Andrea Kalmans and I started a podcast. It's called America's Angels, and we run around interviewing founders, angels, and operators. Andrea is an Austin investor and the founder of Lontra Ventures, and Season 1 is all about Austin's deep tech scene. We called the season Austin, What's Going On?
As Andrea says, we do love McConaughey. Alright, alright, alright.
Seven episodes are out so far.
Season 1 So Far
Nick Travers. Our first guest, a fellow investor, once cornered the founder of Bai at a Princeton street fair. We followed his investing from Bai drinks all the way to nuclear reactors, including the founders behind Austin's Allo Atomics.
Alex Mirran of GridWeave. Alex, GridWeave's co-founder and COO, started out mining Ethereum on GPUs in milk crates in Austin. Now GridWeave helps enterprises own their AI deployments and protect their data.
Professor Luis Sentis and Heeyong Huh of Suhwa. Humanoid robots have gone from $10 million lab curiosities to $25,000 tools, and Suhwa makes a wristband that turns hand gestures into commands.
Gabe Dominocielo of Umbra. Gabe once had straight Fs. He went on to co-found Umbra, a satellite company, and his angel investing rule is that if the idea isn't bizarre, he won't touch it.
Peter Wang and Dr. Andy Terrel. Peter founded Anaconda and Andy leads compute and open source at NVIDIA. We talked about Python, AI, and the Austin STEM Center.
Bridget Youngs of Terminus Industrials. Bridget is bringing high-voltage transformer manufacturing back to Central Texas. Also, her mom was an astronaut.
Brandon of Job Machine. Job Machine uses AI to get veterans and trade school graduates hired, and Brandon explains when AI is worth paying for and when a person is still the better choice.
Where to Listen
Listen on the America's Angels website or on Apple Podcasts, and follow us on X at @americas_angels.
If you'd rather read than listen, I've written about the defense market and the 5 levels of drone autonomy.