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When people think of Austin tech they usually think of the semi-conductor industry. Julie Huls, the president of the Austin Technology Council, is here to say that vision of the city is missing a whole lot.
“We would not be a success as a region period if it weren’t for our friends in the semi-conductor sector,” said Huls. “But I want the world to know that Austin is responsible for more than the semi-conductor industry.”
Now Austin has a vibrant ecosystem of software and Internet companies including BigCommerce, HomeAway, Indeed and BazaarVoice. Not to mention the fact that Austin is a town with a support system of organizations like accelerator Techstars Austin, incubator Capital Factory, online network Built In Austin, and the Austin Technology Council.
“Tech in Austin really runs the gambit from early stage companies to enterprise ventures,” said Huls.
Though diversity has its advantages for Austin, it also can be challenging. With lots of new voices it can become difficult for the outside world to understand Austin tech's needs. For the industry to lobby the government, the University of Texas at Austin, and the public, it needs a unified voice, and it needs a campaigner. Julie Huls is that campaigner.
“The community needed someone who could help advocate on behalf of tech and create a place at the table,” said Huls. As president, “this position really first and foremost was about forming a common vision and then driving that vision to success.”
Huls in some ways is uniquely qualified to bring together such a diverse industry. “My business background is pretty varied. I’ve worked in everything from real estate to banking,” said Huls. “The former board of the ATC council was looking for an entrepreneur that they knew could relate on a business perspective to these CEOs.”
With that experience Huls has set about gathering together the common interests of all the players in Austin tech and advocating on their behalf.
The ATC’s work means “we don’t have a lot of different fingers pointing in different directions,” said Huls and that Austin “has a voice in important regional decisions.”
To that point the ATC has recently joined with the City of Austin in the “Austin Technology Partnership.”
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The Partnership will work on ways to connect tech job creators to educators and workers, increase access to later stage capital, support the build-out of a life sciences ecosystem, and conduct research and stakeholder education. That last priority is one that Huls and the ATC are keen on, particularly when it comes to Austin’s lack of tech talent.
“Our tech companies always, always prefer to hire locally,” said Huls. However, “regardless of U.T.’s numbers all of the colleges and universities combined are not producing enough.”
Huls cites a study that says Austin tech will be creating 9,000 new jobs between now and 2017. Local tech talent simply isn’t keeping pace.
For its part Austin tech already knows this, but Huls points out that the community hasn’t pinned down its problems yet and has spent too much time lamenting the situation.
“I think that is one of our skeletons in our closet. We as a tech community have only complained to ourselves about the lack of talent,” said Huls. “CEO’s have to stop complaining to each other about how hard it is to find talent.”
“Its frustrating for me because I have been listening to tech companies talk about this for years,” said Huls. “We have to broadcast that problem to the larger community.”
To alleviate those frustrations Huls is leading the ATC’s efforts to conduct a hiring survey of Austin tech companies. The survey will hopefully better inform the community on how it can spend its resources collectively. As such it should be able to advocate for itself better.
Opportunities to advocate on behalf of Austin tech are appearing evermore.
In fact, “a lot of STEM policy makers are coming to Austin to talk about tech,” said Huls. Having a unified voice when those policy makers come around not only better channels the community's efforts but helps people realize ‘hey there is something going on in Austin.’
“Austin is not the one-trick pony that it used to be,” said Huls.
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