Is the Future of Austin Business in Your Front Yard?

Howdy, Austin.

Welcome to Austin Founders Feed, your weekly peak behind the curtain at the fastest growing entrepreneurship community in the country.

Here’s everything that’s happening this week:

Let’s get to it.

— Ken & Warren

This edition is sponsored by Wishbone Advisory.

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Austin may be getting a new kind of startup incubator.

On Thursday, March 26, City Council approved a resolution to pilot Front Yard Businesses (FYBs) as part of a new “Pink Zone” test. The idea is to lower startup costs by letting more founders start selling from their own homes in select areas.

Why this matters:

If you run CPG, coffee, baked goods, repairs, personal services, or niche retail, this creates a real “micro-location” playbook:

Would you try a front-yard or 200 sq ft micro-shop in Austin? Reply and let us know.

Most business owners know their rent, payroll, and ad spend. Far fewer know what they’re actually paying to accept card payments.

So we partnered with Luis Gutierrez of United Solutions to create a practical guide to payment processing, POS systems, hidden fees, pricing models, and the questions to ask before signing anything.

If you’ve never taken a hard look at your payment setup, this is worth a read.

Breakfast tacos & coffee with Austin founders, operators, marketers, and eCommerce leaders while swapping practical ideas on what’s actually working right now in the marketing world.

Walk away with actionable tactics you can put to work the very next day.

Tomo Mags, the roaming magazine shop known for its signature blue bus, has officially opened a permanent downtown location at 411 Brazos St., Suite 101.

The shop is the latest chapter in a decade-long print obsession started by founder Vico Puentes, who originally launched Tomo in Houston out of a restored school bus—popping up at galleries, universities, and coffee shops before evolving into physical spaces and collaborations. Now, Austin gets the best of both worlds: a permanent “browse and linger” home base and the bus continuing to make stops around town.

Their new brick-and-mortar location is proof that there is growing demand business’ that design for how people actually like to spend time in person. No passion being too niche for Austin.

Austin startups raised $7.19B in 2025, up 64.8% from 2024 and above the prior 2021 peak. The jump was driven by a handful of large late-stage rounds, including:

The numbers reflect a maturing Austin tech scene that has moved well beyond its software roots. Capital is increasingly flowing into defense, robotics, energy, autonomy, and vertical AI.

With firms like Craft Ventures recently planting a flag in Austin and Elon Musk announcing plans for a massive semiconductor facility, the capital keeps following the talent.

Read the full Crunchbase report here

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