Goodbye San Antonio

Thanks for the Career

I’m packing up the last of my things today and we’ll be moving over the weekend. Five years ago we came to San Antonio for Shannon’s job and after a lot of hard work on her part, we’re on to the next step in St Louis. (For those who don’t know me that well, Shannon is my amazing wife who’s career as a zoo veterinarian takes us on lots of adventures.)

I’m sad to leave this city, but to be honest, I was probably more sad when I arrived. I left behind good friends and startup work I loved in Denver & Boulder. In 2011, the startup movement in San Antonio was just beginning, and while encouraging and exciting, there just wasn’t much of a job market yet. It was a city where you if you wanted to do interesting work, you had to figure out how to make it happen yourself. This forced me to look inward and ask myself what I wanted to create in the world, rather than pick my career from a job ad.

Since then, I’ve co-founded two music tech startups, licensed music from Sony/Universal/Warner, spent 4 months in Silicon Valley at Stanford’s StartX accelerator, won music hackathons in San Francisco, spoke at developer conferences on mobile music tech, attended international academic conferences on new music interfaces and way more than I ever imagined I would do.

And while really, the stuff I’m most proud of didn’t actually happen here, it’s this city that nudged me down this path. It’s also this city that mentored me via all the smart folks at Techstars, Geekdom, and Cafe Commerce who taught me about business and startups. This made everything else I did possible.

So San Antonio, thank you, you took me in when I didn’t want you, and I’m better for it.

XOXO

Greg

Footnote: San Antonio in 2016 is a different scene all together, flush with opportunity. I’m sure glad I got here before that.