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Trina Peck, James Ortiz and Aneesh Dhawan are Gen Zers pursuing their passions in Austin.
What do a cosmetology student from Idaho, a DJ from Houston and a Virginian startup CEO have in common?
Like thousands of others, they're part of a swarm of young people who wound up soul-searching in Austin—and as Gen Zers, they're all part of a new generation known for its social media savviness, focus on diversity and social issues and a rejection of traditional workplace norms.
When 22-year-old cosmetology student Trina Peck moved from northern Idaho to north Austin early this year, she had to adjust to more than balmy Texas weather. Formerly a nursing student who spent five years working in the medical industry, Peck made a major lifestyle change when she moved to Austin in search of new opportunities.
22-year-old cosmetology student Trina Peck quit nursing school and moved to Austin after being burnt out in the medical industry. (Trina Peck)
Peck said she was tired of feeling taken advantage of while working for others and switched to cosmetology. She chose Austin for its reputation as a mecca for young people looking to make connections and create a new life.
"It just felt like no one really cared about you or had your best interest at all," Peck said. "It’s just always about making the people at the top more money regardless of how you work (or) what you make. It’s just an exhausting feeling and you never really feel appreciated."
She's not alone: many Gen Zers are coming of age during "The Great Resignation," a time when people are collectively quitting their jobs, packing their bags and pursuing their passions at an unprecedented pace. A record 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in search of better opportunities in September.
Young people also tend to have a growing disdain for corporate hierarchies and the ultrarich, especially as wealth inequality ballooned even further during the pandemic.
Half of those under 30 across the political spectrum now say billionaires are detrimental to the U.S. economy. And a study by Knit, a Gen Z-led Austin startup that collects data on Zoomers, found that nearly half of those surveyed are looking to build their own business—around 10 percentage points higher than any other age group.
Like Peck, who wants to work for herself and open a hair studio of her own, 22-year-old James Ortiz scrapped his corporate future plans for his passion during the COVID pandemic. A graduate of Texas State University, he had just fine-tuned his resume for post-college life when an opportunity arose for him to continue his passion of DJing.
Austin DJ James Ortiz has built a life around his passion for DJing. (James Ortiz)
In college, he'd help popularize Latin Nights at a popular entertainment venue in downtown San Marcos. And now years later, he's getting paid for his Latin-infused mixes as a regular at popular Mexican food hangout Gabriela's.
So far, he's not regretting his decision.
"I would say the nine to five definitely is not for me, and I don't think it ever will be," Ortiz said. "I love music (so) I don't even consider them shifts because I'm just DJing."
Knit CEO Aneesh Dhawan may have the most insight of all into the Gen Z mindset: a Zoomer himself, he moved from Virginia to Austin in 2019 to help Gen Zers connect with social causes while helping companies align with the values of America's future.
At 23, Aneesh Dhawan is already the CEO of a startup based on Gen Z insights in Austin. (Aneesh Dhawan)
Dhawan said three key factors have shaped the youngest adult generation: growing up during the 2008 recession, being the first generation born in the age of the Internet and entering young adulthood during the COVID pandemic. As the world's first digital natives, Dhawan said it's also easier than ever to build yourself as a brand.
"I think it's a mix of major life events where you kind of see the power of being your own boss (and) having kind of more control over your destiny, especially when things happen that are very much out of your control, like a global pandemic or financial crisis," Dhawan said.
And according to Dhawan, Ortiz and Peck, there's no better place to find your destiny than Austin.
"Gen Z is really a generation of creators and entrepreneurs... we want to build things, we want to create things, whether that's the rise of creators on social media, or entrepreneurs as well," Dhawan said. "And Austin's such a great place to do that. So I think that's definitely one thing that attracts a lot of my generation to the city."
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A Web3 meetup was held this week at Cosmic Coffee + Beer Garden. (Andrea Guzman/Austonia)
It’s hard to know what Web3 is without first understanding the original versions. The first web is the 90s Internet where people had their own random websites that didn’t link together, making it decentralized. In Web2, we saw the rise of Google, Facebook and other major players who configured standard ways for people to share and receive information.
Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood and other blockchain developers say a decentralized version of the Internet, Web3, is on the way. Web3 can be thought of as synonymous with cryptocurrency, meaning it is based on the blockchain. Platforms and apps built on Web3 won’t be owned by a central gatekeeper, but rather by users. Those in the Austin crypto community believe to see a growing presence of Web3 in Austin.
Pujaa Rajan, an engineer at financial software company Stripe and adviser for startups, describes herself as a “digital nomad.” She has traveled all over from Hawaii to New York and San Francisco, looking for the crypto community in each place.
Having been in Austin for the past month, Rajan organized a Web3 meetup this week at Cosmic Coffee + Beer Garden in South Austin open to folks working in crypto or the crypto-curious. About 30 people showed up. "Compared to a lot of other cities that I went to, it is a lot more open and community-oriented here, which is what Web3 is all about,” she said.
Pujaa Rajan, an engineer at financial software company Stripe, organized a Web3 meetup in Austin during a visit. (Andrea Guzman/Austonia)
ATX DAO member Roberto Talamas, who stopped by the event, talked about the crypto group’s expansion. Web3, in Talamas’ view, expands on the previous versions which allowed people to read, then read and write. Now, he says, people can read, write and own. To Talamas, blockchain technology has powered that ownership aspect, and it can be utilized through groups like a DAO, a group that pools together capital and goes on to make investments or take on blockchain-based projects.
“The ecosystem of work with (Web3) companies here in Austin is still relatively small,” Talamas said. “And that’s one of those things that we’re trying to deal with at ATX DAO is to do all the advocacy work needed to make Austin the best Web3 city.”
Part of that community, however, has gotten a bad rep for being “crypto bros.” Rajan acknowledged that Web3 involves both finance and technology, which are fields women have historically been excluded from. But, she says the decentralization aspect creates a clean slate and a new means to form groups. “I feel like we can kind of take back the power or create a world for ourselves,” Rajan said.
The meetup at Cosmic brought together crypto users to talk about the prospects of Web3. (Andrea Guzmán/Austonia)
Meetup attendee Jonathan Hillis also talked about the idea that Web3 creates an opportunity to start over and how this could be something that grows in Austin. Born and raised in the capital city, Hills has left his Bay Area Web2 Instacart job behind to live in a cabin outside Dripping Springs last year. He and his wife, along with a group of internet friends formed a DAO called Cabin, and he's now writing on the Web3 version of Medium, known as Mirror.
When it comes to the state of Web3, four cities stand out. “The dam broke in Covid,” Hillis said. “Everybody no longer had to live in the Bay Area for tech.”
San Francisco is still rooted in Web2 traits with Big Tech and software as a service venture. New York is financial technology. Miami is another major player. But with Austin, Hillis sees a lot of potential.
“Austin is great at being a place for independent online creators of many types—musicians, but also artists,” Hillis said. “What excites me about Web3 is the opportunities for putting creators at more of the center of the value capture.”
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(Philip Taylor/Flickr)
For Carson Stanch, who moved to Austin from Brooklyn, New York, to be near family, Austin's lower cost of living was just an added bonus. According to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, a $100 bill is worth $98.20 in Austin when compared to the national average in 2020, while it's worth just $84.53 in New York.
Houston native Carson Stanch moved from Brooklyn, New York to Austin just before the pandemic. (Carson Stanch)
Stanch soon realized she was a trendsetter—or perhaps a fortune teller—as the pandemic hit a few months after her move. No longer willing to spend extra money on their more expensive apartments, Stanch said many of her friends and other New Yorkers left the city amid COVID lockdowns.
"It's so expensive to live there (and) all of the reasons why you live in New York, you couldn't really do anymore," Stanch said.
Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst with the Tax Foundation who wrote a 2018 report on the value of $100 in U.S. metros, told Austonia the report factors in the costs of goods and services with residents' incomes and compares them to the national average. The result is price parity, a number that varies drastically across the country—for instance, a $100 bill won't get you near as far in Austin as it would in more rural parts of the Hill Country.
While a Ben Franklin note was worth $4 more in New York in 2020 when compared to 2018, a $100 bill decreased by $1.60 in value in Austin. Austin's cost of living also saw the 12th-highest increase among U.S. metros from the 2010 to 2020 census.
And as the pandemic's nationwide housing boom gained extra momentum in Austin, peaking at a median home price of $575,000 in June 2021, Watson said the value of $100 could have dropped even further.
"There's just been a chronic hunger for building houses on the coasts and in certain cities in the heartland," Watson said. "Especially this year, we're seeing more and more discussion about that in Austin, and so that is a big, big factor."
Price parity bleeds into other factors as well—in San Francisco, where the value of $100 sits at $82.63, residents are nearly 18% poorer than their higher incomes suggest. But with higher incomes than the U.S. average, they may find themselves more flush with cash when moving to a cheaper city like Austin.
Many out-of-towners have used that extra change to make housing offers much higher than the asking price, Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather told Fox7 Austin.
"All those migrants are bringing with them high-paying jobs who are used to much more expensive housing and they’re willing to pull out all the stops to win these homes and move to Austin," Fairweather said.
But Austin is catching up to those traditional hotspots: the area was predicted to be the most expensive metro outside of the Golden State by the end of 2021.
In just two years, Stanch said she's seen some signs.
"I feel like I look around certain areas of Austin (and) they do feel more similar to downtown Brooklyn," Stanch said. "Some businesses I see might tend to cater to folks who have a little more income."
So why not move to, say, Florence, Alabama, where money is almost 20% more valuable?
Watson said the difference comes down to the value of amenities—something the study can't track.
"Part of the value in New York City is all the amenities that you're near, the value of Broadway, the value of being able to get food delivered to your door," Watson said. "So that may be reflected in people's willingness to pay higher prices... there's a lot of really great reasons why people may want to be in Austin from an identity perspective that you can't get in other parts of Texas."
In Austin, tech salaries rose 5% from 2020-2021 as big-name corporations like Oracle and Tesla—alongside Tesla's billionaire owner Elon Musk—flocked to the nation's new "boomtown." With an ever-increasing job market, eclectic culture and reputation as one of the world's best cities for move-ins, Austin's appeal might still offset its price.
But for Stanch and many others, there may still come a time when price wins over location.
"If I was to the point where homebuying was more important than being near friends and family, then I would move to get the home," Stanch said. "I think that's kind of part of my plan."
