About us
ATX Startup Network is a community for people building, operating, and backing early-stage tech companies in Austin.
Austin has no shortage of founders, experienced operators, investors, technical talent, and ambitious ideas. ATX Startup Network is about creating more ways for those people to get in the same room, around the same problems, earlier in the company-building process.
ATX Startup Network brings the ecosystem together through candid conversations, working sessions, founder office hours, demos, and community events centered on the messy, consequential parts of building early.
Some events will put you in the conversation. Others will put your product, problem, or idea on the table. The formats may change, but the expectation is consistent: show up curious, challenge assumptions, contribute what you know, and help move the work forward.
This is a home for different ways to participate in Austin's early-stage community.
WHAT YOU'LL FIND HERE
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Austin RAW Conversations
A monthly, interactive gathering that brings founders, operators, investors, and other ecosystem players into the same conversation around the questions shaping early-stage company building in Austin. Each session takes on a real issue, tension, or decision and opens it up to the room. The goal is to surface different perspectives, challenge assumptions, and leave with a sharper understanding of the problem than we came in with.
ATX Founder Office Hours
30-minute, 1:1 working sessions with Arturo Piña for early-stage founders. This isn't a pitch meeting. Bring a product question, GTM challenge, customer problem, fundraising decision, or something else you're actively working through, and let's get to work.
Demos + Community Events
Opportunities to share what you're building, explore problems across critical industries, meet other people working in the ecosystem, and participate in new event formats as we experiment with them.
More formats will be added as the community grows.
WHO THIS IS FOR
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- Founders building early-stage companies
- Operators working in or around startups
- People exploring entrepreneurship
- Active angel and venture investors
- Operators considering angel investing or venture
- Emerging fund managers
- Members of the Austin ecosystem who want to contribute, not just network
Whether you're building your first company, investing your first check, or have been doing this for years, the goal is to create more opportunities for useful collisions across Austin's startup community.
A NOTE ON EVENTS
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Each event series has its own format, schedule, capacity, and participation requirements.
Always refer to the individual event page for the most up-to-date details, location, format, and timing. Some events are open to the broader community, while others may have limited capacity or require advance booking.
OUR PARTNERS
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We're grateful to the organizations helping us create more places for Austin's early-stage community to come together.
🌟 STATION Austin sponsors Austin RAW Conversations.
Thank you to STATION Austin for sponsoring Austin RAW Conversations Meetup.
STATION Austin is the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Texas. Day and night, in-person and online, we gather the best founders, programmers, and designers outside of Silicon Valley and introduce them to investors, employees, and customers who help their ideas launch. STATION Austin is powered by Capital Factory, whose investments and leadership have helped power the Texas startup ecosystem for more than a decade. To sign up for a STATION Austin membership, click here**.
Upcoming events
22
Founder Edge: What Gives a Founder Real Leverage Early?
701 Brazos St, 701 Brazos Street, Austin, TX, USAustin RAW Conversations is a free, highly curated monthly meetup hosted by Arturo for founders, investors, and operators building at the edge of early-stage tech.
This month, we’re asking a deceptively simple question:
What gives a founder real leverage before the market validates them?
Some founders have lived the problem they are trying to solve. Others bring deep industry knowledge, technical ability, trusted relationships, an existing audience, or years of operating experience.
But a strong backstory is not automatically an edge.
A founder’s background becomes strategically meaningful when it changes what they can see, how they interpret the market, which decisions they make, or what they can build, access, and earn faster than another capable founder pursuing the same opportunity.
In this interactive session, Arturo will introduce a practical framework for examining founder edge without reducing it to pedigree, personality, or mythology.
We’ll explore:
- When lived experience becomes insight rather than anecdote
- How technical capability, industry knowledge, access, and adaptability create different forms of leverage
- Whether founder edge is something you possess, build, borrow, or compound
- How investors can recognize an edge before traction makes it obvious
- When persistence amplifies an advantage and when it simply prolongs the wrong decision
- What happens when a founder’s original edge stops mattering as the company grows
You’ll also have an opportunity to map your own founder edge, evaluate one in a company you back or advise, and identify the capability or access that may still need to be built or borrowed.
The session will be highly interactive. Participation is strongly encouraged.
📍 Location
STATION Austin | ACL Room
701 Brazos St., Austin, TXSTATION Austin is located inside the Omni building at the corner of 7th Street and Brazos Street, with entrances on 7th Street, Brazos Street, and 8th Street.
🚗 Parking
Grab a $10 parking validation via QR code when you arrive. For the most up-to-date parking information, visit Capital Factory Parking.🗓️ Date & Time
Thursday, September 24, 2026
6:00 PM to 8:00 PM CT👤 Who This Event Is For
- Founders examining how their experience, skills, relationships, and constraints influence the way they build, and which missing advantages they may need to develop or borrow.
- Investors evaluating why a particular founder may be better positioned to pursue an opportunity before traction, growth, or market validation makes the answer obvious.
- Operators helping early-stage companies convert founder insight, access, and capability into repeatable organizational advantage.
🤝 Sponsor
Thank you to STATION Austin for sponsoring RAW Conversations Meetup.STATION Austin is the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Texas. Day and night, in-person and online, we gather the best founders, programmers, and designers outside of Silicon Valley and introduce them to investors, employees, and customers who help their ideas launch. STATION Austin is powered by Capital Factory, whose investments and leadership have helped power the Texas startup ecosystem for more than a decade. To sign up for a STATION Austin membership, click here.
28 attendees
ATX Founder Office Hours
·OnlineOnlineATX Founder Office Hours are weekly 1:1 working sessions with Arturo Piña for early-stage tech founders in Austin.
This is not a pitch meeting. It’s 30 minutes to get an experienced operator and early-stage investor into the problem with you.
Arturo has spent 10+ years building zero-to-one products and operations across supply chain, logistics, proptech, and healthtech. He’s built a bootstrapped, profitable seven-figure business, helped scale venture-backed companies, been through two exits, and now invests in early-stage technology companies.
So bring what’s live in the business right now: finding your wedge, landing early customers, sharpening GTM, working through product or positioning, thinking about capital, or pressure-testing a decision before you make it.
No deck required. No need to package the story. Bring the context, the problem, and what you’ve tried so far. Then let’s get into the work.
BEFORE YOU RSVP
----------------------
⚠️ Your Meetup RSVP does not reserve an Office Hours session.
There are only four 30-minute sessions available each week, and appointments are booked separately through Calendly on a first-come, first-served basis.By RSVPing to this Meetup, you acknowledge that you still need to use the Calendly link below to reserve your actual 30-minute session.
BOOK YOUR 30 MINUTE SESSION → CALENDLY LINK
If the current week is full, check Calendly for the next available opening. New availability is released on a rolling basis.
COME READY TO WORK
-----------------------------
These 30 minutes are yours. Bring the question, challenge, or decision you want to make progress on and be ready to dig into it.Pre-launch is fine. Pre-revenue is fine. Messy is fine. Specific is better.
If you book a spot, please show up. There are only four sessions each week, and we want every one of them to count.
3 attendeesATX Founder Office Hours
·OnlineOnlineATX Founder Office Hours are weekly 1:1 working sessions with Arturo Piña for early-stage tech founders in Austin.
This is not a pitch meeting. It’s 30 minutes to get an experienced operator and early-stage investor into the problem with you.
Arturo has spent 10+ years building zero-to-one products and operations across supply chain, logistics, proptech, and healthtech. He’s built a bootstrapped, profitable seven-figure business, helped scale venture-backed companies, been through two exits, and now invests in early-stage technology companies.
So bring what’s live in the business right now: finding your wedge, landing early customers, sharpening GTM, working through product or positioning, thinking about capital, or pressure-testing a decision before you make it.
No deck required. No need to package the story. Bring the context, the problem, and what you’ve tried so far. Then let’s get into the work.
BEFORE YOU RSVP
----------------------
⚠️ Your Meetup RSVP does not reserve an Office Hours session.
There are only four 30-minute sessions available each week, and appointments are booked separately through Calendly on a first-come, first-served basis.By RSVPing to this Meetup, you acknowledge that you still need to use the Calendly link below to reserve your actual 30-minute session.
BOOK YOUR 30 MINUTE SESSION → CALENDLY LINK
If the current week is full, check Calendly for the next available opening. New availability is released on a rolling basis.
COME READY TO WORK
-----------------------------
These 30 minutes are yours. Bring the question, challenge, or decision you want to make progress on and be ready to dig into it.Pre-launch is fine. Pre-revenue is fine. Messy is fine. Specific is better.
If you book a spot, please show up. There are only four sessions each week, and we want every one of them to count.
1 attendeeATX Founder Office Hours
·OnlineOnlineATX Founder Office Hours are weekly 1:1 working sessions with Arturo Piña for early-stage tech founders in Austin.
This is not a pitch meeting. It’s 30 minutes to get an experienced operator and early-stage investor into the problem with you.
Arturo has spent 10+ years building zero-to-one products and operations across supply chain, logistics, proptech, and healthtech. He’s built a bootstrapped, profitable seven-figure business, helped scale venture-backed companies, been through two exits, and now invests in early-stage technology companies.
So bring what’s live in the business right now: finding your wedge, landing early customers, sharpening GTM, working through product or positioning, thinking about capital, or pressure-testing a decision before you make it.
No deck required. No need to package the story. Bring the context, the problem, and what you’ve tried so far. Then let’s get into the work.
BEFORE YOU RSVP
----------------------
⚠️ Your Meetup RSVP does not reserve an Office Hours session.
There are only four 30-minute sessions available each week, and appointments are booked separately through Calendly on a first-come, first-served basis.By RSVPing to this Meetup, you acknowledge that you still need to use the Calendly link below to reserve your actual 30-minute session.
BOOK YOUR 30 MINUTE SESSION → CALENDLY LINK
If the current week is full, check Calendly for the next available opening. New availability is released on a rolling basis.
COME READY TO WORK
-----------------------------
These 30 minutes are yours. Bring the question, challenge, or decision you want to make progress on and be ready to dig into it.Pre-launch is fine. Pre-revenue is fine. Messy is fine. Specific is better.
If you book a spot, please show up. There are only four sessions each week, and we want every one of them to count.
1 attendee
Past events
12
