Austin AI Collective
The people
behind the work
Two founders. A growing roster of speakers and collaborators. A community that keeps growing because the people in the room keep showing up and building.
Two founders. A growing roster of speakers and collaborators. A community that keeps growing because the people in the room keep showing up and building.
15 years building coaches and thought leaders. Then he went all-in on AI and is now further than most operators get in a year of trying. Nathaniel is the target user for everything the Collective offers. He figured it out in real time and then turned around to show everyone else the path.
He runs the Crossing the AI Threshold webinar series, coaches operators privately, and built the technical infrastructure that powers the Collective. If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when someone goes genuinely all-in on something, watch him work.
The Collective started because he kept watching people he cared about stay stuck. Not because they weren’t smart enough, but because they hadn’t been in the right room yet.
High performance coach, philosopher, and founder of Mystic Misfit. Kevin works at the intersection of evolutionary psychology, embodiment, and mastery. He makes complex ideas land in the body, not just the head.
Kevin walked into AI skeptical and walked out building. He shares that arc with his longtime friend Mike Bledsoe, and the two of them have been working through this shift together. That story sits at the heart of the Collective: serious operators who saw what AI does to good work and decided to be early instead of late.
His conversion is one of the most honest you’ll hear from anyone in this space. No hype. Just what changed and what he sees now that he couldn’t see before.
Operators, founders, and builders who have spoken at our events, contributed their expertise, or collaborated on what the Collective is becoming. This list grows with every event.
Longtime friend of Kevin’s and one of the operators most invested in this AI shift alongside him. Co-founded and ran companies across media, software, education, and consulting. Now rebuilds them with AI at the foundation.
Bridges crypto, inner work, and frontier technology in a way almost nobody else is doing. CMO of COTI, advisor across multiple projects, and one of the more interesting thinkers in the Austin tech scene.
Austin entrepreneur, growth strategist, and community lead at MagicBlocks.ai. Pedro has built event-driven businesses from the ground up and brings a rare combination of marketing scale and AI adoption.
Founder and CEO of Above Phone, the privacy-focused smartphone built on GrapheneOS. Also founded TakeBackOurTech.org. Hakeem brings the digital sovereignty angle that most AI communities completely miss.
Founder of AWKN Ranch and one of Austin’s most well-connected operators. William brings access to the kind of space and community where real work gets done. Venue, network, and vision.
“The people thriving in AI aren’t the ones who read the most about it. They’re the ones who got in the room.”
Actualize with AI (formerly Claude Code Day) was the first experiment. A full day in Austin at Awaken Ranch, a room of people who’d never touched AI seriously, and a simple promise: you leave with something running on your machine.
It worked. People who arrived skeptical left building. Then it happened again. Same result. The room itself was doing something no course, podcast, or webinar could replicate.
So the question became: what if we built a whole community around this? A collective of people who show up in person, work together, and push each other further. Four formats, different depths, one community underneath all of it.
That’s the Austin AI Collective. The room, designed, curated, and kept honest by people who are in it themselves.
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