as entrepreneurs.
They don't have a lot of confidence in their abilities as business people.
But they've got some amazing ideas to contribute to the world.
That's why Jan Ryan is helping to build a design program at UT Austin that’s based on the core principles of entrepreneurship.
I sat down with Jan to talk about how and why she’s building this new program. Jan also talked about her own journey from artist to entrepreneur, why failure is so critical, and how we can keep making strides to support women in entrepreneurship.

Founders and entrepreneurs are typically in control. They’re motivated, logical, and driven. But there’s one area that often escapes us: our own health.
But if we aren't sleeping, or exercising, and if we’re constantly eating fast food, and stress has overtaken our lives … are we really the leaders?
That’s the question Shayna Dunitz asked on this episode.
She’s the COO of Central Athlete, an Austin-based fitness center. Before she started at Central Athlete, she worked for 3 Day Startup, where she helped entrepreneurs reach their dreams. Far too often, she observed amazing leaders who were taking charge of everything … but their own health.
On this episode, she gave some practical advice to entrepreneurs to get the most ROI from their sleep and health habits.

Like a lot of entrepreneurs, Ross Baird, Founder at Blueprint Local, has been creating businesses from the very beginning.
But what sets Ross apart is his passion for social entrepreneurship.
Most people separate the world into two pockets: Making money and doing good.
But Ross knows that a business can actually be a great, financially sustainable way to do something that you care about.
So, on this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast, Ross joined us to talk about lifting up your community through social entrepreneurship, partnering with others in your region, and leveraging the new opportunity zone legislation.

Some companies have a more difficult time getting funding that others. Maybe you’re a founder of a CPG company. Or maybe you’re a founder who lacks a technical background or a technical team. If that’s you, you know that it can be a little trickier to get the funding your business needs to keep growing.

We’ve been talking a lot about this lately. So, today, we’re focusing on another type of company that can also struggle to get funding: consumer hardware products.

Brandon Austin, Co-Founder at GoFish Cam, came on the latest episode of the Austinpreneur podcast to talk about his company, how they used Kickstarter to prove demand — and eventually secure the funding they needed, and how they’re fitting into the Austin ecosystem. His story demonstrates that even when it’s tricky, you can still rise above the challenges to secure the funding you need.

John Entwistle and Kyle Carberry have a really unique investor story.
It starts with graduating high school.

When the end of their Senior year rolled around, John and Kyle had a decision to make: Go to college or pursue their vision to launch a cloud based coding system. They chose their vision.

But that meant they needed funding.

And unlike most entrepreneurs, as recent high school grads, they didn’t have a network to reach out to. They built a top class investor network from scratch. How’d they do it? John and Kyle came on this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast to talk about their company, Coder, and their story.

Last year, in 2018-2019, the Anti-Defamation League saw a 572% increase in white supremacists propaganda across the country. Chris Magyarics, senior researcher at the ADL is helping fight that hate.

Chris is responsible for the ongoing monitoring of various white supremacists organizations and sub movements throughout the United States. He also serves as an expert consultant to law enforcement agencies. Because online hate, even in the tech industry, is growing.
“Unfortunately, it’s like a game of whack-a-mole. You take one extremists off of your forum and then they pop up somewhere else in one of the more obscure platforms,” says Chris. A series of trends he sees emerging include white supremacists trying to gain political office and increasing their propaganda efforts.

And don’t be fooled, it’s not just swastikas anymore… white supremacists are rebranding. It’s hard to pinpoint these days because the propaganda doesn’t bluntly scream white supremacy. Thankfully, ADL is working with tech companies like Bumble to figure out how to use AI to spot and weed out extremists from their platforms.

But tech companies aren’t the only ones responsible for spotting and reporting hate. Tune in to this episode to learn what YOU can do to combat hate online.