Austin is such a beautiful and unique city all in itself. I can understand why 150 people move to Austin everyday, even after just being there for a couple of days!

Our first visit was at ATI with Mitch Jacobson. ATI is essentially an incubator for the University of Texas. There are 3 areas of startups at ATI: bio/health sciences, clean energy, and IT/wireless. ATI offers coaching, guidance, and mentoring to the participants in the program. The company graduates have created an incredible 6,500 jobs!! Interestingly, it is funded by local, state, private, and federal funds.

Next, we went to Techranch, where we met with Kevin Koym. He was a very philosophical and interesting individual. He had a lot of wisdom to share, and it was evident that he had a lot of passion for what he does. His philosophy is that “We are going to change the world. Right now!” He also said that “you need to change the world with your work. That is essentially the reason why you go to college- to define that.” That statement really had me thinking – How will I define that? You have to have a deeper reason for what you do. A purpose/passion. Overall, this is lacking the U.S.! Don’t just make money, but make a difference!

We met Jason Black, an entrepreneur to eat lunch at a cemetery!! At first, this was Very weird (which is SO Austin!!), but I soon came to understand the meaning behind it. As we were walking around and looking at gravestones, Jason explained that “every gravestone has a start and an end date, the dash in the middle is your life. What do you want your dash to be? What do you want your legacy to be? This really hit me and truly made me think deeper about what I want my future, my legacy, to look like!

Sean Branagan met us at a local coffee shop (Hideout Coffeehouse) on Congress Avenue, and we got to understand what brought him all the way to SXSW from Syracuse, NY! Well, he is the creator and commissioner of Student Startup Madness, which is a way for students from all over the country can come together and pitch their business ideas to investors. I liked his thoughts about colleges should not be training students for jobs that are here today, because those jobs will NOT be here later! We asked him why did he choose SXSW to do this event for the students, and he said because it is crawling with media people and it is a great way to get traction.