Nobody who lives in Bastrop can say "Highway 71" without wincing a little. The traffic is real. But most mornings I don't mind the drive, because of what I get to pass along the way.
My wife Isabella and I love Bastrop. It's a historic Texas town, founded in 1832, with beautiful old homes along the Colorado River, the Painted Porch bookstore, a Saturday farmer's market, and some of the kindest people I've met anywhere. We eat at Pluto's and the Storehouse more than I'd like to admit. And right alongside this small town sit some of the biggest projects in the world. On the way into Austin I pass SpaceX, The Boring Company, Tesla, and Saronic. My neighbors work at these companies. I watch the future get built out my truck window every single day.
So here's the news: StandardData is bringing its headquarters home to Austin.
Home is the right word. I started this company in Austin and spent my formative years at Capital Factory on Brazos Street, where I met people who are still lifelong friends. After StandardData was no longer a startup, Isabella and I moved to McAllen, and the Rio Grande Valley was good to us: weekend trips to the beach, year-round golf, and a community that welcomed us like family. Those years also made me a better operator. Running the company from McAllen taught me how to run a remote team well, and the lower cost of living saved the company real money. Being far from everything also pushed me onto planes to DC far more often than I would have gone otherwise.
Then, in 2025, StandardData hit prime contractor status, and growth like that needs a hub. I could feel Austin calling us home.
Here's how I think about Austin: it's a capital city with startup metabolism. There's a beautiful capitol building and all the gravity that comes with it, and a few blocks away there are founders trying things nobody has tried before. That combination is StandardData in miniature. We keep one foot in government and one foot in the bleeding edge, and the second foot is what makes the first one fast. Take ResponseRail.ai, our product: drop in a federal RFP and get a complete, compliant first draft back, often within a business day. We use public data to draft responses for firms before we've even had a first conversation with them. A traditional government contractor would never attempt that. They can be cagey. We'd rather show our work.
What changes with the move? Less than you might think. We've been remote from the very beginning and that isn't going anywhere. Austin was always our hub, and now it's official again. We already gather here for in-person meetups, we went to SXSW together, and we held our last retreat at the Hyatt Lost Pines, ten minutes from my house. From here, StandardData is going to focus on investing in Austin, Bastrop, and the surrounding areas. That's where we'll hire and where we'll put our energy as we grow.
The community didn't wait for us to unpack. We've joined the Bastrop Chamber of Commerce, the Austin Chamber of Commerce, and the Austin Club, which puts our roots down at the small-town scale and the capital scale at the same time. Last Thursday the Austin Club invited me to serve as the inaugural speaker for the Momentum Circle, its new gathering series, and I got to tell the StandardData story in a room that started life in 1878 as the Millett Opera House. I opened with the building's own history, because the Club's stewardship of that room took years of patient effort by a relatively small group of people, and that's exactly the kind of long game I believe in. The best part of the night was watching newer members and longtime members find each other over dinner. Thank you to Paul Kornfeind and the entire Austin Club team. They've offered us an extremely warm welcome, and I'm happy to be a member of the Club.
One thing about how we show up: we go to events to build relationships, not to collect connections. It's the same way we approach our government work. Trust there is earned over years, and it can't be collected at a registration table.
What's happening in Austin right now, public and private, is just getting started, and I think it's the best city in America. StandardData intends to help write the next chapter. If you're building here, or serving government from here, come say hello. I'm at dillon@standarddata.ai, and odds are you'll catch me at the next chamber event.