In a post a few days ago Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 made this comment: 'Basically, Japan is Japan because it has a million small retail businesses.'

I was curious about why they have thrived while other cities have seen them widely replaced by national and international chains.

He kindly…

20 minutes in and the gardeners showed up. It was a nice idea while it lasted.

Beautiful day in Austin, so I thought I would work outside.

Q1 PitchBook data is in.

Austin Deal Value: $730M, 44%⬇️YOY vs 30%⬇️ nationally

Ranking: 8th,⬇️from 5th for all of 2023.

The goalposts have shifted, as pre-2020 this would have been a high quarter.

Next quarter we'll see if this is a trend or a one-off.

Cool. It seems I finally have a banger.

Quite a bit of interest in Japan, how to create commercial dynamism with small businesses, & Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 thoughts.

A great episode that went down a ton of different rabbit holes. The episode title 'We Digress' was perfect. Anna Gát 🧭 & Jim O'Shaughnessy 👏

A few thoughts & comments:

'The human mind can hold a thought for seven seconds, but if you're conversing about it, infinitely.' I'm…

Great episode Media Empires Podcast with Danny Crichton & Erik Torenberg. 👏

Anyone interested in a deep dive on tech media from someone who has helped shape it should definitely tune in.

After listening, I have two additional questions:

1. What do you think are the causes and…

Congrats Micha Breakstone 🇮🇱🇺🇦 & Somite Therapeutics on the raise & the great @forbes story (@GilPress 👏)

Fantastic to see Austin backing Austin as builders create the next generational companies! Next Coast Ventures, Trust Ventures, & Texas Venture Partners! 🚀

What's Next!

This “Tesla” podcast is interesting in its positioning. Claims “Tesla” hurt itself by going to China. Two HUGE items left out. First, if BYD is a challenge for Tesla it’s a MASSIVE challenge for Ford/GM. This is never discussed. 2nd, Elon always said he wanted Tesla to kick…

Just wow! We truly live in amazing times!

With Q1 firmly behind us, I thought it a good moment to look back on the #AustinNext 2024 episodes.

The podcast has definitely grown from its humble beginnings as a hack to meet interesting people and build social capital when I moved to Austin.

Now it focuses on dissecting the…

There are so many amazing pockets in Austin.

Austin Eclipse.

I'm a huge fan of the Jason Scharf / Austin Next and highly recommend it to anyone and everyone interested in the startup ecosystem in Austin.

Jason nails it every time.

Just one of the reasons, I'm thrilled about #Austin 's rise as a hub where the digital and physical converge.

Not only do we get amazing innovations (been playing with FSD on my Model 3 Tesla Elon Musk🤯), but it also creates good middle class #jobs .

(Source: Kara Carlson 🦇)