Early takeaways from Austin Deep Tech Week: 1. Austin is a serious f*cking city. SF is still the center of gravity. LA has built an absolute monster around aerospace, defense and industrials. But after spending a few days in Austin, I'm increasingly convinced this city has structural advantages that the coasts underestimate. People I've met here seem to have one primary objective: Build. Heads down. Gas pedal pinned to the floor. Noticeably less obsession with looking important and more obsession with actually making shit work. Deep tech rewards exactly that mentality. 2. Texas being aggressively pro-business isn't some Twitter talking point. It's an actual competitive advantage. Heard versions of this repeatedly from founders and investors this week. Permitting. Regulation. Taxes. Energy. Land. Manufacturing. Expansion. When you're building software, you can abstract yourself away from geography. When you're building atoms, geography becomes part of your cap table. Every additional month waiting on a facility, permit, power connection or expansion is effectively dilution. Texas understand that speed matters. 3. The coastal migration isn't over. SF and LA still have unbelievable technical talent density, particularly at the earliest stages. But the requirements change when a deep tech company starts working. Now you need 100,000 square feet. Power. Testing. Manufacturing. Suppliers. Technicians. Hundreds of employees. Suddenly Texas starts looking a hell of a lot more attractive. And founders here don't seem nearly as worried about convincing talent to follow them as outsiders assume. 4. The next chapter isn't companies moving to Texas. It's companies starting here. Historically the playbook has often been: Coast → prove technology → raise capital → expand into Texas. I think that increasingly becomes: Texas → Texas → Texas. More technical founders will move here before starting the company. More pre-seed and seed companies will originate here. More headquarters will be planted here from Day 1. And that's when the flywheel gets interesting: Talent → startups → capital → exits → experienced operators → new startups. Once that loop starts compounding, ecosystems become very difficult to stop. 5. Austin feels significantly less distracted. There is obviously bullshit everywhere. Startups attract grift like flies to shit. But there's noticeably less keeping-up-with-the-Joneses energy here. Less worrying about who raised what round. Less optimizing for appearances. Less obsession with which VC follows you or which dinner you got invited to. More: Does the thing actually work? That cultural difference matters more than people realize. 6. “But the capital is on the coasts” is becoming a lazy argument. Have you ever heard of a f*cking airplane? It's 2026. If you're building a generational company in Austin and a great investor in SF wants into the round, they're getting on the plane. Great companies don't travel to capital. Capital travels to great companies. Austin already has serious institutional capital on the ground alongside a growing ecosystem of smaller funds. More capital will follow the companies. It always does. 7. Austin increasingly looks built for where deep tech is going, not where venture has been. Deep tech is becoming less about a handful of scientists sitting in a Bay Area lab and increasingly about deploying massive amounts of physical infrastructure. Factories. Energy. Robotics. Defense. Space. Advanced manufacturing. Data centers. Industrial systems. Those businesses eventually collide with the physical world. And the physical world cares about land, power, regulation, labor, logistics and speed. Texas has a lot of all six. SF still has the deepest venture ecosystem. LA has built an extraordinary deep tech machine. But Austin doesn't need to become either of them. It may be building something fundamentally different: A startup ecosystem optimized not just for inventing hard technology — but for actually industrializing it. That's a much more interesting proposition. Came into Austin Deep Tech Week thinking this was an important emerging hard tech ecosystem. Now thinking “emerging” might already be outdated. Ingredients are here. Talent is coming. Capital will follow. Unlike a lot of startup ecosystems I've visited, Austin feels like it actually wants you to build shit here. That's a hell of a tailwind 🏭🇺🇸 Finally - mad props @Andercot, @CaitlinCloud9, @Jason_A_Scharf + many others for putting this together & making this a kickass week!

For any teams building on @arc or otherwise: you should really consider applying. I'm happy to review your application and give you a referral. Just send me a DM. It could change your life.

In a world where it’s easier than ever to start and scale a new business, customer service may end up being the ultimate differentiator.

last week @KashRazzaghi showcased how private assets will be deployed/managed on Arc by this time next year, over 30% of assets deployed will be private privacy will be a key driver for unlocking latent demand

It been great seeing all of the WoW Forever enthusiasm. Timeboxing is good advice. I spent more time than I'd like to admit playing BC and WotLK (at one point was a top 10 PvE rogue on BG9). Since I already uninstalled and quit forever I can only reminisce on the good times.

Made with studio.arc.io Its like Cursor, but for onchain apps with first level of contract security screens baked in. @arc

the team has been cooking on a post quantum upgrade plan for ecrecover more details on this soon

how a private stablecoin transfer should feel: open your wallet. toggle private on and hit send. no one else can see it. how it actually works on @arc : configurable privacy at the protocol layer, encrypted state in hardware enclaves, master key threshold-split across validators, post-quantum from day one. what each piece actually does ↓

Gm architects This is just a starting point in what will be a long and exciting journey. Glad you’re here for it!

Arc now fastest growing day 1 chain ever 24hrs: - thousands of teams building - 3000+ apps - billions of API calls - 9% of total ecosystem activity (150+ chains) Token prices can be manipulated. Onchain volumes faked. Developer activity is the only real metric. Nice work @arc @circle

In case you missed it, we announced Arc Sectors yesterday. Building open programmable economic infrastructure is only achieved when you can support all types of financial activity. Arc Sectors is an attempt at solving exactly this. We are currently focused on payments, privacy and agents. We would love your input while designing it, please reach out to me, @AdiSeredinschi or @chrisries to talk about it!

.@blockjain just chatted about Arc Privacy Sector and demonstrated a private USDC transfer The key takeaway: the UX for private transactions is as seamless as clicking a button

The best version of privacy that we can give our users.

Had a great time talking to David about @arc .

Birdie is seated for launch day

launch day fit check it’s giving DeFi casual

Going live with @samconnerone to chat privacy. Tune in: nitter.net/i/broadcasts/1RKZzBnpk…

Lift off

Big day tomorrow It’s privacy szn ladies and gentlemen