Happy Thanksgiving, team!
Welcome to this issue of Stumped by Nature, where we notice nature lurking just beyond our screens, curate a list of outside-y events in Austin, and build community with other folks in the thick of the startup ecosystem.
In this week’s issue:
🦬 Bison!, Part 2
👩💻 Career timelines with an English degree
🌤️ Upcoming outdoors events
❄️ Seasonal event deluge
Let’s dig in!
-Nicole
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NATURE SPOTLIGHT
Last week we chatted about bison, perfectly honed ecological dreamboats with a matriarchal society, some serious hops, an unmatched societal/cultural impact, and the tool of strategic ecological warfare during a very nasty patch of anti-Indigenous Manifest Destiny.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we’re looking into the bison-tangential people re-bisoning the land, starting with a behind-the-scenes peek into how this plopped on my radar.
Bison buddies
Authorial Backstory
The world’s an absurd place, right?
My day job is in Venture Capital.
My previous lives in were in public education, the non-profit world, and community organizing. (Side note: opting for an English degree doesn’t generate a linear career path.)
A through-line is that I’m fascinated by how people think, and since I’m no longer teaching and therefore no longer paid to read teenagers’ notebooks, I am thirsty for the weird, unfiltered mess that floats through peoples’ brains, especially as they’re growing an idea from concept into something palatable for consumers.
Part of my VC work is specifically around aligning our firm priorities with the bandwidth of my colleagues as individuals + as internal teams—how to action the chunks of work, how to triage a couple dozen time-sensitive meetings when there are exactly three open slots on the calendar this quarter, and how to know when the best thing for firm morale is for us to take five minutes to go stare at the flameleaf sumac out back.
THE flameleaf sumac
So it’s with this lens that I also get to know folks in the greater Austin startup ecosystem.
Have you noticed the isolation of the ecosystem? How often folks get shifted into what seems like a peerless realm, with the competition and pressure of operating at such a high level? The stress of being The One to forge the path forward though constant ambiguity? The liminal space just outside of deeper connection because there’s a distance that comes with the power of leadership and the relational work of fundraising?
Bake in some philosophy club, and I’m very curious about what it’s all for. What happens when this collective of high-achievers, these folks pushing innovation and creating entirely new ways for society to engage, are post-exit and/or have accumulated life-changing wealth.
What do folks who’ve capitalistically made it to the finish line do with the lives they’ve created?
Is it a three month world tour, waking up in beautiful places with nightly panic attacks, a body decompressing from an 8-year-sprint?
I suppose there are worse places to be haunted by success
How can this (gestures broadly) be more sustainable? How can we live with some sense of grounding when our hard-to-set busy season boundary looks like:
“I’ll start limiting external calls after 9pm CT!” or
“My wedding is at 5, but I have a huge customer call at 6!”
Cue my mouth-agape full horror.
And so this newsletter originated as question and a quest—what happens if we notice even just a bit more of the day-to-day world. Can we build at breakneck speed without breaking—ourselves, the relationships that matter most to us. Can we reduce, even slightly, the isolation of leading something that’s cracking a new vertical. Can we live a life designed to nurture the busy seasons in a way that’s both human and humane.
Wasn’t this supposed to be about bison?
And so, I agreed to climb into an unmarked van full of strangers at sunrise on a Saturday to go watch a bison die.
Our destination: ROAM Ranch, 600 acres of Hill Country on this side of Fredericksburg, land that was previously industrially farmed until it was depleted and deemed “unsalvageable”
Their spiel: Regenerative ranching. Make an environment so inviting that nature jumps right in
Their strategy: Large-scale ecosystem restoration. But to fully oversimplify: bison. Bison bison if we’re getting technical.
Our agenda:
drink the Kool-Aid (tastes great!)
participate in the field harvest of a 3-year-old bull
learn to nourish ourselves with the sacrifice
Bison lung, reanimated
The results of this journey:
Crying in public (obviously)
A crash course in how far removed we’ve been from our food
Abject awe
A new knowing of the heft of a bison’s heart + how it tastes raw
The creative talents of my van mates. Coming soon: the collected contributions from Food Writer, Business Writer, Lyrical Writer, Scientist, Photographer, and me
My essay dips into reflective ecology. If you’d like to have eyes on this compilation when it’s live, click this link, and I’ll make sure you get it when it’s hot off the press.
A lingering question of how to be aware and engaged with the reality of the world. How to pay attention to the details of the daily, especially when part of the the daily, inevitably, is death and endings.
A detailed example of how some founders choose to live their post-exit lives
Me, attempting to process the field harvest view. Achilles tendons were involved. 📷 Stephanie Saldivar
Bison in the Exit Plan
ROAM Ranch’s seasonal bison harvest exists, in part, because Taylor Collins and Katie Forrest have had a focused, successful build (and sell) of Thunderbird and Epic Provisions. Epic’s sell to General Mills allowed the couple to move closer to the earth, digging into regenerative agriculture, educating through community events, and creating Force of Nature, their network of regenerative farming partners.
And they’re not alone in this re-bisoning:
Ted Turner, of CNN founding fame, is estimated to have 50,000 bison across 15 ranches to have the largest private herd in the world
David Bamberger, former chicken tycoon, dug into Texas Hill Country for a nearly 50-year-long restoration project, including bison. His efforts helped water flow from dormant streams.
📷 ROAM Ranch
How does this incredibly small sample size tie in?
There’s a not-zero number of people in the Austin startup ecosystem who have chosen the help-the-land route post-exit, now protecting watersheds, beekeeping, and binocular-wearing as the longer tail of their legacies.
And the not-zero number of people working to support bison have aided in a comeback from a few hundred bison to now half a million bison.
The point here: people can do transformative work in and for the world. And people can do transformative work in and for themselves—to keep from depleting all of the nutrients from their own ecosystems, especially during seasons of extreme intensity.
And sometimes the oversimplified fix is to get nice and curious about a passing bird.
Today I’m thankful for not having an HOA
UPCOMING EVENTS
‘Tis the season for a lot of tree-looking.
🗓️ November 28 : Pitch and Run/Walk : For startup ecosystem folks to move and make community-building moves
🗓️ November 29 : Founders Running Club : More running. More founders.
🗓️ November 28 : Georgetown Lighting of the Square : Have your carols on standby
🗓️ Sundays, including November 30 : Y’all know about Chicken Shit Bingo, right? It’s an Austin rite of passage.
🗓️ November 30 : Zilker Tree Lighting Ceremony : 155 feet tall. 3309 lights. A 10-foot star. Watch this buddy glow.
🗓️ December 1 : First Light Books Tree Lighting : Letter writing + a postal worker homage.
🗓️ December 2 : Waterwise Gardening : Learn about soil’s role in irrigation and how to keep your plants hydrated
🗓️ December 3 : Cedar Park Heritage Oak Tree Lighting : We’ve been promised 30,000 sparkling lights.
SEASONAL FLAIR
❄️ Trail of Lights, beginning December 10
❄️ Peppermint Parkway at COTA
❄️ 37th Street Lights, beginning December 12
LOCAL FARMERS’ MARKETS
👩🌾 Arboretum Food & Artisan Market Saturdays 11-3
👩🌾 Barton Creek Farmers Market Saturdays 9am-1pm
👩🌾 Lakeline Farmers Market Saturdays 9am-1pm
👩🌾 SFC Farmers’ Market Downtown Saturdays 9am-1pm
👩🌾 SFC Farmers’ Market Sunset Valley Saturdays 9am-1pm
👩🌾 Texas Farmers’ Market at Bell Saturdays 9am-1pm
👩🌾 Texas Farmers’ Market at Mueller Sundays 10am-2pm
HOMEWORK
Soft influence your kin to gaze in awe at a plant or bug of your choice.
That’s all for this week!
In the meantime, I hope you wallow the earth until you’re both fully nourished.
-Nicole
OPTIONAL SIDE QUESTS
🪵 What’s this like for you? Email with your perspective.
🪵 Who should I collaborate with? Email with your recs!
🪵 Is this newsletter not your vibe? Forward it to your enemies to make them suffer too.