Technical Thinking For Teams That Build Things

Austin has two AI economies, and most businesses only hear about one of them.

The visible one makes headlines: Tesla's autonomy work, Oracle's AI infrastructure push, the venture-backed startups pitching foundation-model plays at Capital Factory. That economy is real, well-funded, and almost entirely irrelevant to what your business should build.

The second economy is quieter and far more useful. It's the SaaS company on the Domain whose AI support agent now resolves 70% of tier-1 tickets. The Central Texas health system automating prior authorization paperwork. The fintech running LLM-powered compliance review. The logistics operator on the I-35 corridor whose demand forecasting quietly cut inventory carrying costs by double digits.

That second economy is applied AI — proven models pointed at expensive, repetitive work. Its build costs collapsed over the past three years, its ROI math got short, and it's now firmly mid-market accessible.