Austin Gunter's Posts
About Austin Gunter
Blogging, entrepreneurship, tai chi, yerba mate, and rhetoric.
I'm a 20-something in Austin, Texas who lives and breathes life around words and people.
I work at WP Engine as the Brand Ambassador inside the WordPress (Capital "P") community. I make connections between the community and WP Engine.
Previously I helped grow tech startups at Tech Ranch Austin, a pre-seed incubator. I had the privilege to work with more than 120 entrepreneurs and help them build successful businesses.
I'd probably like to meet you :-)
Asking What It Means to Slow your Hustle Down and Take a Breather
“How long have you been here? Less than a year? That’s not a super long time for everything that’s happened….” Have you ever gotten a gut-check on your ambition? A little message from the world around you that suggested it would actually be ok for you to slow down and take [...]
This is the funniest (and also most cynical) take on “Community Management” I’ve ever read
From McSweeney’s What is a Social Media Community Manager? Oh sorry, I didn’t hear you over the sound of how hip my job is. I’m responsible for engaging current and prospective customers via social media channels, building a strong community around our brand, analyzing relevant metrics, SEO management—you name it, I do it. I spend all day [...]
Today, Jason Cohen used me as an example on his blog ASmartBear.com
This morning I woke up in Vegas ready to fly home from a conference only to discover on Twitter that Jason Cohen, the founder of WP Engine, had written about me on his blog, blog.asmartbear.com. The title of the post is, “Austin in San Francisco,” but the post is about his belief that startup companies [...]
Being a Dick on Twitter Will Crater Your Startup: BetaPunch May Have Just Eaten Social Media Cyanide
@betapunch @beccagallery because I’m still annoyed that you guys tweeted links to our previous tests twitter.com/DanielleMorril… — Danielle Morrill (@DanielleMorrill) January 9, 2013 Danielle Morrill of Referly had a good reason to be upset with BetaPunch today. BetaPunch is a startup that provides user testing for startups. Apparently Danielle used BetaPunch last year for some [...]
The Entrepreneurial Mindset – Mikey Trafton
Mikey Trafton is the founder of Blue Fish Development Group, Fire Ant Software, an original investor in the Alamo Drafthouse, and mentors several Capital Factory startups. When Mikey and I met in 2012, he told me a few stories that distilled his motivation for entrepreneurship down into radically discrete elements that are so simple for us to apply in our [...]
The Things That I Believe
I keep a journal that I hand write when I need to process life in intense bouts. I’ve got a mentor responsible for massive progress in my life in the past year who basically forced this upon me early on, and Thank God she did. It works to work my thoughts out into words, and [...]
Leg 3: Bakersfield to San Francisco, a few weeks after arriving
Shame on me for not finishing this post sooner. I’ve officially been in SF for a month, and I’m getting settled into my routine. It’s been an intense few weeks. My highs have been high, and I’ve had a few lows and “Oh shit, what did I just do” moments, of course. Packing everything you [...]
Jack Dorsey on Editing His Ideas and Making Twitter + Square Happen
I love how he talks about the intentional, iterative, messy process he was willing to put himself through on the way to fully realizing his ideas. It makes me wonder what ideas are we all having that we’re not giving time enough to mature. Notice also how clearly he can articulate the human perception of [...]
Steve Jobs on how he looked at the World. And how we should too.
This is why I moved. And why I’m doing a lot of things now.
Where do your thoughts go when you’re not distracted?
What thoughts does your mind drift to when you have a few moments to yourself? When you’re in the waiting room, what do you start thinking about? Do you wonder what you need to get at the grocery store, or dwell on that thing that went wrong at work last week? Or do you remind [...]