Austin’s Best Startups Honored Tonight!

The Forrest Four-Cast: May 25, 2017

Walkup tickets are still available for the Thursday, May 25 Austin A-List Awards at Mary Moody Theater at ACL Live. Walkup price is $35, which includes free food and drink at the After Party, plus a gift of 10,000 Rapid Reward® points from Southwest Airlines (but only if you are one of the first 800 registrants).

The Austin A-List recognizes some of the city’s most impressive innovators and entrepreneurs. What began as a very small event in 2011, has followed the trajectory of our local startup ecosystem and has blossomed into a very impressive gathering of top Central Texas brainpower. Winners at tonight’s ceremony represent the best of the best of the best from a city-wide nomination process that yielded more than 170 entries.

In addition to these outstanding startups, the Austin A-List will feature short, six minute presentations from six outstanding speakers including Burnie Burns (Rooster Teeth), Ruben Rathnasingham (Dell Medical School), Akshay Sabhikhi (Cognitive Scale), Mike Smerklo (Next Coast Ventures), and Ingrid Vanderveldt (EBW2020). The always-inspiring Roy Spence of GSD&M will be the evening’s final speaker. Doreen Lorenzo (Director for the Center for Integrated Design at the University of Texas) and myself will serve as co-emcees.

And, of course, the biggest value of tonight’s Austin A-List event is outstanding networking. Doors open at 4:30 pm and the show begins at about 5:20 pm (get there early if you want the SWA points!). If you can’t be there in person, then check back to this post on Friday for a full list of the 2017 honorees.

Hugh Forrest tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often (but not always) cover technology-related trends. When not attempting to wordsmith or meditating, he serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW in Austin.