The Echoes and Rhymes of 1920s Paris in Austin Today
If it’s the last thing I do, I will banish Silicon Hills to a historical footnote. Not Austin but Silicon Hills. And the same goes for Silicon Alley, Silicon Beach, Silicon Slopes and every other knock-off Silicon Valley derivative moniker.
We tell startups not to define themselves as the Uber for X or the Anduril for Y because the Uber for X is Uber and Anduril for Y is Anduril.
Mike Maples in his book Pattern Breakers describes his concept of Founder-Future Fit. I think the idea can also be stretched to ecosystem-future fit.
Founder-Future Fit means a founder or startup team aligns more authentically with a radically different future than anyone else. This alignment brings great advantages. Authentic and practical passion for future technologies enables founders to discover insights ahead of the curve and grasp vital details overlooked by others. This greatly contributes to uncovering ideas with groundbreaking potential. This authenticity also draws in early customers, investors, and believers. Which gives the startup the edge over its competitors in achieving product-market fit first.
An innovation ecosystem has a breakthrough when its underlying first principles, unique resources, and ecosystem-future fit align with the macro inflections taking place. It happened in Renaissance Florence, Industrial Age Manchester, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley.
Austin’s First Principles
I was recently having a coffee conversation with a few local builders laying out my mental model for the region’s first principles.
"Austin combines three elements," I explained. "Modern Silicon Valley, 1950s Detroit, and 1920s Paris. Digital tech, physical and industrial innovation at scale, and a mixture of creatives and intellectuals."
While I have voiced my disdain for the knockoff monikers or X for Y, there is power in metaphor. I understand I’m walking a tightrope.
My companion approved of the framework. Then came the question that stopped me in my tracks and sent me down a rabbit hole: "How do we actually create a 1920s Paris in Austin beyond just saying there is a vibe?"
If the city is to truly embody the spirit of 1920s Paris, how do you build it and allow it to grow organically?
What Every Innovation Ecosystem Needs
Thriving innovation ecosystems share certain foundational elements:
Talent Critical Mass: Founders, innovators, and funders; the builders of what’s next. Add storytellers and philosophers, and you have a complete ecosystem. I plan to explore this three persona framework in much greater depth in a future essay.
Expanding Luck Surface Area: Creating opportunities for talent to connect serendipitously, sparking unexpected collaborations.
Creative Collisions: Encouraging the convergence of people and ideas to ignite innovation.
Austin already possesses these traits, but fragmentation is holding it back. This fragmentation exists across multiple axes.
“New” vs. “Old”: Some long-tenured residents and organizations resist the city’s evolution, creating unnecessary friction.
Within-Sector Fragmentation: The Bio & Health sector is a perfect example of this. Despite its growing prominence, its lack of connective tissue creates the false impression that it’s small and underfunded.
Mechanics of 1920s Paris
Paris in the 1920s flourished due to four interrelated dynamics that functioned both as internal connective tissue and a magnetic pull to outsiders.
1. Place
Neighborhoods like Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés, along with iconic cafes such as La Rotonde and Café de Flore served as specific spots that were both welcoming yet distinct gathering places. Everyone knew this was where the intellectual and artistic exchange was happening. It didn’t matter if you were Picasso or a yet undiscovered painter, you could just show up. Cafes had a certain feel and sense to them fitting the time, place, and people.
Danny Crichton of Lux Capital was my guest on the podcast a few months back and his story about paint shops being open at 4AM nails the connection between place and ecosystem.
2. Informal Networks
Ernest Hemingway's Circle, Gertrude Stein's Salons, and similar gatherings provided ample opportunities for creative collisions among artists, writers, and thinkers. The power of these networks is they were simultaneously loose and tight. Some operated like short-term workshops or mastermind groups, where members refined their craft and elevated each other's work. Others were all about the serendipity of new people and fresh ideas.
In Paul Graham’s Cities and Ambition, he writes about the quality of eavesdropping and its importance to a city.
A friend who moved to Silicon Valley in the late 90s said the worst thing about living there was the low quality of the eavesdropping. At the time I thought she was being deliberately eccentric. Sure, it can be interesting to eavesdrop on people, but is good quality eavesdropping so important that it would affect where you chose to live? Now I understand what she meant. The conversations you overhear tell you what sort of people you're among.
It’s in these informal networks where all the eavesdropping is happening and the true flavor of the ecosystem emerges.
3. Formal Networks
Workshops, lectures, and exhibits provided structured opportunities for knowledge sharing and showcasing talent. These could have ranged from pop-ups to weekly performances to gigantic festivals. These weren't just events, but institutions reinforcing the city's identity as a creative capital.
4. Communication Pathways
Magazines and newspapers amplified the ideas and creations of Paris' intellectuals, broadening their reach and influence. These weren't merely publications, but cultural artifacts that documented and shaped the intellectual movement of the era.
Bringing 1920s Paris to Austin
The key again is to learn and apply the lessons without trying to be a pale facsimile of the original. I have dubbed one of the region’s superpowers “The power of And.” We are a convergence hub, so the question is how do we bring together the creative, artistic, and intellectual vibrancy with tech and industrial innovation.
It’s not as simple as saying “We are the group that connects everyone.” Do you have the right to say that? Should any such group even exist. Like many ecosystems, Austin has crossed a certain scale threshold, so what binds the community is an idea. Everyone can’t fit one space in one given moment; it’s simply too large.
Can you imagine the entirety of Silicon Valley, Boston, or New York, being in a single spot within their ecosystem? And this isn’t just a superstar problem. Could you put all of San Diego, Miami, Nashville, Chicago, or Seattle in a single organization either?
At a certain point in a city’s evolution, there is a Cambrian explosion bringing both specialization and siloing. Connectivity channeling the 1920s Paris vibe needs to cut from a different axis line weaving threads across the silos.
I have found several new initiatives and spaces that embody the vibe and are trying to weave those threads.
1. Place
Arena Hall functions as a modern salon, hosting events that attract thinkers, creators, and builders.
The University of Austin is not only building a new university, but bringing back civil discourse directly to the public with the launch of the Austin Union. Past debates have included “Is Originalism a viable method to secure the common good?”; “Does artificial intelligence mean the end of human creativity in the music industry?”; “Is electoral government the optimal path to preserve capitalism?” and “Is the Middle East strategically important?"
2. Informal Networks
Every Saturday morning The BoardWalks brings together the most eclectic group of people such as tech entrepreneurs, writers, scientists, and even podcasters. The group walks 5 miles, having the most random and eavesdrop worthy conversations.
Both Progress Studies and Interintellect have local meetup groups with past discussion on the history of bubbles, the importance of aesthetics, the need for a philosophy of progress and many other interesting topics.
3. Formal Networks
Cosmos Institute is creating a literal bridge between philosophy and AI, fostering deep intellectual exploration.
The upcoming Austin AI Film Festival is celebrating a new artistic medium. Given the region’s creative history, tech past, and intersecting future, we should be owning this wave.
Edge City Austin is a pop-up society incubator bringing together technologists, thinkers, and builders to “engage in deep discussions, hands-on workshops, and collaborative problem-solving sessions with leading thinkers in AI, biotechnology, and community design.”
4. Communication Pathways
The Austin Business Review is a great newsletter combining a listing of tech events, artists & foodie features, writings of note, and culture to-dos. By bringing together all these elements, it serves the entire Austin ecosystem, helping ideas flow between communities that might otherwise remain separate.
What’s Next
We need more convergent spaces.
Those places like the 1920s cafes, the promise of the WeWork commercials, and the open office water cooler myths. A challenge of the remote work + social media + loneliness epidemic era is we are losing our connectivity and spontaneity. Places where we can focus and build, while being able to ride the edge of serendipity. They should feel like Austin, speak Austin, and change as the definition of Austin evolves.
We need more intersecting networks.
Centers of excellence are thriving and growing. An opportunity is for those nodes that connect them. It’s not about being all encompassing, but about bringing aspects of hubs together.
We need more connection to the creative & intellectual community.
When building my Austin mental framework, it came together slowly and in pieces. I knew we were more than a Silicon Valley clone. Adding in 1950s Detroit to the model clearly captures the GigaFactory, the Samsung Fab, and all of the startups building rockets, drone boats, and robots. However none of this accounts for the “Live Music Capital of the World,” all the writers who live here, the growing comedy scene, or all of the intellectually focused podcasters. Paris in the 20s nails this, but these elements still feel quite separate.
For 1920s Paris in Austin to move beyond an echo and become a true rhyme in the Austin innovation ecosystem, the creative and intellectual must be fully integrated, not adjacent. When it all becomes one, it will no longer be Silicon Hills, it won't be my mental model, it will just be Austin, and everyone will know what that means.