josh-rubinThis week, We Are Austin Tech features an interview with Josh Rubin, who can often be found covering startup events throughout the city for CNN.
Rubin runs the CNN Express Bus, a broadcast-ready mobile news bureau.
During his interview, Rubin discusses the coverage of technology in Austin and says it’s not where he thinks it should be. We couldn’t agree more at Silicon Hills News. That’s why we’re working to close the gap and bring more startup news to the Austin and San Antonio region.
That’s why organizations like We Are Austin Tech are vital to shining a spotlight on the innovators in the technology industry locally.
“I think there is over emphasis in America on the tech scenes of New York and Silicon Valley,” Rubin says in the interview. “I understand why it is, I understand that’s where the critical mass is. I’m not interested that. I think there is more fire in the middle of the country right now.”
Rubin also talks about how difficult it is for a startup to get national press and how the best stories bubble up through a network. That’s also why social media is so important in keeping an audience informed of a startup’s activities and progress. It’s easy to get buried in a fox hole and code, code, code until the cows come home. But it’s equally as important to go to the coffee machine and talk to other like minded individuals. Attend a few of the high tech happy hours and schmooze with other startups. You never know who you might meet and how they might positively impact your business.
Rubin also mentions Geekdom, which shows the cross-pollination going on among the two largest cities that make up this thriving technology region.
“The best piece of advice I was ever given for new ideas and for startups was… I was reporting… I was down at Geekdom, which is an incubator down in San Antonio.And I walk in there and I’m meeting all of these different companies, and I walk in and this one company is telling absolutely everything about their business: who they’re funded by, who their competitors are, what they do, how they do it. And I pause for a second and I say “Guys, thank you, but aren’t you concerned about intellectual property, aren’t you concerned about piracy?” Rubin says in the interview. “And they said no, flat out. Piracy is not the issue in startups. Obscurity is the issue in startups. You need to tell people what you do, you need to tell everybody what you do and you need to be telling them that all the time.”