Austin X Austin - Joah Spearman

Meet Joah Spearman. Mr. Spearman is running for Austin City Council, District 9 and , like many Austinites, believes the city should remain affordable, creative, and inclusive for all types of people. Joah first moved to District 9 over 20 years ago as a student at UT-Austin, and now lives with his wife in Old West Austin. His platform, Localeur, helps subscribing travelers access authentic recommendations from locals in 200+ cities around the world to discover the best local places to eat, drink and play. Localeur has been named a “must-have” by Travel & Leisure, Fortune, TIME, and The TODAY Show, and has partnered with Nike, Lyft, JetBlue Airways, and Match.com, among others. 

 

Like many people, I moved to Austin to go to UT back in 2001. I grew up in Killeen and started coming to Austin in the late 90s for track and cross country meets and that's when I fell in love with Austin. I remember going to the original Run-Tex store off Riverside and South 1st and being amazed at the idea of a city full of people who embraced active lifestyles and the outdoors. To this day, I run 30 to 50 miles a week and whether it's the Lady Bird Trail or running along Scenic Drive or the Capital, I still get that runner's high in Austin.

 

During my senior year at Killeen, I started driving down to go to shows at Austin Music Hall and La Zona Rosa and I was hooked on the live music scene. Over the years, I've fallen in love with different bands and venues and just stayed really connected to the music community that makes this city so special. I've known Adrian Quesada for years before Black Pumas so it makes me so proud to see the success he's having. I've been good friends with Austin City Limits producer Terry Lickona for a dozen-plus years and seeing the ways they've continued to evolve the show over the years from Willie Nelson to Kendrick Lamar and Jackie Venson is so cool. Even as music has taken a bit of a backseat to Austin's food scene and tech industry in the last decade or so, I truly believe the live music identity of this city is a driving force of what makes Austin unique and worth attention from companies like Tesla and people from all over the world.

 

For the last 9 years, I've been the founder and CEO of Localeur.com. I started it with a really simple goal of helping travelers experience local and the best local places to eat, drink, see a show etc instead of going to tourist traps. We launched with just a dozen of my friends here in Austin sharing recommendations on our site during SXSW 2013 and now we've grown to more than 200 cities around the world; our mission has stayed the same. I remember so vividly trying to pitch venture capitalists back in 2013-2014 and they'd say, "This is cool, but is local just an Austin thing?" True story. Back then it wasn't a commonly-held belief that travelers wanted to know where locals go instead of where tourists go so I think it's really a testament that we've now reached 200 cities and 6 continents from an idea that started right here in Austin.

 

I know a lot of folks look up to Elon Musk or Joe Rogan or whatever famous person lives in Austin, but I get inspired by the creatives and entrepreneurs who've been here for years often times not even getting recognition. Small business owners like Shauntavia Ward who owns eleMINT Skin or Ryan Lerma who owns Passport Vintage inspire me. Community builders and leaders like Jane Claire Hervey with Future Front and Virginia Cumberbatch with Rosa Rebellion inspire me. Restaurant owners and chefs like Philip Speer from Comedor, Michael Fojtasek with Olamaie, and Tavel Bristol-Joseph with Canje. These are the people who really drive the creative and cultural identity of Austin.

 

I live in Old West Austin just west of Downtown.

 

I love our neighborhood so much; it's walkable, there are good restaurants like 40North and Better Half nearby, my favorite shop in Austin is close (no-comply Skate Shop) and it's great proximity to UT, Downtown and - most importantly - the trail. My favorite thing about our neighborhood has been how easy it has been for my wife and I to have a car-less household for years. It's not uncommon for us to walk to Book People, Alamo South Lamar or to ZACH Theatre, which I'm on the board of.

 

I studied Japanese at UT and have loved Japanese food for years so this is an easy question for me and the answer is Uchiko. Austin has an amazing food scene and there are always new and exciting places, but the ambiance, consistency and service at Uchiko are really hard to beat. The hotate (dayboat scallop) is probably my favorite single bite of anything in Austin and their fried milk dessert is what dreams are made of.

 

Whenever I think about development, I think about how cities are very much like people. A city is a living organism. It needs diversity of experience and thought, it needs new information and ideas, it needs change and growth. A city that isn't developing and embracing at least some change isn't going to reach its full potential anymore than a person who doesn't embrace any growth or change in life. Then when you factor in how slow our government has been to create the kind of housing affordability and supply we truly need to keep pace with population growth and the pressures that is putting on our people, especially creatives, renters and small business owners, and we've got to do something and fast.

 

First of all, I've always dreamed of my best friend moving to Austin. He has a great setup in Detroit with his wife and daughters, but I'd definitely make sure he moves into a neighborhood where it's easy for us to run on the trail together. The advice I'd give him is to optimize for walkability. Neighborhoods like Mueller, for example, have the kind of walkability that is really ideal for multi-generational families and urban living that is the right balance of density, diversity and quality of life in my opinion.

 

Travel has changed so much in the last five years, really two years during the pandemic, because our attitudes about why we travel have changed. I think the most lasting change on travel because of the pandemic will be people being much more intentional about where they go and for how long - people taking longer trips to really get rooted in a place instead of just going for a couple days. Whether it's international trips or road trips, I see people being really mindful of what they hope to get out of a trip from a wellness and mental health standpoint instead of just checking things off on a bucket list to post on Instagram.

 

Better Half

 

Gregory Gym (great for women's volleyball)

 

Fresa's or Fonda San Miguel

 

The Long Center side of Lady Bird Lake

 

Garage Bar for cocktails, Whisler's for hangs

 

I don't drink coffee, but I dig Codependent for a meetup.

 

Southern Walnut Creek Trail is great for a bike ride.

 

I love taking Red Bud Trail to Westlake. I'm not sure it's a shortcut, but the drive is nicer than Bee Caves for me.

 

A biscuit by Little Ola's biscuits at Butler Pitch & Putt.

 

Austin is such a photogenic city; I guess I'd go with a concert at Mohawk.

 

This is a hard one! I'd probably go with no-comply Skate Shop because you can get a snack or drink, buy some shoes or clothes and they donate a ton of money to support Central Texas Food Bank.

 

A picnic at Roy C. Guerrero Park. That's where I proposed to my wife.

 

ACL Live

 

Say what you want about SXSW's ups and downs, but this city owes a lot to this unique event that attracts so many talented, creative professionals to Austin every year.

 

Joah is one of the only Black tech founder-CEOs in history to have raised more than $5 million in startup funding without Silicon Valley VCs, and he did it by building a community of more than 100 angel investors including Deep Eddy Vodka and Sweet Leaf Tea founder Clayton Christopher, Bazaarvoice founder Brett Hurt, WPEngine CEO Heather Brunner, former Silicon Labs CEO Tyson Tuttle, several members of Central Texas Angel Network and Capital Factory.  Joah has served on several major nonprofit organizations including the March of Dimes and Austin PBS, and has advised the Mayor of Austin, ESPN X Games, South by Southwest Festival, the Beijing Olympics and FedEx on issues. He is the former board chair of AIDS Services of Austin and is on the executive committee for ZACH Theatre. Joah is a four-time finalist for the Austin Under 40 Awards and was named Emerging Business Leader of the Year by the Greater Austin Black Chamber in 2013.

 

Joah, in other words, gets scale. A frequent contributor to Inc. Magazine, Austin Monthly, and other outlets as well as a public speaker signed to FRESH Speakers Agency, Joah delights audiences all over the country with his compelling tales of how he went from a childhood of food stamps to rubbing elbows with the CEO of Apple, and what it will take for more people like him—people of color, women, folks from low-income backgrounds–to get their careers and brightest business ideas off of the back of napkins to building companies with global scale. His ambition and resilience are contagious.

 

Thanks to Joah for all of his insight. To learn more about Joah or Localeur head over to their website linked below.