What makes Austin special?

Saturday night, we met Tim.  Tim is awesome and runs a company in Austin called eDash Marketing.  Tim emailed us out of the blue after finding us on Tumblr and invited us to a meeting of the minds - a party celebrating TEDxAustin rejections.


We spent our night hanging with entrepreneurs, creative folks and other free thinkers discussing what makes Austin great.  Here’s the gist of why Austinites think Austin rocks:


1. Large network of seasoned entrepreneurs with experience building successful businesses in Austin.  It gets better… after exiting, many have stayed and offer support to new entrepreneurs.

Capital Factory, a new startup incubator in the vein of Y-Combinator, offers mentorship to budding entrepreneurs in Austin.  Successful mentors include the ranks of Andrew Busey, Jason Cohen, and Ian Clarke, who are more than eager to help new ventures in Austin succeed.

Hayes Davis, co-founder of CheapTweet, told us that most successful entrepreneurs in Austin are more than happy to grab coffee or offer advice to new startup teams.  Compared to his time in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina (where once businesses have exited they typically disappear from the community), Austin is the optimal alternative.

2. Great startup hub to grow a business… and a family.

Startups in Austin greatly benefit from the mentorship that experienced entrepreneurs provide.  Part of what keeps these entrepreneurs around is the comfortable lifestyle that Austin supplies - no matter which stage of life you’re in.  As one entrepreneur explained, ‘You wouldn’t raise your family in SF or New York, but Austin is a great place to start a business when you’re young, continue to grow the business, and it’s a nice place to raise a family when you’re older.’

3. The Austin community throws tons of events which bring like-minded people together multiple times a week to meet, share ideas, and just be social.

Events such as SxSW (better known as South by Southwest) bring major attention to the city, showcasing Interactive, Film and Music projects and unite the city in its achievements.  This mix of artistic and technological innovation meets at social interaction - a startup hub with southern culture - people in Austin are nicer and always friendly.  This warmth and inclusiveness is a big reason Austin is teeming with fresh ideas.

A great place to be true to your business and your ideas, our host, David Walker of 302designs, posed that “Boston’s where you go to be surrounded by intellectuals, New York is where you go to be with rich people.  Austin’s where you go to be yourself.”

Hayes Davis put it another way.  “If San Francisco is about engineering and New York is about design - Austin is about people and has a rich social culture.”

We bought it, but we want to hear from you.  What is the X-factor that makes cities foster innovation?