This week, Austin lost one of the people who built this tech community. The tragic passing of Josh Baer in a plane crash leaves a hole in the heart of our tech ecosystem.
Josh spent 27 years pouring himself into Austin’s startup scene. He came to town to join Trilogy, then stayed to build companies of his own: Skylist and OtherInbox. But his real legacy started in the late 2000s, when he founded Capital Factory and helped usher in a new era of optimism for what Austin’s tech scene could become.
From there, his influence only widened. In recent years, Capital Factory leaned into bigger, more speculative bets on hardware and deep tech, helping reshape Austin’s identity from a city known for enterprise software into one building med tech, advanced manufacturing, and the kind of frontier technology that used to feel like science fiction.
But the numbers and the company names only tell part of the story. What Josh actually did was simpler and harder: he showed up for people. He mentored founders before they had a product, introduced them to their first investors, and stayed in their corner long after the introductions were made. If you built a company in Austin over the last two decades, there is a good chance you crossed paths with Josh.
I felt that firsthand in my role with ATC. When I took this job four years ago, the first call I received was from Josh. He wanted to talk about the future of our community and what ATC could be. He had opinions, he pushed me, and he made it clear early on that he was paying attention and was open to more conversations.
His impact actually reached my family too. In 2013, when my oldest daughter was 16, Josh spoke to the teen leaders on the organizing committee of TEDx Youth Austin. She was impressed enough to go home and look him up. That search led her to his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, a school that wasn’t on her radar at all. It became one of her top choices. She went on to have a great experience at CMU, including meeting her husband. A leader like Josh doesn’t just influence the people he meets directly. His reach extends to people he never knew he touched, like my own daughter, whose path changed because of one talk he gave.
Last year, we inducted Josh into the Austin Tech Hall of Fame. It felt right at the time. It feels even more important now.
Josh Baer was a devoted husband to his wife Amy and loving father to their three children. Our hearts are with the Baer family, and with everyone at Capital Factory grieving this loss alongside our whole community.
Thank you, Josh, for everything you built here, and for everyone you built it with.
Thom Singer
CEO, Austin Technology Council