Austin lost one of its most important people last night.
@JoshuaBaer died in a plane crash near Laredo. He was 50 years old. And if you spent any time in Austin's entrepreneurial world, you felt him. Whether you knew him personally or not.
People will write about what he built. @CapitalFactory, his businesses, investments, portfolio companies, etc. It all matters.
But what actually gets founders through the hard stuff is someone believing in them. A random text. A connection made at the right moment. Walking into a room and feeling like you belong there.
That was Josh's superpower. And he gave it away constantly. He was the hype man for all entrepreneurs.
You'd feel it in his social posts. You'd feel it in a message out of nowhere. You felt it in every Capital Factory space he built, long after he left the building. He created an environment where people believed something was possible before they had any real reason to.
Technology developed in Austin will 3D-print buildings on the moon. Technology developed in Austin recently saved pilots who were shot down near the Strait of Hormuz this week. Businesses in Austin will continue to build hard technology that doesn't exist yet. Solve problems that seem impossible right now.
Austin isn't just weird. Austin is audacious.
It's audacious because Josh Baer spent decades making people feel like they could actually pull the impossible off.
He was Austin's hype man. But he meant every word of it.
Our community is what it is because of him.
@FredLambert This is clickbait. Take your time @Tesla , we want this right not rushed. If you have yet to experience unsupervised vehicles, visit downtown Austin and catch one of the endless fleets of cars rolling around.
My thoughts after 3 months in the US/Texas🇺🇸:
- Americans are way more extroverted than Europeans
- Talking to strangers is normal here
- My first H-E-B trip felt like Boris Yeltsin seeing an American grocery store
- Some food is more artificial, but the amount of choices is insane
- You can still eat healthy. You just have to choose it
- High risk, high reward is real
- Way more people are entrepreneurial
- People dream bigger than in Europe, and they actually execute
- Obv not everyone is smarter, but the smart people are world-class
- Successful people here are way more down-to-earth. In Europe, successful people care about status and can be arrogant
- Cars. Enough said
- Americans have perfected artificial sweets
- There’s still more freedom here than in Europe
- One thing I didn’t expect: some Americans talk down on America
- As an outsider, that’s weird, because imo it’s still the greatest country on Earth🇺🇸🇺🇸
Over the last few months I have been building a game mostly for me but now I'm opening it up to the world and would love your feedback! 🎧 BonkCity is a beat-driven horde survivor where you stack busted builds, run cyphers, and bonk the whole block into rubble. Free demo's live for #SteamNextFest — go cook a run. 👇
https://t.co/8WHY0x41ib @bonkcity_
@sny_knicks Texan here,@jalenbrunson1 is a beast and deserves every ounce of praise for his leadership and determination. Congrats Knicks on a dominate post season.
Spurs will be back. They clearly have a great, young but inexperienced team.