I’m on the flight back from Austin, and I’m still buzzing. Three days, three very different stages, one spool of Galvorn fiber, and more BBQ than any responsible CEO should probably admit to eating.
Three years ago I wrote about my first SXSW experience, and Austin left enough of an impression that I’ve been looking for an excuse to return ever since. This year, DexMat gave me three of them — and the city delivered on every count.
Running Into Austin
Before anything else: the weather was perfect. I ran along Lady Bird Lake every morning, which is my preferred way to both clear my head and earn whatever I’m about to eat. On Friday morning, I was joined by one of our investors, Anthony Del Porto of Betterway, for a run-and-talk that I’d take over talking business during golf any day of the week.
What made it especially meaningful is that Anthony and I first crossed paths two years ago at DexMat’s Run For Carbon during Houston Energy & Climate Week. There is something beautifully full-circle about building an investor relationship that started on foot and continues on foot. Running is honest. You can’t hide behind a PowerPoint deck or a carefully arranged pitch room when you’re both gasping for air. I’d argue it’s one of the more authentic ways to get to know someone.
I also managed to reconnect with Austin friends and colleagues I hadn’t seen since my last visit three years ago. There’s a particular joy in picking up a conversation exactly where you left it — a testament to the relationships that outlast any single conference.
Thursday: Science Fair of the Texas Futures Summit
My first official event was the Science Fair component of the Texas Futures Summit, where DexMat was among the companies showcasing at the intersection of deep technology and the future of Texas’s economy. As always, the spool of Galvorn fiber is a better conversation starter than any slide deck. People want to touch it. They’re surprised by how soft it is. They’re amazed by how light it is. And then you tell them it’s stronger than steel and as conductive as copper, and you watch the mental math happen in real time.
Texas is a natural home for this conversation. The energy, defense, and industrial ecosystems here are exactly the industries where Galvorn can have the most transformative impact. Every handshake and business card exchanged Thursday was a reminder that the commercialization journey is fundamentally a people journey.
I also had the honor of meeting the legendary Bob Metcalfe — inventor of Ethernet and recipient of the 2022 Turing Award. He was suitably impressed by Galvorn as the material poised to enable the next generation of Ethernet cable — stronger, lighter, and more conductive than copper. When the inventor of Ethernet leans in to look more closely at your fiber, that’s a moment you remember.
Saturday: Capital Factory’s Top Secret Salon
Saturday brought me to Capital Factory‘s Top Secret Salon, a curated gathering of defense and dual-use startups, investors, and customers. It’s exactly the kind of room where Galvorn’s properties — extreme strength, light weight, electrical conductivity, flexibility — generate real, substantive conversation rather than polite interest.
Defense and dual-use applications are an important part of DexMat’s near-term market strategy, and rooms like this are where relationships that lead to serious offtake conversations begin. I can’t share details, but I left with more business cards than I had talking points, which is always a good sign. Kudos to Capital Factory, which has developed a truly vibrant venture ecosystem in Austin.
And speaking of futuristic technologies, I took Waymo autonomous vehicles for most of my rides around Austin. The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed — and in Austin, it distributed me around town quite well.
Friday: Lights, Camera, Galvorn — Meet The Drapers
The centerpiece of the trip — and the reason this post is longer than usual — was Friday’s taping of an episode of Meet The Drapers, the venture-focused reality TV series featuring Tim Draper and family. Think Shark Tank, but with a deep focus on startups that are genuinely trying to change the world.
I’ll be honest: I have never done anything like this before. I’ve pitched in boardrooms, on stages, in Zoom squares, and in stairwells (see: my London trip), but a reality TV taping was a new frontier entirely.
DexMat was selected as one of four finalists from hundreds of applicants — a process that involved two virtual pitches over the preceding weeks. I can’t reveal anything about the outcome until the episode releases this fall, but I can tell you that the experience was everything I hoped it would be: energizing, unexpected, and a little surreal.
Beyond the episode taping itself, the producers collected extensive background video on each contestant. They asked me to choose an Austin location that was special to me — and the answer was obvious.
Franklin BBQ
Franklin Barbecue — the James Beard Award-winning, perpetually-lined, objectively transcendent BBQ institution on East 11th Street — is the one Austin destination I have written about with genuine reverence on this blog. When the production team asked where I wanted to film, I didn’t hesitate. Franklin was extraordinarily accommodating, and they set us up with a loaded tray of brisket, ribs, and all the trimmings. I ate a little, but shared most of it with the crew. They say the camera adds 10 lbs, so I didn’t need any extra help from Franklin!
Sitting at Franklin — with a camera pointed at me, a tray of some of the world’s best BBQ in front of me, and the smell of post oak smoke in the air — I told the stories that have shaped me as an entrepreneur. Here is a version of what I shared:
Moonshots and the Museum
I grew up in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, where my mother worked — ultimately becoming Chair of the Department of Space History. Going into work with her meant being surrounded by the artifacts of humanity’s greatest achievements: the Friendship 7 capsule, the Apollo lunar module, the Spirit of St. Louis. These weren’t just objects. They were evidence that imagination, courage, and relentless execution could bend the arc of history.
I think imagination is one of the most underappreciated drivers of human achievement. When we fail to solve the world’s hardest problems, these are often failures of imagination — artificially constraining our solution space by thinking inside the box. As astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison has said: “If you can dream it, believe it, and work hard for it, anything is possible.”
My parents were the first inspiration. Both grew up in families of extremely modest means in Hot Springs, Arkansas — a great town, full of great people — but they saw the trajectories around them and aspired for lives of greater adventure and impact. They saw education as their ticket to a bigger stage, and, with each degree, they stepped into wider and wider circles of impact. My mother’s journey from a small town in rural America to one of the most significant, popular museums in the world is, to me, one of the great entrepreneurial stories of all time — even if she’d never use that word for it.
My father’s story is one of resilience. He was diagnosed with cancer when I was just born and given six months to live. He fought like hell, participating in experimental treatments across the country, and bought himself ten more years — enough for me to get to know him. His treatments contributed to scientific progress that has since saved millions of lives; what was a death sentence for him is now a treatable cancer with a survival rate exceeding 90%. He showed me what it looks like to devote yourself to others even when times are hardest for yourself.
Rice, Football, and a Nobel Laureate
Having grown up inspired by literal moonshots, when I had the opportunity to play college football, I chose Rice University. At Rice I got to play the sport I loved every day on the very field and in the very stadium where John F. Kennedy gave his famous moon speech in 1962. “But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? . . . Why does Rice play Texas?”
Playing football at Rice (and, before that, at TJHSST) was a moonshot! Every time we took the field, we were the underdog. Nobody expected us to win. But through creative strategy, hard work, and disciplined execution, we found ways to win more often than not. That maps almost perfectly to entrepreneurship: the odds are always against you, but with the right team, the right motivation, and relentless execution, you can change the world.
At Rice, I had the fortune to attend a talk that changed everything. Nobel Laureate Rick Smalley gave his famous “Be a scientist; save the world” talk, arguing that if you could solve the energy and climate challenge, the solutions to almost every other major human problem — food, water, disease, equality — would follow. It was an epiphanic moment. I dedicated my career to making a significant, positive impact on energy and climate from that day forward.
In a full-circle moment that still gives me chills: I am now CEO of DexMat, where our material, Galvorn, was co-invented by Rick Smalley himself. Like my father, he was taken from us too soon by cancer. Carrying forward his scientific legacy — translating his breakthrough into exponentially scaling real-world impact — is among the great honors of my life.
Failing Forward
I should tell the complete story, though — because it isn’t a straight line from Rice football field to reality TV taping.
As I moved from software into hard tech, I had a very first-hand lesson in why they call it “hard.” Entrepreneurs sign up for a high risk of failure, but, when one of my ventures in particular failed, it really hurt. I was all-in — and many of my investors were friends, colleagues, even family. The timing made it worse: we had just had our first baby, my partner was in grad school, and suddenly I was facing significant financial pressure having just lost a large portion of our net worth. I fell into a depression. I questioned whether I had what it took to make the impact I had spent my career pursuing. I wasn’t eating. I was losing weight for probably the first time in my life. The pandemic hit around the same time, and it would have been easy to stay secluded and wallow.
But my family needed me. And — not to be melodramatic — the climate needed me. I thought about my parents, who had faced far more significant adversity than a startup failure and had not become quitters. It reminded me of getting knocked flat on the football field in front of your teammates and the entire crowd. The greatest moments of growth over my football career weren’t the touchdowns; they were the moments of figuring out whether you had what it took to get back up and keep fighting.
So, call by call, meeting by meeting, I put myself back out there. And the response humbled me beyond measure. My family and friends didn’t disown me — their love was unconditional. My teammates were eager to collaborate again. My mentors challenged me to apply my learnings and have even greater impact on my next shot on goal. My investors made introductions and committed to reinvest in whatever I did next. I felt, as corny as it sounds, like Superman healing in the warm glow of Earth’s yellow sun.
I returned to the climate fight with greater determination than before. I co-founded Third Derivative to address exactly the commercialization challenges I had faced — and rapidly built it into the largest climatetech innovation ecosystem in the world, having now helped mobilize more than $4 billion into nearly 300 deep-tech climate ventures.
And then came DexMat. And Galvorn. And a tray of Franklin brisket. And a camera crew.
I can’t tell you how the Meet The Drapers episode ends. You’ll have to watch this fall. But I can tell you that sharing these stories — both the triumphant and the painful — was a lot of fun. And the other entrepreneurs competing were top-notch, with very compelling ventures – it was an honor to stand beside them.
The demand for high-performance, sustainable materials is real and growing. Our customers are proving it. The investors are leaning in. And now, apparently, so is primetime television.
More soon. 🚀
Have you visited Franklin BBQ? Seen an episode of Meet The Drapers? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
Your parents achieved more than degrees when they had you ♥️
Stop It! I’m not crying; you’re crying!