Leaders S4: E07 - Thom Singer shares how he solidified Austin as a leading technology hub

David Bloxham (00:01.058)
Hello Tom, how are you?

Thom Singer (00:02.604)
I'm doing great, David. Thanks for having me.

David Bloxham (00:04.938)
It's been great to have you on board. I'm very, very excited about this one. We're obviously we've done a lot of podcasts ourselves. I feel like I'm speaking to an even more experienced podcaster here, Tom. So this is great to have you here. And just to introduce you to our listeners, we have here the CEO of the Austin Technology Council. 12 years as a professional speaker, we're going to find out other more interesting details about his background.

and obviously a representative of Austin, the community, and Austin, the city in terms of technology and the industry that it's very well known for, to the world and saying to the state. So, you know, GCS itself has been working in Austin for quite some time now, and we've had a good relationship with the ATC, but it's great to have someone, you know, with such a great knowledge and in-depth knowledge of the community on board. So, Thomas, great to have you here, welcome.

Thom Singer (01:03.363)
Great to be here!

David Bloxham (01:03.674)
Um, yeah, fantastic. So, I mean, I think for those that don't know, I mean, most people will know about Austin, Texas. You know, most people know it was one of the I feel for us kind of looking at it from kind of outside the state is one of the first kind of areas that took up the mantle from what San Francisco was doing and and created new tech hubs in different parts of the of the country and is obviously kind of well known for

huge business, such as Indeed and Dell, but obviously many, many interesting kind of startup businesses as well. And I've been to Austin three or four times, you know, in my happily one of my favorite places, and seeing just how kind of important a important part the ATC plays in that business community. So as I said, it's really great to have someone with your experience and also with your kind of knowledge of that. So

So just give us a bit of an understanding for those who don't know about, about maybe about Austin as a tech hub and about the, you know, the Austin tech council and what it does to, to help promote and drive that tech hub.

Thom Singer (02:09.675)
Sure. Well, Austin, I moved here in 1991. So I've lived here for 32 years. And Austin has gone through some of the most dynamic changes of any city in the world. We weren't always, every year for the last three years, number one in the fastest growing cities in America. But we were always on that top ten list. And so when you add up three decades, when I moved here in 1991, the greater area had 700,000 people. We now have 2.4 million people.

and we've built one road. Now that's not fair. We've built lots of roads, but the growth, nobody could keep up. And we're about to widen some more. Some of our major highways are about to get bigger. But, you know, it's really been an amazing story of Austin's growth. And much of that story, most of that story has been around the technology industry. So if you go back to the 1960s and 1970s,

David Bloxham (02:43.675)
It's a very wide road though Tom, it's a very wide road.

David Bloxham (02:50.638)
や今下手ですね。

Thom Singer (03:05.763)
You know, we really weren't as a globe, we really weren't this, you know, technological business place in Austin or anywhere else. But we started to see trickles of it in the 1960s and 1970s. And then in the 80s and especially the 90s, Austin really started to explode as this tech hub. And in 1991, the Austin Technology Council was founded. It's spun out of the Austin Technology Incubator, which is part of the University of Texas.

David Bloxham (03:23.665)
Yeah.

Thom Singer (03:32.611)
It was spun out by several leaders, including George Kosmetsky, who was a real civic entrepreneur, who really had a vision when he moved to Austin in the 1960s as a professor and dean at the business school at UT, that Austin could attract amazing companies to do things and was really instrumental in a lot of the chip industry that came here. So in 91, the Austin Technology Council was founded with a goal, actually two goals, and that was number one, to put technology on the map.

David Bloxham (03:33.911)
Thank you.

David Bloxham (03:51.288)
Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Thom Singer (04:02.775)
as the economic driver of the future of Austin. And the second thing was to bring a fragmented, ragtag tech community together. And essentially, you could say that, not that ATC did any of it alone, but we were part of that ecosystem. Those things that we were founded to do, big checkmark in the checkbox, Austin is now one of the most dynamic cities in the entire world, when you think of a technology hub.

You have to think of Austin. So it's been a wild ride. I only joined the Austin Technology Council eight months ago, so I can't take any credit for anything that this organization has done over the 30 years that it's been here. It's gone through a lot of iterations and we're ready to go through sort of a new iteration. That's what I was brought in to do was to sort of find the new direction and reinvent the Austin Technology Council. So now is a real exciting time in the technology community in Austin, because 30 years ago we had community leaders who had a vision.

for what Austin could be. And if you really look at Austin today, we're living that Austin tech miracle that those leaders set into action. So today we're speaking those visionary leaders of today to be able to help look to where does Austin go in the next 30 years.

David Bloxham (05:17.836)
And I think, you know, for me, it's just really exciting, because even from the few times I've been there, you see it changing kind of year on year. And, you know, there's a number of different contexts. But what I mean, I'm just quite interested in therefore. So you've obviously seen those changes within Austin, and you've seen obviously the Austin

private capacity, what do you think the key factors are that that other than the vision itself, what do you think the key factors are that have really helped and driven that growth? You know, because obviously, like you said, it's a great leadership story, right? 30 years ago, someone sets out a task to become one of the most dynamic tech hubs in the world. And then 30 years later, you're like, Oh, cool. Tick in the box. So what do you think those those key categories, those key factors are that have really driven it?

Thom Singer (06:08.771)
So there are a lot of them. And if you take out any one, it might not have been enough to stop the amazing growth. But when you stitch them all together, that laid the foundation for everything. So first of all, it was those community leaders. It was George Kosmetsky, Laura Kilcrease, Carol Thompson, Pike Powers, who probably could name 30 or 40 people who back in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, looked to, where do we go next? How do we grow this community and be an attractive place for businesses to come?

David Bloxham (06:10.994)
Thank you.

David Bloxham (06:15.671)
Yeah.

Thom Singer (06:37.431)
The second thing is Texas is a pro-business state, right? There's not a lot of taxation. There's not a lot of regulation. So that was an attractive draw. Then you have things like the companies that early came here, Texas Instruments, IBM. They brought people here and continued to start what was really this migration of the brain trust that came to Austin. And then in later years, you had Tivoli and Trilogy and Dell and others who, again, were hiring in people.

with business degrees and engineering degrees from some of the top colleges in America. If you meet someone who's lived here, you know, 25 years, and they went to Carnegie Mellon or they went to Stanford or Berkeley, you know, you can pretty much find out that 20 years ago, 30 years ago, they were recruited out of their MBA program or out of engineering school to come here and be part of some of these startups and larger companies that were looking to grow their workforce here. And then you have this entrepreneurial spirit.

Austin has this drive inside of it to really be a place where you can be whoever you want. You know, Austin's a very liberal, accepting town. And so we've always been accepting of everything, whether it was business, whether it was lifestyle. Austin has always been a place where people could come and be themselves and be accepted into the community. You also then had the University of Texas, which is an amazing one, top 25 university in the United States.

that was putting out top people through their business school, their engineering school, and all their other programs. And for years, for a hundred years, people would graduate the University of Texas and wish they could stay in Austin because they had a love affair with the town. However, there wasn't a job base here back in the 60s and 70s and before. So come around 19...

David Bloxham (08:13.191)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Is it pretty much a university? Because it's the state, it's the state town, isn't it, of Texas, I think. Is that right in saying it's the kind of state capital?

Thom Singer (08:25.347)
So it is the capital of Texas. And so if you go back and look at our history, we were a government town and we were a university town. But now that has all been eclipsed by the business community. We are now a tech business town. And so again, I can keep rattling off pieces of this puzzle that were important. Our Chamber of Commerce back in the 90s really took an attitude that what can we learn from the rest of the country? And they would send the delegations out to cities like San Diego that had experienced massive growth.

David Bloxham (08:26.902)
Yeah. Yeah.

David Bloxham (08:32.33)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (08:54.679)
cities like Denver that had experienced rebuilding their downtowns, and they would look at what did these cities do when they take the best things, but while they were there, they would also meet with big companies and say, if you're looking to expand, Austin's a friendly place to come. So we have a recruiting effort that is continuing today through the chamber and through Opportunity Austin and through groups like Capital Factory and other organizations, the Austin Technology Council, who rave the flag that Austin is the place to be. So

This wasn't one group, one thing, a little thing. There were 20 different pieces to this puzzle that all came together in a perfect storm and created what we are now living in Austin, which is really an awesome, vibrant place to start a company, to move a company, to move a headquarters. I mean, look at companies like Oracle and Tesla. The list is very long that have moved their headquarters to Austin. It's a place.

where we want to be because the community is behind you and we support the growth of tech.

David Bloxham (09:55.57)
Yeah, and I guess part of the challenge of that is obviously that the the success of it means that people look at Austin and think, well, that's a good model to, to fulfill and and follow, isn't it? You know, see, there's more, there's more Austin's kind of, you know, popping up around the country. I know, kind of that was being mentioned Nashville and Charlotte and places like that, in terms of, you know, cities, states, locations that are just seeing that as a

as a way to really promote and grow their communities as well. So do you see when you see those other places, you see that as a kind of a great community. We can look at these other places. Is there a competition there?

Thom Singer (10:38.167)
You know, I don't want to say there's a competition, but for 30 years, Austin was that alternative to the Silicon Valley or other big expensive cities that if you wanted to go somewhere, Austin was that alternative. The cost of living in Austin 30 years ago was, you know, little more than half, but a grand half or two thirds of the cost of living in the places, these big cities, Boston, New York, Silicon Valley, et cetera.

David Bloxham (10:44.438)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (11:01.131)
You know, housing prices were less than half the cost of California. So there was a lot of things, no state income tax. There were a lot of things that were really attractive. So Austin was the alternative. Well, we're not the only alternative and other cities are now positioning themselves as the alternative to Austin. And this is something that as a community, we need to be aware of. And it's not competition. It's not that these other cities that you mentioned, and there's more, you know, are bad or they're trying to steal our stuff. It's that.

Austin has grown, we've matured. We now have issues around traffic. We have issues around the cost of living, the cost of housing. These things will be coming with big city, with 2.4 million people and expected to probably double again in the next 20 years. We're a pretty big city. We're one of the top, I forget the number, the top 15, 20 cities, not necessarily the whole metropolitan area, but city itself. We're a big city. If you look at the amount of people who live in the Austin city limits.

David Bloxham (11:47.185)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (11:59.115)
We have to realize that we're no longer the only alternative. There's a lot of places out there. However, what we do have is all of those little puzzle pieces and Austinites have an unnatural love affair with Austin. So people who move here, who really embrace it, and not everybody does. I've met people who've moved here who didn't like Austin, but they're the minority, sometimes they're loud about it.

David Bloxham (12:20.232)
I don't know why they would do that. I love Austin. I think it's great. Yeah.

Thom Singer (12:25.491)
Yeah, but it's Austinites have this unnatural level of effect. So we're pulling for each other. When we've gone through the sessions, you know, Austinites are out there networking, they're helping their neighbors get jobs, they're helping their friends get jobs. If somebody's trying to found a company, people are making introductions to advisors and venture capitalists and investors. So Austin is a place that if you embrace the community, the community is going to embrace you back. And that because we have become so dominated by the tech industry does make us unique.

David Bloxham (12:30.442)
Yeah.

David Bloxham (12:55.52)
Yeah. I think that's the, you know, for myself, I work in a place called Reading, which is in Berkshire, which is the west of London. And it's got a quite a vibrant tech community as well. We've got Microsoft, Oracle, et cetera, et cetera, based here.

So I always used to joke, I started in recruitment in 1996. And it was quite a good time to start an IT recruitment because all these companies are moving here so we could kind of hire and work with them. But, you know, I also have done quite a lot of work with the Chamber of Commerce in Berkshire in the past and seen the importance of it. But I think coming to a place like Austin, you can really see, you can see the difference in different places when you go there, you know, the importance of the Chamber of Commerce, the importance of...

kind of business community. And I always feel that, you know, particularly for a kind of vibrant tech community, you need those vibrant, you know, that, that vibrant platform to kind of grow from and, and particularly within Austin, I think that's the, that's the thing I've seen the most in terms of, you know, the, the power of it. And then the, the, the network that you kind of build within that. I mean, when you go to those events, people really care about it, don't you? Like you said, like people are really rooting for the cause.

Thom Singer (14:08.011)
Yeah, I actually think that, and even my words that I've taken from the work I did before joining the council, that I have taken into the council, and that is that community, collaboration, and conversation can solve all problems. And I think that's one of the reasons that Austin was able to thrive so much over the last 30 years, is we had this vibrant sense of community. People wanted to collaborate. People in some cities, larger cities, the Valley.

David Bloxham (14:15.566)
Yeah.

Thom Singer (14:34.611)
Maybe people were prejudging you based on where do you work? What's your job title? Who do you know? You know, you couldn't get through some barriers and some gatekeepers to get to see people. But Austin had this sense of community and collaboration where everybody would talk to everybody. We would have these high tech happy hours back in the 90s and you'd have, you know, venture funded founders with really successful companies. You'd have people who worked in engineering, people who worked in marketing all come together. Where do you ever see engineering and marketing at the same party? You know, but in Austin that...

David Bloxham (15:03.055)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (15:03.991)
That was part of what you saw back in the 90s. You know, the receptionist was talking to a CEO and I had a friend who founded several companies and he said, I love coming to these multi, just really eclectic networking functions because if I need a receptionist, if I ask my friend who's CEO of another company, he's never gonna say, my receptionist is great, hire her because he wants that person.

David Bloxham (15:15.558)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (15:27.639)
He said, but if I meet him at a party and I find that they've got a great spark, then I can hire them to come join my company. So that was something that was very unique about Austin 20, 30 years ago, was this just melting pot of everybody. And nobody was really prejudging you based on your pedigree or your degree or whatever. Now, as we've grown as a city, you start to see silos.

A lot of CEOs only want to go to dinners with CEOs. So their venture capitalists take out the portfolio and those CEOs are like, yeah, I go to that every month or every other month. I don't need to go to anything else. And then you find verticals of FinTech meetings and MedTech meetings. And this is important. You should get together with the people in your vertical.

David Bloxham (16:07.69)
with your closed community as it were.

Thom Singer (16:10.147)
Absolutely, but the thing that made Austin special and that I'm working to try and keep alive is we still need to have that thread that runs through everybody where people are willing to show up, whether it's all tech CEOs or whether there's some service providers and sales people there, whether it's the engineers or the marketing people, if we continue to come together and have conversations around that collaboration in that community, Austin will continue to thrive and dominate as we go into the next few decades.

David Bloxham (16:37.89)
Yeah, and that's the story really, isn't it? Let's keep doing what was worked, because this is what's kind of driven us further than other places. So what do you I mean, when you when you put together these kind of meetings and the program, as it were for the ATC, you know, what are the things that you find are the things that bind people together the most that people are the most interested in to, to kind of break down those barriers, because like you said, like it is important to have a medtech meeting or

a green tech meeting because people have a very specific than they want to talk about. So what do you try to foster in order to build a bigger group?

Thom Singer (17:14.691)
Well, the one thing I'm trying to do is take away any sense of competition between the Austin Technology Council and these other groups, right? The medtech group or the fintech groups. Instead of us trying to do, you know, medtech meetings, also, I want to support their meetings and then I want them to support ours. So we're trying to do some more general business type meetings, some high level think tank conversations with CEOs and other leaders in the community about what does the future look like.

David Bloxham (17:22.038)
Yep. Yep. Right, okay. Chill.

Thom Singer (17:43.343)
and supporting these other groups. The first thing I did when I came in is we were doing a monthly women in technology breakfast, but it wasn't really well attended. I was looking at the numbers for the previous few months. It was a lot of work for a small meeting. And there's a group in town called Austin Women in Technology that's a thriving, strong organization. So I called that program and I said, look, I'm not gonna do these anymore. I'm gonna put yours in my calendar. I'm gonna support.

women in technology because I think it's important. I think groups like this are important. You should get together with people who are like you, whatever that means. And so instead of me putting on a women's meeting, which doesn't make any sense because I'm an old guy, is I can support a group that is already thriving, tell my members about it, and I'm not at all worried that someone's going to steal my member. If Austin Technology Council does what it's supposed to do, which is to bring the whole community together.

David Bloxham (18:38.6)
Yeah, exactly.

Thom Singer (18:38.807)
then we serve a place and so do these other groups that are more tightly-mitched to a certain topic or a certain demographic. So I wanna be the place where we look to collaboration. I wanna work with the chamber. When a tech company is looking to move here, we wanna talk about what the tech community is and does. So I wanna create this thread that runs through tech that is not competing with anybody, but is lifting up and supporting everybody.

David Bloxham (18:57.014)
Yeah. Yeah, and I guess, you know,

that is the way that a real kind of community works, isn't it? You've got...

David Bloxham (19:13.762)
it doesn't, it works in a very collaborative way. And if you can get that sort of kind of collaboration between and that's sometimes different in business, isn't it? You know, you you kind of find that sometimes that in business, the battle lines are so drawn in terms of competition, and who's making more sales, and who's hiring the best people, etc, etc. But I guess it must be quite challenging sometimes to bring down those those gods, you know, I've been to many recruitment industry events where

You know, everyone's kind of hanging in their own groups, not talking to each other. So recruitment is known for being very competitive. So I think in business now, and if you can kind of set the right tone, that people will talk and will share their war stories and problems and views, won't they?

Thom Singer (19:58.247)
I believe there's a time and a place for competition, right? I mean, that's what makes, you know, a capitalist society work is, is if you can build a better mousetrap and you can get out there and create something and you can go and provide a better product or a better service, then you're going to beat the competition. And so that's, that's part of what makes this all work. But there's also a time and a place for community collaboration and conversation. And that's where a nonprofit comes in. That's where a community organization comes in. And sometimes I meet these

David Bloxham (20:21.911)
Yeah.

Thom Singer (20:26.323)
you know, entrepreneurs, oftentimes younger, who they're like, I don't join things that my grandfather joined things. So when you ask him questions about, about his grandfather and his grandfather built an entire business by being very well networked in the community, chairing the chamber of commerce, uh, you know, hiring people, when people got laid off, they would, you know, uh, in other companies, they would find jobs for them and help. And it's like your grandfather wasn't wrong. And while society has changed and we live in a digital world with likes, links, shares, and follows.

David Bloxham (20:33.042)
Yeah.

Thom Singer (20:55.747)
Spending time together and having real conversations face to face, there is still a place for that. And I often meet entrepreneurs who embrace it. And as you sit back over the years and you watch the people who embrace community, want to, you know, are willing to talk to everybody within reason. Obviously, the more famous you get, the more often your phone's going to ring. You can't meet with everybody. But when you're starting out to pretend you're busier than you are, that you can't have a coffee with somebody because you want to put out an air of, you know, oh, look how great I am.

David Bloxham (21:03.177)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (21:24.855)
Those people tend not to make it the long run, whereas the people who embrace community tend to.

David Bloxham (21:27.254)
No, no, totally. Yeah, exactly. And there's so much collaboration available. I was just while you were talking there, I was talking about the younger generation. And, you know, obviously, we've seen a building this community, which is GCS Connect, which is basically our online community of different leaders that we speak to. I mean, do you find therefore, like, you know, obviously, you know, your guy might say, I don't join anything, then you might say, but you're on TikTok, or you're on Instagram, or you're on LinkedIn. So

You are joining stuff, you're just not joining. Do you find that is a, that sort of community is something you have to embrace, but embrace in a different way, or would you prefer to say, let's meet face to face properly? Which is obviously something you can do in Austin, because it's a, for those of big places, it's a kind of smaller community, you know, you can kind of bring people together easier.

Thom Singer (22:15.491)
So first of all, I wasn't picking on the younger generation. I just was thinking of somebody in particular who happened to be, he happened to be 30 who said that to me. However, I think that in society as a whole, and especially after the pandemic, we have gotten a little bit more disconnected. And I think these online tools, using the zoom for a meeting, participating, following people on, on Tik TOK or Instagram, or, or being part of a Facebook community or a LinkedIn, LinkedIn group, I think these things are awesome.

David Bloxham (22:20.365)
Yeah.

Yeah.

David Bloxham (22:27.67)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (22:44.515)
These are tools that we can use to make, grow, and keep our business relationships. However, when I speak to groups about networking and growing community, I ask people in the audience, if they went to college or high school, who are the people you keep in touch with today? Ten years, 20 years, in some cases 40 years later? Is it people who you happen to have been in the same club with but never talked to, or you were in a class with 400 people?

David Bloxham (23:00.008)
Yep. Yeah.

Thom Singer (23:13.955)
Or the people you're still friends with today is that the people you lived in the dorms with, who you partied with, who you went on spring break with, who you were in study groups with, who were in your fraternity and sorority or your sports club or whatever. Shared experiences is how human beings build relationships and it's how we build trust. You know, I can follow you on TikTok, but it doesn't mean I'm going to trust you if I'm in need. However, if you and I have been to lunch and dinner and we've hung out, I've been to your house, then I can trust you.

David Bloxham (23:18.556)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (23:43.283)
if I have a problem or a need. And so human beings, although these digital tools have came along and they're fabulous, I love them and I use them all. They don't replace real human relationships. Someone I've never met who I'm connected to on LinkedIn in the LinkedIn world is equal to my best friend from college who is Godfather to my oldest daughter. However, the relationship looks the same on LinkedIn, but a person I've never met who I accepted their connection

five years ago, never thinks about me and I don't think about them. Where's my best friend? I talked to three days a week. You know, he's in Vietnam with his older daughter right now, traveling, checking out different parts of the world. He's trying to do different trips with each of his kids who are now adults. And even while he's in Vietnam, we're corresponding about the greatest thing he saw on the trip. I know what he's doing today. I don't know what some random link on LinkedIn is doing today. So

David Bloxham (24:16.357)
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

David Bloxham (24:39.458)
That's right. Yeah because if you look at something like Austin is a success story that's been based like you said on 30-40 leaders that probably met on a weekly basis that

Thom Singer (24:40.331)
That's, we have to get back to remembering you can't have best friend relationships with everybody. You can only have a small inner circle. But if you cultivate that inner circle to where they know who you are, they can help you, they got your back, it'll change the trajectory of your life and your career.

David Bloxham (25:05.39)
shared ideas that trusted each other and wanted to grow something kind of bigger. And I think, you know, for me, I see social media as a great way to kind of, you know, bring people into this conversation, but it's not the conversation, you know, that you, you know, we find that, you know, these types of conversations, right, this is a conversation that people are much more interested in than a status we post about, you know, we're just about to open up our office in Austin or something, you know, we're supposed to expand, like...

know, these are the things that people buy into, because they want to hear what people really think rather than, you know, the status that someone puts up that that probably isn't them, if you know what I mean. And I think it's really interesting, because I guess, you know, for me, like you talk about challenges, that's, that's something that's changed quite a lot since the pandemic. And when we when we talked about putting this conversation together is, is obviously something for Austin, we talked about cost of living, you talked about, you know, you know, the traffic problems, that sort of thing.

Then we get into something which I know you're quite kind of passionate about, which is kind of, you know, you know, hybrid working, virtual working, that sort of thing, which, which can kind of, you know, in some ways, I was up in London today, which is why I've got my suit on. So I've got my London suit on, I've decided when I go to London, I'm going to wear the suit because we go to the city and everyone's there, but it can really rip out the heart of an office community, can't it, you know, if there's no one going in on a Monday or Friday and everyone's working from home.

And that vibrant Austin that I know can be quite, can be quite high and harmed, can't it? You know, you haven't got those opportunities to meet.

Thom Singer (26:43.811)
So this whole concept of hybrid work, remote work, or in-person work, it depends who you talk to. And people are very passionate about whatever they believe is the right answer. What I have seen from talking to hundreds, yeah, well, that's probably true with everything in society, right? My belief is right. You certainly see it in politics. I'm right. You're wrong. But I've talked to, since I took this job, I probably took to 150 leaders in the tech community here in Austin.

David Bloxham (26:58.202)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, as usual.

Thom Singer (27:12.063)
And I've asked many of them about this. What are your thoughts? And the answers are on all three, hybrid, remote, and in-person. And it depends who you talk to and how they believe in. So I think there's not a wrong answer. It's what works for your company. There's a lot of examples of companies that were founded 10 years ago, before the pandemic, who have been fully distributed teams, fully remote the whole time, and they work and they're successful and they're making money and they have good culture.

David Bloxham (27:12.078)
Mm. Mm. Yep. Mm. No. Mm. Yep. Mm.

Thom Singer (27:41.143)
You have other examples of people who had face-to-face businesses, and their culture has been hurt because of remote work. And so they're trying to figure out how do we fix that. And then you have others who have done hybrid and it's worked well, and then you can mix that up into any other way where things have worked or haven't worked. My belief is that people need to feel connectedness. They need to feel a belonging to their team. And so you can find ways to do that without having everybody come to the office every single day. But if you ignore it,

then that's where you find people who leave, who quit, who don't feel it was a good fit. And that's why you have a lot of churn. So the answer is culture. I talked to one pretty popular, I won't say who, because I don't know if I have permission to share this story, but one successful entrepreneur in town who was before the pandemic, all about everybody being in the office. He built several companies and it was about that culture of everybody being in the office. During the pandemic, they started hiring people outside of Austin. Some of their people decided to relocate to less expensive places.

He said, so he's gone to a fully remote work staff and he goes, all of his friends think he's saving all this money on office space, but he still needs office space because a lot of the people still live here and want to come in a few days a week, so he still needs office space and he flies everyone in and I think it's close to 400 employees now and the ones who don't live here, he puts them up in a nice hotel every quarter because he needs the teams to get together face to face. He wants that culture.

David Bloxham (28:47.68)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (29:08.203)
And he needs them to put on a party for everybody. And if you take 400 people out to the Salt Lake, you know, for a party, that's not inexpensive. So he says to build culture in a remote and hybrid work world, it's not inexpensive because you have to bring everybody together. You have to do things. You know, a Slack channel does not make up for going to lunch with a coworker a couple of times a year. So, you know, I don't think there's a right answer. If your team is thriving fully remote, that's the right answer.

If your team needs to come together to be able to collaborate and get work done, that's the right answer. And one story I tell is a young, uh, young professional who I know is a big introvert. He's brilliant. He's, he's one of the most brilliant, you know, mathematician minds you'll ever meet in the world and, and is, is known as such. And his company requires him to go to the office four days a week. And I said, boy, I bet you hate that having to go in.

David Bloxham (29:36.265)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (30:02.827)
And he said, I love it. And I'm like, why would you, the biggest introvert I know, why would you love going in? And he said, it's the collaboration. He said, when he's working on a problem, trying to dissect the data by himself and he needs to talk to somebody, when they were remote because of the pandemic, he'd have to go on the Slack channel, find someone who was available, set up an appointment, get on Zoom, try to share the problem over Zoom, and it would take forever. He said, now in the office, he walks in someone's office, takes out a pen, goes to the whiteboard.

writes out his problem of the data he's researching, and the person looks up on the board and goes, have you tried this? And they go up and together, they move Xs and Ys around, and then they're laughing about it, and they've solved the problem in 15 minutes. So he said that as a data person and as a researcher, he's really a creative. And he goes, when you're a creative, oftentimes you meet other people in the process. So he actually likes going in for that collaboration piece.

David Bloxham (30:48.786)
Yeah. To help you. Yeah, exactly. And I think it goes back to what you were just saying there about the events and the meetups, isn't it? You know, you.

you know, yes, we can do stuff over social media, but we can do different types of things when we meet face to face. Yes, we can know, resort in recruitment, you you can sit and talk to candidates maybe more easily if you're sat in your, in your office at home, but to do a sales day when you're reaching out to clients is much better to have the atmosphere around you have, you know, you know, tens of other people making the same call. So if you're getting

Like a bad call, you can turn around and like, you know, they'll put you on the back and it's okay, guys, go again, you know, you need that, don't you?

Thom Singer (31:32.907)
Well, and one other thing I'd like to share on this topic is about a year ago, I got a call from a friend of mine who said, would you talk to my son? And his son, who was in his thirties was passed over for a promotion and he lived out in California, worked for a tech company. And during the pandemic, they had said, we're going a hundred percent remote. So he moved his family to his cabin in Tahoe because he thought it would be a better place to raise the kids. And all of a sudden, a year and a half later,

David Bloxham (31:55.302)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Last one.

Thom Singer (31:59.111)
A promotion came up that had been sort of a wink, wink, nudge, nudge. You're going to get the promotion. And I went to somebody else and he asked his boss and he said, well, she's in the office, you know, she's here every day. And he goes, you told me I wouldn't be penalized for moving to the mountains. And the boss said, you're not penalized, but you don't get the promotion. And so now he's moving his family back to the Valley because he loves his company. He loves the job, but he realizes that for his career path that he wants, he needs.

David Bloxham (32:27.015)
you gotta be in there everything yeah yeah no and I think that's a really good point hmm yep

Thom Singer (32:28.131)
people need to know them. So it's up to the individual. Yeah, it's up to the individual and the company, but we can't pretend that you don't, that it's not an advantage to being able to go to lunch with your boss every week than if you live on the other side of the country. The advantage goes to the person who they know, because the old cliche, people do business with people they know, like, and trust is still true, and that's true with internal politics at work, but it's also true

with a community, right? People support the people they know they're like and they trust. And that's why in a community like Austin, we need to keep that thread pulling everybody together so that people know who each other are so that we can support each other in good times and in bad.

David Bloxham (33:08.194)
Yeah. And when you're walking down, you know, walking down the street, you're in a bar or something, you've met this person at an event and then you're like, Oh, hi, how are you? And like, you know, share a drink.

share a kind of a bit of a gossip, that sort of thing. That's what you really want in that sort of community. And that's the sort of kind of feeling that I've got when I've been there is that it's quite close, even though it's a very, very big place.

Thom Singer (33:33.431)
Yeah. Shared experiences are how we build relationships and meeting someone once, whether it's in person or online, meeting someone once doesn't make them part of your network. It makes them someone you have met once. And there is a big difference between someone you've met once and someone who you've cultivated a long-term and mutually beneficial relationship with. And so that's why community means interaction.

David Bloxham (34:00.818)
Yeah, for sure. And is this the sort of like when you're thinking about the programme for the Austin Tech Council, you know, do you do you listen to feedback from the community on what this sort of events you should do? Or do you?

Do you put together a program of what you think? Like the things we've just talked about, these are the sort of things that people want to talk about, you know, that you put those forward. I mean, how are you driven with those sort of decisions?

Thom Singer (34:24.418)
So both, like I said, I'm trying to have a lot of listening meetings where I bring different people in the community together and say, what should ATC be doing? I've asked, I've met with 150 leaders, I've done a couple of like round table think tanks and I ask and I listen for patterns so that we can create some sort of a learning event around a topic that's drawing to people. The other thing is because of my background as a professional speaker, I have a lot of friends who are big time speakers who...

David Bloxham (34:33.115)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Thom Singer (34:52.735)
get paid a lot of money to come into companies. Well, as a nonprofit, I don't have any money to pay them to come in, but a lot of them are my friends and so I've been able to get, I've been able to.

David Bloxham (34:59.736)
That's right, there's a good business in the trust, mutual trust, there you go.

Thom Singer (35:04.607)
I have that mutual trust and long-term relationship. And I've been able to get some speakers, both locally and nationally, who a nonprofit would never be able to afford. But they're going to be in Austin. And so I build an event because they're here or, you know, I just ask for the favor. And so we've had some really amazing programming for people who you'd have to pay $10,000 to have them speak to your company. And we've had the opportunity to have them

David Bloxham (35:30.865)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, that sets the next 20 years up. So you talk there about the...

Thom Singer (35:33.451)
you know, come in and do a presentation. And I don't know that people really realize how fortunate we've been with some of the people who we've had speak, but, you know, using my network, I'm trying to get really good business conversations started.

David Bloxham (35:52.13)
the vision that someone might have had in 1991. And then if you talk about your new role coming in and maybe rebuilding that vision for us. So what are the main priorities for you maybe over the next few years, as you see us kind of coming out of the pandemic and viewing like the kind of the economic situation, what do you really want to achieve from your role?

Thom Singer (36:13.603)
Well, I want the Austin Technology Council to go back to being a grassroots organization because when it started, and I remember when it started, you know, it was made up of a handful of, of really ambitious and community oriented entrepreneurs, visionaries who were looking to the future and, you know, it wasn't about necessarily the events. It wasn't about the, uh, you know, uh,

you know, how many members did you have or who were the members or who were the sponsors? It was really about the visionaries coming together and looking to the future. So I'm trying to bring it back to basics. I really want it to be a place where some of these visionaries say, we can come and talk about these ideas and then implement those ideas directly or indirectly through the tool of the Austin Technology Council because I won't be in this role forever. And, you know, but the entrepreneurs who lead the community, if they're, you know, young and up and coming and ambitious,

and aggressive and they really care about the next 30 years of Austin. You know, I mean, we have some board members who've been part of this organization for 20 years. That's what I want is to find the people who want to be that foundation of Austin tech and to share ideas for the next 20 years. So I don't know what that looks like. I'm not smart enough. I'm, I will be the first one to tell you that I'm not smart enough to come up with any of the answers. And so I need that grassroots support to be able to get the vision.

David Bloxham (37:36.018)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, that that's the sort of thing that you're going to build in that conversation, building that new vision is going to, you know, like you said, like continue kind of Austin's success over that, you know, maybe even get Austin to have two roads, you know, how exciting would that be?

Thom Singer (37:52.763)
Well, what gets nonprofit organizations, community organizations, and companies into trouble is when the leader pretends they're more than they are, either as the leader themselves or the organization, the company, when they pretend they're more successful or they pretend they have more influence or they pretend they make more money, have more clients, or they pretend they have more influence in the community from the standpoint of it. I don't want to say, this is what we are. I want other people to say.

David Bloxham (38:02.688)
Yeah, yeah.

Thom Singer (38:21.643)
That is what you are. I want the community to determine who we are and where we go.

David Bloxham (38:25.605)
Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, we've talked to a lot of leaders, you know, and I think that's one of the key things. Sometimes that humility, isn't it? You know, I'm

I'm here to drive the conversation. I'm here to put people's visions together to make a vision, but to not listen and not drive that vision. And I think, you know, we always speak to excellent leaders. And I think that understanding of you're kind of almost a conduit for the vision, the communal vision, is the right way to think about it.

And it sounds like you've got that kind of that vision yourself, Tom. So so you know, as you kind of, you know, think about that kind of, you know, Austin itself, you know, my last question for you really is, you know, what do you feel, you know, when you when you're thinking about kind of the coming years are your kind of real worries that obviously there's a lot of talk at the moment about the economy and that sort of thing and the problems in the tech community. Are you quite

You got positive, you know, in the long run, if you know what I mean, about what's happening.

Thom Singer (39:33.655)
Yeah, I'm bullish on the future of Austin. I think that, you know, there's going to be some bumps in the road. There have been over the last 30 years, 50 years, whatever. I think that, you know, nobody knows what's going to happen with the economy, right? They've been predicting a major recession, like big time for the last year and a half. And the can keeps getting kicked down the road. Is it going to happen? Is it not going to happen? I'm not an economist. I can't tell you. I do know that we need to be ready for, you know, this. I mentor some younger people.

David Bloxham (39:41.878)
Hmm.

David Bloxham (39:51.099)
Yeah.

Thom Singer (40:03.427)
who are in their late 20s and early 30s. And I remind them that, you know, they say, I got this great job, my company's going to go public. This one guy, he was like, oh, you know, we have a hundred million dollars in venture funding. So we're totally going to go public. And I'm like, do you know how many companies that get venture funding actually go public? It's a small number. And he was like, yeah, but he didn't, even working in tech, he didn't realize that most tech companies don't ever have a giant exit. And so I encourage him as an individual to have an emergency fund. I go, look, you're doing great in sales.

David Bloxham (40:20.36)
Yeah, yeah.

Thom Singer (40:33.163)
But the company could collapse tomorrow and no one's going to tell the sales guy company is going to collapse in a month. And I go and you'll get blindsided. So you want to have some emergency money set aside for a plan B. I think that's true for a company, for a community is we have to be ready for some hard time so that we can weave our way through them. But I believe that, like I said before, Austinites have this unnatural love affair with Austin. Austinites care about Austin.

For the most part, we are still a very friendly, opening, welcoming town where we don't prejudge people can come in and meet with just about anybody in town. It may be a little more complicated than it was 20 years ago, but you still can come in and you can move here without any ties into the community and have a leadership role. Yeah. And have a leadership role in just a few years if you're willing to serve. So I think, I think Austin's going to be fine. I think we're going to continue to be the city.

David Bloxham (41:16.97)
become part of the community.

Thom Singer (41:27.671)
that everybody looks to as this miracle of what we created over 30 years. But it's not going to come easy. We need to get back to having this sense of community conversation and collaboration.

David Bloxham (41:36.299)
last week.

David Bloxham (41:40.078)
Brilliant, fantastic. Well, Tom, you know, that I think obviously is great to find out more about Austin. It's great to find out more about the community. But I hope anyone listening today and believe me, what I've been to Austin itself, and it's definitely there. But I think it's great for any community, any business leader in any any any location to hear those is great piece of advice and try to implement them themselves. So thank you very much. Yes.

Thom Singer (42:02.303)
And check out our podcast. Our Austin Tech Connect podcast is, I've interviewed now like 25 entrepreneurs and community leaders about their story, their journey, their success, but also their thoughts about the future of Austin. So if you wanna learn more about what's in store, what is the vibe of the future of Austin, go listen to Austin Tech Connect.

David Bloxham (42:25.251)
Fantastic. And we'll put all the links up on the on the socials as it were. So to kind of get send you in the right direction. So thank you very much today, Tom. It's been great to speak to you. Have a wonderful day. And I'm sure I'm sure it'll be a very successful period for us then. Thank you very much.

Thom Singer (42:41.379)
Thank you.