Bryan Menell on the Austin Emerging 100, AustinStartup.com, and Valley envy

I first found out about Bryan Menell's Austin High Tech Happy Hour when he and I both scheduled an event on the same day. Ooops. A few months later, I discovered AustinStartup.com (get the RSS feed), and found that Bryan is responsible for that as well. Recently, Bryan gave me a sneak peak at a new site he was working on -- the Austin Emerging 100. Bryan has clearly been a very busy guy. Before reading this post, go check out the Austin Emerging 100. If you're looking for work with a startup, this should be the first place to check.

Lynn Bender: Bryan, The Austin Emerging 100 is going to be a tremendous resource for all of us. It looks like a considerable amount of work went into it. How many folks were involved in the development of the site? Did you have any corporate sponsorship?

Bryan Menell: The website will be a great resource for the many people who ask me every week about what technology companies are hiring, who they are, and what they are up to. It started as a spreadsheet that Bryan Jones (CEO of Moximity) put together, and we collaborated to grow the list. At various points I asked for input from friends who are angel investors, PR professionals, and other members of the tech community. At first I thought it would be difficult to even come up with 100 companies, and then it became even more difficult to limit it to just 100. There haven't been any sponsors of the project, but I would certainly welcome some!

(You can read Bryan's own post on the Austin Emerging 100 here).

Bender: You also manage AustinStartup.com and the Austin High Tech Happy Hour. Did you originally envision this suite of sites, or did you create each as you discovered a need? Do you have any future plans that you can share?

Menell: Each one kind of came up independently, and each has it's own support system. AustinStartup was intended to promote and expose all the cool technology stuff going on in Austin, and the happy hour was my wife's idea. At the first happy hour over a year ago there just weren't many social events for technology folks. I wish I could say there was a grand plan behind it all, but it all just sort of happened. My future plans include taking a break from dreaming up little side projects. Although I think it would be really neat to create something like TechCrunch's CrunchBase just for Austin technology companies. Anybody want to collaborate on that project?

Bender: You are on the Board of Advisors of Texchange. Could you tell me something about the organization?

Menell: Texchange is a great organization for C-level executives in Austin technology companies, and for entrepreneurs. The quality of the networking is amazing, and the content in the monthly programs is top notch. In June Geoffrey Moore (who wrote Crossing the Chasm) is speaking, and that will cap off a tremendous year for Texchange. I encourage anyone who is interested to attend as a guest of mine to try it out.

Bender: Hardly a day goes by that someone doesn't say: "Austin could be another Silicon Valley. if only we could.....".
Yet, every day I see folks turn down opportunities to move to the Valley because they love Austin. How are we doing? What are we doing right, and what are we missing?

Menell: I lived in the valley for a few years, and it's been 12 in Austin now. We don't want to be like the valley because Austin is so much better. One of the things we do lack is a great support system that helps entrepreneurs get from idea stage to an investable stage. One of the ways we could do that is to pull entrepreneurs who have seen liquidity back into the startup community. I think we need higher levels of venture investment in more diverse areas like mobile, B2C, social media, and cleantech. Today we're more diverse than ever before, but we could definitely use more.