Sep 16, 202657 min
I had been thinking Austin needed some kind of frontier-tech week when Andrew Côté announced that he was bringing Deep Tech Week here. I reached out almost immediately, and now I’m helping build it. That gave us the...
technology
Austin Next
Hosted by Jason Scharf · technology · EN
About this Podcast:
Austin is building the new tech, cultural, and intellectual stack. The region is a living laboratory to answer a single question: How do you build a global innovation superpower?Host Jason Scharf dissects innovation from the individual to the ecosystem. From the soundstage to the data center to the fab, we decode the mechanics of Austin's innovation ecosystem.As Atoms, Bits, and Intelligence converge, we explore how Hard Tech scale, digital velocity, and creative density collide. This is an audit of the future. We map the physics of the flywheel so builders and investors can navigate the chaos.
Pitch Analysis
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Contact path
Verified email
Booking probability
35%
Guest openness
Selective
80/100
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What is Austin Next about?
Austin is building the new tech, cultural, and intellectual stack. The region is a living laboratory to answer a single question: How do you build a global innovation superpower? Host Jason Scharf dissects innovation from the individual to the ecosystem. From the soundstage to the data center to the fab, we decode the mechanics of Austin's innovation ecosystem.
Who hosts Austin Next?
Austin Next is hosted by Jason Scharf. The show has published 185 episodes to date.
What has Austin Next covered recently?
Recent episodes include "The Future Is Actually Starting to Happen | Andrew Côté, Deep Tech Week" (16 September 2026, 57 minutes), "The Army Is Adapting to the New Speed of War | Matt Willis, Army FUZE" (10 September 2026, 56 minutes), and "What This Unlikely Deal Shows About New Austin | Max Cunningham (Sesh) & Jake Medwell (8VC)" (16 July 2026, 59 minutes).
How often does Austin Next publish?
Austin Next publishes roughly every two weeks, with episodes averaging 63 minutes across 185 episodes.
How hard is it to get booked on Austin Next?
Booking probability for Austin Next is 35%, and the host is rated Selective on guests. Austin Next requires a Pod Score of 80 or higher. Austin Next's contact route on record: verified email.
Who should pitch Austin Next?
The strongest fits for Austin Next are IT Services & Software Development and Business & Management Consulting. Austin Next has a technology audience and around 480 subscribers on YouTube.
About the host
Jason Scharf hosts Austin Next, a technology podcast with 185 episodes published.
Verified host email: ████████@████.comSign in to unlock →
Recent episodes
Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.
Sep 10, 202656 minThe battlefield is changing faster than the systems built to supply it. Matt Willis runs Army FUZE, a roughly $750M portfolio built to get new technology into soldiers’ hands faster. The deeper question is what an...
Episode #182
What This Unlikely Deal Shows About New Austin | Max Cunningham (Sesh) & Jake Medwell (8VC)
Jul 16, 202659 minSesh looks like a consumer brand. 8VC looks like the last fund that would back it. That mismatch is the fastest way to see what Austin is becoming. Sesh founder Max Cunningham and 8VC's Jake Medwell start with the logic...
Jun 30, 202640 minA custom board that ran two thousand dollars five years ago now costs fifteen and ships in two weeks. That collapse is why a hundred teenagers flew to Austin to build in the physical world instead of code in the...
Jun 18, 20261h 13mBrett Hurt returns to Austin Next for the fourth time, more than any guest in the show's history, to argue that the hardest problem in front of us is psychological. Abundance is already on a clear technological path...
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Jun 11, 20261h 16mAustin's counterculture is still the ethos. The next chapter is what gets built on top of it. Karen Blashek, the editor-in-chief of Austin Home Magazine, took over a 21-year-old design publication with no editorial...
Episode #178
Revisited: How Specificity in Vertical AI Rewrites Industries | Nick Tippmann, TipTop VC
May 21, 20261h 5mUpdated re-release. A year ago we left one question unresolved. Where do foundational AI models end and where do the applications begin? Nick Tippmann returns in a fresh epilogue. A year on, the tension has only...
Apr 29, 20261h 12mThis was not the episode we planned. Will Johnson, founder and CEO of Gyde, and Alex Cohen, founder and CEO of Hello Patient, came on to talk about innovation in the business of health. Instead it became our off the...
Episode #176
The First Thing Built on the Moon Will Come from Austin | Jason Ballard & Will Hurd, ICON
Apr 23, 20261h 12mICON has been telling the same story since 2018. Humanity has a construction problem that solving for regulations and supply-demand incentives alone won't fix. We need fundamentally new ways to build. Jason Ballard...
Episode #175
Reinventing School Is Accelerating Austin's Talent Flywheel | Joe Liemandt, Alpha School
Apr 15, 20261h 12mJoe Liemandt built Trilogy, recruited 2,000 Ivy League graduates to Austin, and is now running what he considers the higher-leverage version of the same play, K-12 education. Our host, Jason Scharf, brings a perspective...
Mar 24, 202652 minDirected energy weapons, autonomous drones, and combat AI agents are not just real. They are deployed. Jim Rebesco, cofounder and CEO of Striveworks, breaks down what's driving this moment, and the second and...
Episode #173
Innovation Ecosystems Are Inherited | Nait Jones
Mar 18, 20261h 2mThe hype that landed on Austin in 2021 was correct and at the same time ahead of the curve. Nait Jones, serial founder and former a16z partner who arrived in Silicon Valley in 2011 at the Web 2 moment and moved to...
Episode #172
The Western Canon in the Age of Vibe Coding | Carlos Carvalho, President, University of Austin
Mar 11, 20261h 13mAmerican universities stopped optimizing for students a long time ago. The University of Austin was built as a direct counter to that failure. Carlos Carvalho, its president, brings a statistician's precision to the...
Feb 19, 202648 minThe decision to bootstrap a business or raise venture capital is not just financial. It is physics. You are choosing which system to operate within, which rules will govern your company, and whose incentives will shape...
Jan 21, 202652 minThe current venture market is defined by a dangerous decoupling of capital from reality. While the industry chases $10B seed valuations and trillion-dollar infrastructure bets, Brian Smith and S3 Ventures are executing...
Episode #169
The Semiconductor Moment for the Mind
Jan 14, 20261h 8mThe market is mispricing the human brain. Some Investors view Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) and other neurotech as the next iteration of the medical device, a slightly better stent or a more advanced catheter. This is...
Dec 10, 20251h 3mCix Liv challenges the Silicon Valley consensus that humanoid robots belong in the warehouse or the battlefield. By explicitly rejecting the “Terminator” military arbitrage and the “Jetsons” domestic servant model, REK...
Dec 3, 202552 minThe venture capital model of the last two decades, characterized by the "30-minute rule" and the race to a quick IPO, is obsolete. We are witnessing a fundamental decoupling of capital from geography and a restructuring...
Oct 1, 20251h 24mHow do we nurture and protect the most human endeavors of creation and discovery? Zachary Levi joins us to discuss calling, technology, and a creative Ark in Austin. We move from one’s life mission to concrete plans for...
Sep 24, 202558 minAustin exports culture the way it exports tech. Terry Lickona, longtime executive producer of Austin City Limits, argues Austin is a music incubator, not the music industry, and that’s a feature. We map venues...
Recent guests
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