I just wrapped up my first week as Director of Membership & Community at HICAM, the Hayes Innovation Center for Advanced Manufacturing. And I gotta say, it feels like coming home. That’s really the best way I can put it.
If you’re not already familiar with HICAM, it’s a 52,000 sq ft campus in East Austin built for advanced manufacturing, robotics, and embodied AI startups. There’s a serious prototyping space, training programs, and an ecosystem that connects founders to corporations, academic partners, and each other. It’s exactly what Austin’s hardware community has been missing.
For anyone who’s caught me at H³ ATX or one of the other hardware meetups I help organize, this won’t come as much of a surprise. I’ve spent years connecting hardware founders to the right people, tools, and resources, first through through the accelerators I’ve led, then 0112 Studio, and just by showing up in this community over and over. HICAM gives me a home base to keep doing that work, at a scale I haven’t had access to before.
Huge thanks to Marcus Metzger, Lorna Nash, Jamie Harkrider, and Cash (the dog) for being so welcoming this first week. I’m looking forward to everything ahead with this crew.
If you’re building in hardware, robotics, or embodied AI in Austin, or thinking about starting, I’d love to hear what you’re working on. Come find me at HICAM.