Destin George Bell moved to Austin with no money. He slept in his car. He was making eight dollars an hour. Then he cold-emailed the CEO of the company behind Pokémon Go for months until they wrote him a check. A few years later, he walked onto the premiere of Shark Tank Season 16 with his mom beside him, pitched his fitness app Card.io, and walked off with a deal from Daymond John and guest shark Rashaun Williams for $150,000.
Now he lives here. He runs the G-Beta Accelerator out of the Round Rock Chamber, where his first cohort of five founders raised $600,000 across three companies.
When I sat down with Destin for this week’s episode of Rock Solid, he called his Austin move a “Cortez moment.” Burn the boats. No backup plan. That kind of commitment is what he now looks for in the founders showing up to G-Beta. His test for a co-founder stopped me cold. Would you marry this person with your startup? Would you want to hang out with them for twelve hours a day? Will they flee for a comfy corporate job when the bank account hits zero?
That’s not a business question. That’s a life question. And most of us who have tried to build something already know the answer costs more than we expected.
Destin picked Round Rock on purpose. Austin is pricey. Parking alone at South by Southwest will run you forty bucks an hour. Here, he says, you can park for free and still be in a market that’s rising. He wants his name on the plaque that reads “founding fathers of this emerging market.” That’s the bet he’s making. It’s a pretty good one to make alongside him.
Listen to the full episode to hear the messy version of the story, the one most founders never tell. What’s your Cortez moment look like? Have you burned the boats yet, or are they still tied to the dock?
