NAWBO Austin Monthly Luncheon Meeting - August 2026

# Welcome to F.I.E.S.T.A. Founders, Investors, Entrepreneurs, Startups, Techies, and Austin Newcomers & Adventurers FIESTA is a monthly gathering for Austin’s startup community. Built by founders, for founders, we help people connect, share resources, celebrate wins, and build meaningful relationships. Whether you are building a company, investing, advising, exploring an idea, or new to Austin, you belong here. ## What to Expect Open networking with founders, investors, operators, and community supporters Funder spotlights from VCs, angels, and other capital partners One-minute founder pitches from 10–12 scalable startups Resources, introductions, and opportunities to help founders move forward A welcoming community where curiosity, generosity, and connection matter Founders who have attended FIESTA and are building venture-backed, scalable companies may apply to pitch every six months. Pitching founders are also highlighted in The FIESTA Focus newsletter. ## Monthly Agenda 5:30 PM Doors open, check-in, networking, pizza, and drinks. 6:30–7:15 PM Welcome, announcements, sponsor and funder introductions, and founder pitches. 7:15–8:30 PM More networking and time to connect. After 8:30 PM, an optional after-party at Retail Therapy. ## Parking Street parking is free after 6:00 PM. Omni garage parking is available at Capital Factory from 5:00–9:30 PM, with validation reducing the rate to $8. Come meet your people, make a few meaningful connections, and see what is possible together. Support the Community Interested in increasing your brand exposure while supporting founders? Sponsoring FIESTA helps keep this community accessible, welcoming, and thriving. We would love to explore a partnership. Thank you to our SPONSORS for making this event possible EventMagic for transforming events into magical experiences and delivering meaningful engagement. Thank you to STATION Austin, powered by Capital Factory, for supporting FIESTA and the founders we serve. ST

Welcome to the Code for Community Austin meetup! Our goal is to connect technologists, creatives, and community organizations to find valuable problems and build useful solutions. We do this by matching community needs with interested technology and design partners. At our first meetup we heard from five Austin nonprofits and community organizations, and volunteer teams are now forming around all five projects. This month we check in on that work — and meet the next group of organizations. What to expect at this event We'll open with progress from the projects already in flight: what the teams have built, what they've learned, and where they still need help. Then we'll hear from a few new community organizations about projects they're working on and where they could use support. Damon will share where Code for Community is headed — how the matching system is evolving and how you can contribute. We'll close with time to connect, so if you have skills you want to put to work, you can sign up and meet others doing the same. You do not need to have attended the first meetup. Every project still has room, and the new organizations are starting from zero. For community organizations Nonprofits, mutual-aid groups, and community organizations are invited to sign up in advance to share a project. Whether that means improving a website, organizing data, simplifying a process, reaching more people, or exploring a new idea, we want to hear about it. Submit a project here. For builders Software engineers, QA testers, designers, marketers, project managers, and other builders can meet organizations doing meaningful work, learn about their needs, and find opportunities to contribute. Want to get involved before the event? Visit codeforcommunity.com or reach out to Damon at damon@clearroadlabs.com You might enjoy this meetup if you're a: Nonprofit, mutual-aid, or community organizer Software engineer, QA tester, or data professional Designer, writer, marketer, or creative Project m

Out in Tech brings together LGBTQ+ professionals and allies across tech, startups, and digital culture. Join the Out in Tech ATX community for our monthly mixer at Flourish Plant Shop & Wine Bar. This event is all about showing up as yourself, meeting cool people, and building community. Whether you work in tech, are tech-adjacent, or just curious, come grab a drink, spark a conversation, and connect with folks across roles, companies, and experience levels. No panels. No pitches. Just good vibes and great people. This is our first time hosting with Flourish Plant Shop & Wine Bar. They are a woman-owned wine bar and plant shop. Tuesday is their all day happy hour, and they have a food menu (charcuterie, sandwiches) as well! Looking forward to trying something new with y'all! We meet on the third Tuesday of every month!

For eight years, Steve Adler ran the fastest-growing large metro in America — a streak almost no city in U.S. history has matched. Now, in his new book Hot Seat — Hot City: The Austin Mayor's Story, Austin's two-term mayor pulls back the curtain on what it actually takes to lead a city through explosive growth. Mayor Adler makes a case every founder in this room will recognize: Austin's real superpower is its tolerance for risk — a city where the civic heroes are the ones who try, fail, adapt, and try again. As laid out in the book, Steve will talk about what really happened in the “Uber/Lyft” war, homelessness, police funding and race, and whatever else attendees want to raise. It’s available now on Amazon. He’ll sign copies if you bring one (and I have a few copies for our Fridge Members). Join us Fridgeside for drinks and a candid conversation with Mayor Adler. Happy hour from 5-5:45, Discussion 5:45-6:45, and more casual conversation after.

The Korea Playbook for Austin Physical AI Founders For physical AI, the model is rarely the bottleneck. It's who builds at volume and who's willing to fund it. China still leads on tooling and hardware, but Korea's industrial economy makes its capital structurally more willing to back long-horizon, capex-heavy robotics than most US venture. That's why Korea is becoming a place to fund and scale physical AI, not just sell into. About the Event Antler Korea and US Teams are bringing together founders, investors, and operators working across physical AI, robotics, hardware, and emerging technology in Austin to discuss the state of physical AI in Asia/South Korea and what it means for US startups. We'll explore where Korea fits into the global physical AI landscape, what makes an Asia strategy credible, and how founders can turn technical advantage into real deployment, commercial partnerships, and scale. Speakers Mok Yun Founder & CEO, Contoro Robotics Mok is the founder and CEO of Contoro Robotics, an Austin-based robotics company building AI-powered robotic systems for logistics and industrial operations. Contoro Robotics has deployed on real-world logistics deployments in South Korea and recently raised an $12M Series A investment from Coupang, South Korea's largest online retailer. Mok will share a founder's perspective on moving robotics from development to deployment, why Korean capital is proving more willing to back capex-heavy physical AI, and where he sees Asia's role in the industry heading next. Jiho Kang Partner, Antler Korea Jiho is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has built companies across Seoul and Silicon Valley. He cofounded YC backed Soomgo(acquired 2024), and BxB which was acquired by Binance. Today, he backs globally ambitious founders as Partner at Antler Korea and works with international founders exploring Korea’s startup and industrial ecosystem. What We’ll Get Into The Asia / Korea Landscape Where China still leads, tooling, PCBs, hard

Speaker/Facilitator: Alejandro Mancilla, MongoDB Welcome back to another exciting ACM Austin event! As we continue to dive deep into Enterprise AI & Engineering, we are thrilled to partner with MongoDB to deliver a highly practical, instructor-led workshop on building AI agents. AI agents are quickly becoming a baseline for modern AI applications. In this hands-on session, you will learn core concepts such as reasoning, tools, and memory, and explore various agent architectures. By the end of the evening, you will have built a functional, AI-powered technical documentation assistant using MongoDB and LangGraph. The agent you build will utilize MongoDB as its memory and knowledge store, rely on a supported model (such as Claude, Gemini, or GPT) for its "brain," and use LangGraph to orchestrate the end-to-end workflow. ### Food & Networking Come hungry! We will kick off the evening with delicious Mexican catering, featuring an end-to-end taco and burrito spread. There will be plenty of excellent vegetarian options available to ensure everyone is fueled up before we dive into the technical content. ### What You Will Learn Understand foundational AI agent concepts, including orchestration, reasoning, tools, and memory. Explore common AI agent use cases alongside different agent architecture patterns. Build your own AI-powered technical documentation assistant using LangGraph and MongoDB. Learn how to effectively use MongoDB as a vector store, knowledge store, and memory provider for agentic applications. Understand patterns for more reliable and controllable workflows by adding memory to an AI agent. ### Prerequisites & Requirements Bring Your Own Laptop: A laptop is required to participate in the hands-on exercises, and the venue will have Wi-Fi available so you can easily follow along. Environment Access: You must be able to access Instruqt and a browser-based workshop environment. Experience: Basic familiarity with Python and Jupyter Notebooks