It has happened slowly, but surely: San Antonio, not just Austin, is gathering buzz as an attractive city in Texas for startup tech entrepreneurs.
On Feb. 20, Xconomy is gathering an elite group of the Alamo City’s technology and business leaders to discuss the ways San Antonio has established itself as a tech capital, as well as its goals for sustaining and adding to that growth in the future. This special event is called San Antonio Tech: Seizing the Momentum.
From the founders of Rackspace and Geekdom to an emerging generation of technology leaders, some of the most prominent entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and technologists from San Antonio and beyond will be handing out unique insights on topics such as A.I., healthtech, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and more. It’s all happening at Pearl Stable, in San Antonio’s beautifully renovated Pearl District, and we’ve just released the full agenda.
Some highlights here:
—Graham Weston, the former chairman and CEO of Rackspace who provided the company’s seed capital, is joining his longtime colleague Lorenzo Gomez for a fireside chat about entrepreneurship and the future of the San Antonio tech ecosystem. Gomez worked at Rackspace before becoming the CEO of both co-working space Geekdom and nonprofit The 80/20 Foundation, organizations founded by Weston.
—Manoj Saxena, the first GM of IBM Watson and managing director at The Entrepreneurs Fund, will speak about his success as an entrepreneur and his work with artificial intelligence startups. Saxena is chairman of two Austin-based A.I. startups, SparkCognition and Cognitive Scale.
—U.S. Rep. Will Hurd will summarize his ongoing work in Congress related to cybersecurity, and then moderate an elite panel of cybersecurity experts, including Infocyte founder Chris Gerritz, Jungle Disk’s Bret Piatt, and Jacob Stauffer of Coherent Cyber.
—Kimberly Britton of EPIcenter, Jon Larson from MedSpoke, Pratap Khanwilkar from InCube Labs, and WiseWear’s Jerry Wilmink will discuss emerging sectors that are developing in San Antonio, from energy to healthtech to wearables.
—Rackspace COO David Meredith will discuss San Antonio’s emerging tech scene and how the leadership team at Rackspace, the cloud computing giant that was acquired for $4.3 billion in 2016, is moving the company into its next iteration.
—Numerous experts that fund and mentor entrepreneurs—such as Geekdom Fund’s Michael Girdley, VelocityTX’s Jorge Varela, and Active Capital’s Cat Dizon—will be discussing their strategies of investing in and finding new talent.
It’s going to be a crowd you don’t want to miss, so grab a seat while you still can. See you on Feb. 20.
