Jim Breyer, an acclaimed venture capitalist who once bought Mark Zuckerberg a glass of wine only to find out the Facebook founder was still under 21, was on one of South by Southwest's first panels of the year March 16.
But the biggest takeaway wasn't the story of his early investment in Facebook or his jet-setting circle of friends. It was how he thinks Austin has a major opportunity to build an exemplary technology hub that avoids some of the mistakes made elsewhere. He said Silicon Valley, which he departed last summer to move to Austin, didn't do a good job of hiring women and people of color as leaders in its recent past as tech exploded.
“I feel like we have a much better chance now, given what we know, at really having Austin be a country and world leader when it comes not only to building big market caps, but companies that also may be B corporations that want to do secondary and third-order types of analysis to make sure that it’s not just the profits and shareholder value that over the near term is being developed," he said. "I really do think we have the ability to make women leaders, female leaders, underrepresented minority leaders part of this next generation of true leadership within the Austin community, and broadly within tech.”
This perhaps isn't an entirely new sentiment. But Breyer, whose firm Breyer Capital has made about a dozen investments in Austin companies, has a large voice in the venture and startup community, as well as deep connections to some of the most well-known entrepreneurs in the game -- and plenty of side stories about them. So his leanings can have significant influence that adds to what many of Austin's long-time tech and startup leaders have already been building toward.
That said, Breyer said the valley has a clear advantage in deep tech, including artificial intelligence and AI-on-chip development, as well as an enormous amount of talent and experience.
“Silicon Valley is unique is so many ways," he said.
But in Breyer's experience, which goes back to when he joined the board at Dell after Michael Dell returned to lead the company, Austin has the edge on teamwork.
“Austin is just more collaborative," he said. "The entrepreneurs are talking to each other and working with each other.”
Speaking of collaboration, take a closer look at ways to network during SXSW.
