Mucker Capital hosted two powerful days of programming during Austin Tech Week, bringing together founders, operators, and growth leaders to share real-world insights from the startup trenches. Across four sessions, we explored what it takes to build and scale in today’s AI-driven, fast-moving environment.
Day 1 Oct 20, 2025 – Startup Founder Stories: Live & Uncut
Slides For Day 1 Sessions:
We kicked off Austin Tech Week with an afternoon focused on the founder journey – the mindset shifts, tough pivots, and hard-won lessons that come with building from 0 to 1.
The day began with a presentation from Chris Sheng on “What Does It Take to Be a Founder?”, unpacking the transition from an executive mindset to a true founder mentality. This session dove into the personal side of entrepreneurship – the persistence, resilience, and decision-making that define early-stage success.
We did not record this session but we did record this same presentation at LA Tech Week, which you can view here: Executive-to-Founder: What Does It Take
We then moved into “Building From 0–1: Early Stage Founders,” a live and unfiltered panel featuring Austin-based founders Nathan Latka (FounderPath), Tom Bachar (StreamFunds), Neeraj Sangal (SureSteps), and Nick Hellman (Keyveve), moderated by Mucker’s own Jon Broscious.
We did not record this session but we did record this similar presentation at LA Tech Week, which you can view here: Building From 0–1: Early Stage Founder Panel
Thank you to our sponsor Venture Best.
Day 2 Oct 21, 2025 – Stay Scrappy & Scale: GTM Playbooks for Early-Stage B2B Startups
Slides For Day 2 Sessions:
Our second day zeroed in on go-to-market (GTM) growth strategies for early-stage B2B startups – featuring practical frameworks and real-world lessons from Mucker’s resident growth experts.
We started with Tony Yang’s session on the Buyer Journey Framework, where Tony broke down how startups can align messaging, content, and sales efforts around how buyers actually make decisions – not just internal funnel metrics. Attendees walked away with a practical map for building messaging that resonates and a GTM motion that converts.
Here are the Buyer Journey Framework and the Content Audit / Asset Map templates that Tony shared during the presentation.
We did not record this session but we did record this same presentation at LA Tech Week, which you can view here: Buyer Journey Framework recording from LA Tech Week.
Next, Chris Sheng led a session on “GTM in the Age of AI,” unpacking which tools are truly transforming go-to-market and which are just hype. With over a decade in GTM and experience advising 500+ founders, Chris shared hard-earned insights on optimizing the three pillars of GTM – channel, messaging, and audience.
We did not record this session but we did record this same presentation at LA Tech Week, which you can view here: Stay Scrappy & Scale: GTM in the Age of AI.
Thank you to our sponsors JPMorgan and Venture Best.
