What He Built
Legacy
The companies, institutions, and people Josh kept watering. They’re still growing.
Capital Factory
Founded in 2009 in downtown Austin. Coworking, acceleration, mentoring, investment — all under one roof, with Josh sitting on a couch downstairs. Now Texas’s most active early-stage investor.
Apptronik
The UT Austin spinout building humanoid robots. Capital Factory co-led the $350M Series A in February 2025 alongside B Capital, with Google DeepMind also participating. A long bet, fully justified.
Saronic
Autonomous maritime defense. Backed early. Reached a $1.75B valuation in March 2026 — one of Texas’s fastest-growing defense-tech companies.
Intuitive Machines
The company behind the first commercial Moon landing. Capital Factory was an early supporter. Josh would mention it casually, the way someone else might mention a hobby project.
Firefly Aerospace
Cedar Park’s rocket and lunar lander company, deeply connected to the Austin ecosystem Josh built. One of the regional anchors of his frontier-tech thesis.
Colossal Biosciences
De-extinction. Mammoths. The kind of audacious bet Josh loved — founders chasing something almost impossible, and finding their first believer in him.
Longhorn Startup at UT Austin
Co-taught for roughly fifteen years. Cohort after cohort of UT undergraduates learned what entrepreneurship actually looked like — partly because they had Josh in front of them, telling stories from the week before.
Army Futures Command in Austin
The U.S. Army’s four-star Futures Command chose Austin in 2018. Mayor Adler credited Josh as instrumental. The bridge between Austin’s startup community and national defense innovation runs through Capital Factory.
The Baer Family Foundation
Founded with his wife Amy. Supports disadvantaged children and the causes the family cares most about — quietly, persistently, without ceremony.
STATION Austin
A nonprofit launched in March 2026 to keep Austin’s entrepreneurial soul intact as the city grows. The last big thing he started. Ninety-nine days of work he was incredibly proud of.
Texas Votes
A nonpartisan, open-source civic tool that turns five minutes of preferences into a personalized Texas ballot. Built quietly, with friends, between everything else.
The Washington Office
A Washington, D.C. firm co-founded in 2024 to focus on frontier technology and national security policy. He believed Austin had a voice that deserved to be heard there.
“Some people really do improve the world.” — Robert Scoble, on Josh