Austinpreneur

The digital world of work is changing. Coding, engineering, and software development are no longer what they used to be. These hard skills require new knowledge along with a compatible soft-skill set to set students up for success in the new world of work. Carl Settles, Jr., founder and executive director of E4 Youth, an Austin-based organization dedicated to bridging the gap between underserved youth and creative careers, joined the podcast to talk about how he's training young digital entrepreneurs differently.
That's why E4 developed a curriculum built on 30-40 minute activities based in theatre that really help develop relationships and resilience amongst their students. The better kids start to do at those soft skills, the better the quality of their work.
That creates a loop. The students start to feel better about who they are, and they begin to understand what it takes to make something of quality. It's still critical thinking, but it's linked to passion.
E4 helps kids make connections and find access to creative careers they can love.

29 people.

That’s how many lives the Crisis Text Line saves every single day. And that’s just the amount of active rescues that are called in, let alone the 5,000 people that use the service every day.

Nancy Lublin is the founder of the Crisis Text Line, and her organization is able to help that amount of people through the use of life saving data science.

How does one go from studying performing arts to creating an animated film for both 2D animation and VR?

With a diverse skill set and a desire for self-expression.

Among entrepreneurs, everyone has a weird path that led them to their startup. The path for Matt Udvari, Founder of Part Time Evil, LLC, is no exception.

In this episode, Matt explains how Part Time Evil went from making iOS games to working on a VR film, and he gives us a behind-the-scenes look into the story for Part Time Evil’s film for VR (and traditional 2D): Between Spaces.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again:

Texas by itself has the 10th largest economy in the entire world. It has the strongest economy in the United States and more Fortune 500 companies than anywhere apart from New York.

That is why the Texas Startup Manifesto exists: to unlock all of the entrepreneurial opportunity in Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and the rest of the state.

We brought together Lawson Gow (Founder & CEO of The Cannon), Bryan Chambers (Vice President of Capital Factory), Cindy Revol (Principal at Perot Jain), and Joshua Baer (CEO of Capital Factory) in this episode of Austinpreneur to talk all about the Texas Startup Manifesto.

Virtual reality is high stakes for the data world. Companies are able to tell data-driven stories in immersive ways unimagined until recently. Enterprise content is on the verge of exploding.

Tyler Cummings and Wallon Walusayi joined us on the Austinpreneur podcast to tell us all about the emerging VR/SaaS industry. Tyler (COO) and Wallon (CEO) are co-founders of 3Data, where they’re providing companies around the globe the toolset they need to reimagine data and experience insights unavailable in a 2D environment.

These guys knows their stuff when it comes to VR.  Dive in to hear the future of all things virtual reality, and how the business space is utilizing it to drive new insights.

If you want to be inspired by three absolutely amazing women, listen to Capital Factory co-founder Mellie Price interview Stephanie McMahon, Chief Brand Officer of WWE and Jean Case, Chairman, National Geographic Society and author of Be Fearless: 5 Principles for a Life of Breakthroughs and Purpose.

Case’s five fearless principles are:

1. Make a Big Bet: “Big bets are made incrementally, one step at a time.”
2. Be bold, take risks: "Think about risk taking and failure as R&D. The most valuable piece of R&D is the error because that's when you perfect your idea.”
3. Make failure matter: "We are used to crash and burn, but what if you looked at it as crash and learn?”
4. Reach beyond your bubble: “Build unlikely partnerships. Transformational breakthroughs take place with diverse teams with different perspectives who can cover each other's blind spots.”
5. Let urgency conquer fear: ”When you feel that urgent, burning stuff inside of you, that is the moment that can push you out of your comfort zone and maybe get you to go do some bolder thing.”

Women are starting companies at 5x the rate of men. But most aren’t starting venture scale companies in traditional corporate workplace environments. That’s why Amy Nelson created The Riveter, a network of community and workspaces built by women for everyone.

Amy was a corporate litigator for a decade and had a traditional career before launching The Riveter.

She found that there was a huge need that wasn’t being met: work environments for entrepreneurial women designed to help them thrive in a like-minded community.

Here are the 4 things The Riveter is built on:

• They unapologetically think of women first when building community and open workspaces.
• They democratize access to their space by offering part time memberships for those who don’t need a full time workspace.
• They educate women on how to improve their business and invest in other startups by bringing in renowned speakers and experts.
• They are building a membership benefit organization that ranges from life to business benefits such as off site childcare partnerships and travel programs.
  
  

Meet Chris Vanek and learn how SOCOM fits into the larger Department of Defense.

Find out how they think about innovation, what areas they can invest in, and what their number one innovation priority is right now

Come join us as we chat with the Founder and CEO of disruptED, a company creating augmented reality for grades K-12. We’ll dive into how the learning landscape is changing and what is to come in the future.

Diversity and Inclusion.
Most every company of any real size today has some sort of diversity & inclusion program. If they don’t, it's definitely on their radar. But what about entrepreneurs? Capital Factory Ambassador of Emerging Technologies Brance Hudzietz interviews DivInc CEO Preston James about diversity, inclusion & equity for startups in this week's episode.