Paul O'Brien

On sale now, in print with Amazon: Startup Ecosystems: amazon.com/dp/B0GSJ3VX4R

@thowave More have been rolling in... Seems just a week ago, a NSF change proved my point here.

The federal government spent a billion dollars on 60 regional "coordinators" and zero dollars on actual coordination. Not a joke. A real EDA program. They hired the title and skipped the job the title was supposed to do. This is your tax dollars, folks.

Bob Dylan, Cher, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, and more. These 13 legendary artists have spent decades proving that great music has no expiration date: zurl.co/HgJXI

@MattNovacek @AleshireLaw @data_atx Are you serious?! They spent money on outreach to residents when a bot can run social media and email for free?? Who pocketed that boondoggle?! 😂

@AleshireLaw @data_atx Austin didn’t spend 1.1M on its logo. The brand development money spent on, for instance, outreach to Austin residents would surely not pass the guidelines for HOT spending. Why do you continually advocate for breaking the law?

San Marcos just debuted their new $80k city logo re-design Props on getting a good deal vs Austin's $1 million logo BUT , #txlege should really pass a law banning cities from spending tax money on logos, its becoming too much!

@AleshireLaw @data_atx I'm still lost on how it's even possible that @CityofSanMarcos could find a designer to do the work for less than $1,000,000 Could you ask them to refer the designer to @austintexasgov? That would be amazing. Somehow, Austin got screwed by designers. We should help.

Worse yet, San Marcos paid for their $80,000 logo to promote that city’s image with HOT tax but Austin paid its $1.1 million logo with property taxes. It should have been paid with HOT (if at all) and now someone on Council should propose that the General Fund be reimbursed $1.1 million from HOT tax.

@data_atx Let me get this straight... The City is funding a thrift store, with taxpayer dollars, when we already have thrift stores... Which means we're all paying for it, even though we have them already, and if we wanted or needed more, the demand would be there to open more. Yes?

The city of Austin government is opening basically a thrift store , that only has furniture, and its only customers are homeless transitioning into homes. They are competing with Goodwill and Salvation army They've already spent millions on the warehouse. But the ongoing costs are little discussed. This week they are hiring a manager to manage the warehouse. I imagine it will be staffed by several others as well. Total boondoggle , we should just let Salvation Army and Goodwill cook. We have great thrift stores already.

@Alphaschool @jliemandt This is exactly what high school students should be doing 🙏❤️

Alpha World School will send high school students across three continents for a full school year. They will build the schools, solar power, and Starlink internet that bring 2 Hour Learning to kids in Kenya and Ecuador. They will publish original research alongside professors from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Columbia. We’re hosting a virtual information session on July 15th at 10:00 PM CT. We’ll walk through the program, the selection process, and what a year like this actually looks like. Register 👇

Thomas Sowell: “Anyone who studied history knows that for the first 150 years of this country the federal government did not intervene when the economy turned down. And all that time the downturns all corrected themselves.”

Paddlelaxing

Starbucks spends $400 million a year on software. Yesterday they announced they're moving off IBM and Microsoft to build their own custom systems in-house. IBM dropped 3% and Salesforce dropped 4% on the news. And honestly this is, unequivocally, the biggest signal I've seen since OpenAI and Anthropic launched their consulting arms back in Q1. The largest companies in the world are done paying for software that half fits how they work. We saw this coming about a year ago. Moved everything we build off Airtable and low-code tools and went fully custom. Already paying off, and it's only going to compound from here. This is the opportunity right now. You get all of a company's data into one system. You build out a single operating system for the entire business. You cut out bad, redundant processes. Then you layer AI on top of it, under the correct processes. That's the core of AI consulting. Helping companies actually operate better. There are a lot of fly-by-night offerings circulating right now when it comes to Ai Services. For example, 'second brains'. Throwing scattered data into a second brain while the processes underneath stay broken does nothing. The companies who will absolutely destroy their competition over the next 5 years are rebuilding how they work from the ground up. Starbucks is showing you what other companies will be doing over the next several years. Your job is to position yourself to facilitate that process for as many companies as you can.

@WanderingJoule @austinreforms Right? How else would they get wealthy?! I take that back, property ownership too, obviously

What does Austin spend on an egregious number of nonprofits that it can’t possibly manage with any degree of responsibility? $2 Billy. Cut this. Create a “favorite causes” landing page on the city website for taxpayers to choose to donate Then consolidate IT and marketing. Lastly, build the mega homeless shelter outside of city limits. Heal thyself

@MyMusicXMeMusic @austinreforms If musicians are struggling, non profits emerge to help in various ways.

@seobrien @austinreforms The local music industry “needed work?”

I am a big believer in teaching the entrepreneurial mindset as early as age 12. In fact, I'd argue it's essential. _______ 30 Entrepreneurship Extracurricular Ideas for Middle School Students — Young Founders Lab share.google/1oLTIckAt5JJZg…

When people THINK that they are protected by law (government) they are LESS likely to be vigilant about understanding risks and protecting themselves.

Austin’s VC dollars & deals are growing. Look one level below and you will see share is shifting significantly as well. x.com/Jason_A_Scharf…

Finding I'm not as bothered by AI articles as I am the comments that are clearly just someone whipping up a response in AI so they can appear to be engaged. AI isn't a bad thing if the PERSON remains involved. If I'm having a conversation with a bot, I'm going to be pissed.

@data_atx Survey Says, "Politics"?

An Austin zoning commissioner votes no on a 'Equitable transit oriented development ( ETOD )' zoning case She makes the point that the only purpose of these was to get federal funding for light rail, we still don't have federal funding and the zoning designation has never been used I'm curious why nobody is using the ETODs , maybe just economy