Welcome to Texas Talk.

I'm Gilbert Garcia, opinion writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News.

On this show, we bring you one on one conversations with some of the most fascinating figures in Texas politics, sports, culture and business.

Betto Altamirano is only 34 years old, but he has a resumé so impressive and so full, you can only conclude that he's someone who has rarely wasted a minute of his time.

He has served fellowships at the White House, the US Senate, and the Texas House.

He's received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation grant and been named one of Forbes magazine's 30 under 30 Social entrepreneurs.

He's the co-founder of Iris, an innovative company that uses technology to connect people with their government.

He's the co-founder of the Better Futures Institute, a nonprofit that works to nurture young talent.

He serves as vice chair of the board for Port San Antonio.

And his name keeps coming up as a potential candidate for San Antonio mayor.

On this episode, Altamirano talks about his entrepreneurial projects, his political activism, and what compelled him to keep seeking new challenges.

Let's get started at the.

Thank you so much for being in Texas Tech.

Great to be with you, Gilbert.

Well, you and I grew up close to each other.

Different time.

But but, you know, high school in Edinburg, you grew up in Michigan, just too just a few miles apart.

You know, like a lot of a lot of places in that area in the valley.

You know, Michigan is a small it's a tight knit community.

What was that experience like for you and how do you think it's kind of enriched your life since.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we grew up.

Yeah.

Less than 30 minutes away.

45 minutes away.

Mission, Texas, a town of 150,000 people.

You know, growing up in the Rio Grande Valley, and you're probably relate to this.

It's a beautiful experience being from the border and you get the best of both cultures.

What Mexico has to offer and what the United States has to offer intertwined in one rich experience.

And that allows you to build empathy to better understand the challenges of two countries and two cultures.

But most importantly, I found community in the border, and I think that was a very rich and I grew up in a bilingual and bicultural setting and I'm very thankful for that.

And I love it down there.

The food, the people, the traditions.

And I don't know, there's something about the Rio Grande Valley.

People don't give up.

It puts people back.

I noticed that.

A lot of people.

Oh, it does?

Yeah.

Now, your dad worked on the Mexican side.

Yeah.

And he lived on the U.S. side of the border.

That's right.

He had a tourist visa.

The understanding is that he overstayed the tourist visa.

That's right.

When you were 18, he was deported.

And I know this has been a shock for you.

I mean, what impact did it have?

Yeah.

The family.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I tell the story very often and I tell the story because it's personal, but also because there's a lot of young kids going through something similar.

When I was 18, I got a call from my father telling me that he will not make it home that night or any other night.

But to believe in the American dream, believe in myself.

I know that he was being encouraging because he was being deported and that shocked me in many ways.

But this is a common story in the border, not just in Texas, all along the US Mexican border.

He recognizes that he did wrong in overstaying his visa.

And, you know, my my mother's an American citizen myself as well.

And so there was a way for him to to go through the process.

But how long did it take before he was able to come?

12 years.

12 years.

And that impacted my family and myself in many ways.

You know, initially I did not leave the RGV.

My dream was to go to U.T.

Austin, and I didn't pursue that immediately, Right.

I had to make some sacrifices then.

Yeah, I had to stay with my mother and my siblings.

But, you know, out of my sadness and frustration, I found determination, you know, in moving my my life in in the direction that I wanted to achieve.

And one thing that I that I take from that experience was my involvement in policy.

I started learning about immigration policy.

I got I got involved in politics as well in the Rio Grande Valley.

Then I remember I was interning for Sergio Munoz, who represents District 36.

He was running a campaign.

So I was out there organizing as well, getting to know the issues that were impacting my community of South Texas, and that led me to other endeavors we spoke about.

And so I would say that it was difficult.

It was.

But I also found the determination and and I found inspiration as a result.

And fast forward today in my my father is here with us and he did not attend my my high school graduation or my college graduation, but he was there for my master's graduation.

And so it was fascinating.

And, you know, kudos and props to my mother for, you know, sticking to the goal and the mission of of giving us a better life.

Right.

And that's why they migrated to the US to find that better life.

And they gave us that better life.

And I took pride in being an American.

Now, you studied government at University of Texas at Austin, got a master's in public administration at Harvard's Kennedy School.

And I think even a lot of your private sector has been about young people with government.

Absolutely.

You talked about how what your dad went through that stimulated your interest in policy.

Did that was that the beginning of it, or did you always have some kind of fascination with, you know, that that was the beginning of it?

I would say, yeah, when I was like about 17, 18 years old.

Right.

Again, I got interested in organizing communities, getting out there, learning about the issues, and I studied political science, right?

And I got a fellowship right through Mark Fellowship, which is the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus Fellowship, which is sponsored also by MALDEF.

Right.

And that was my introduction to politics, legislative politics.

And this was at the Texas Capitol and actually my introduction also to San Antonio politics under Representative Jafari.

S And so that was a beautiful experience.

And from there I transitioned right to transfer to UT-Austin.

And when I was at UT-Austin, I interned through the Bill Archer Fellowship that allows allows to get more students into the D.C. Beltway pipeline.

And so I had the experience of working for John Kerry and also working at the UCR.

It's a good thing, you know, But, you know, Obama and John Kerry are Democrats, so there was no conflict of interest.

Right.

But it was fascinating learning about the legislative branch and also the executive branch.

It taught me a lot.

Right.

And I think that also sparked my interest in tech because I was managing the Twitter handle for John Kerry.

And I was also in the public affairs office at the UCR, and I was learning about technology tools and and that was an incredible experience.

You know, you talk about your company and you do a big breakthrough.

Yeah.

Was a co-founding City Fly which was yeah, this is really about trying to make the process of people engaging with their government Yes.

Better You're creating kind of a gamified interactive app where people that they've got problems that they want to let their government know instead of getting on the phone and waiting forever.

They take a picture, they send a report, they get a response.

Yeah, I think they get points, right?

They do.

It's gamified.

Absolutely.

So you know what's not to like about it?

But this You said that you're a spark, maybe an early spark.

Yes.

Idea was you were knocking on doors in 2008 and you must have been 19.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Knocking on doors for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

And people were expressing frustration with you with the problems that they had in their neighborhoods, potholes and those kinds.

It happened twice right?

I mean, so in 2008 and 2010, when I was a student at Utpb before I transferred to UT-Austin, I was very involved with the young Democrats Utopia, and I was Utah.

RGV Right.

They combined the schools down in the Rio Grande Valley.

And so, yeah, I was organizing great part of the campus, right?

And also the house houses in proximity to Edinburg, you know, to where you studied high school.

And so I found that, you know, that was a big challenge, right, in terms of the infrastructure that, you know, people were complaining about.

Right.

And fast forward to 2010, the same during Bill White's campaign.

I was still in RGV right before I transferred UT and, you know, working in Texas Capital.

And I did the same thing, organize, you know, as a young Democrat, got out there, heard from the constituents.

And then fast forward to 2014, that's when when I really got, you know, started with this idea.

So I came back from D.C. to Texas.

You'll just end up in Mexico.

Then you are in Mexico.

We did at some point.

Yeah, at some point, yeah.

So?

So when I come back to Texas, I organized for Andy Brown.

He was running for a county judge at the time.

He was unsuccessful.

Now he is a county judge.

I learned a lot in the first campaign that he ran was organized in the east side of Austin, and that's when I got this idea, Right?

So I already knew that, you know, people cared about their infrastructure and streets and their basic needs.

Right?

They don't want to spend more than 20 minutes on the phone trying to report these issues.

And so this is where I got this idea.

And fast forward, in that summer, I was doing a fellowship with the State Department, which is called the Pathways Internship.

So it helps young people go through the pipeline of becoming a diplomat.

And I found out that I didn't want to be a diplomat, but I learned a lot about what was happening in Barcelona because that's where I was stationed in terms of the Smart Cities movement.

And so you combine my experiences of organizing in the past, right, of understanding the infrastructure issues that people are facing, the needs that they have to communicate these issues.

And then I get involved in the Smart Cities movement.

As a scholar, I was reading and researching and I developed this paper that became City Fi and eventually that became a prototype and a tool that we tested both here in San Antonio and in Mexico City before applying to an RFP that came out of the city of San Antonio.

And then we won that contract and launch in the city of San Antonio in 2017.

So that's it.

And she said, Who was your first client?

It was, yes.

How challenging was it?

You know, you got to do what not just say, trying to tell people we're the best.

We're the best in implementing this.

You got to convince them that the idea makes sense because it's something new, absolutely challenging.

Was it to make that case, you got to tell a story.

Right?

And I think for us, there was a wave, a movement, right?

Even Barack Obama came to Austin to speak at South by Southwest and he spoke about the need for more technologies to step into the public service arena.

And the concept that he spoke about was civic technology.

And that's what we aspired to create, right?

A civic technology tool that could enable better communication between people and governments.

And so it was complicated, right?

We evangelize the concept all across the city.

And eventually Hugh Miller, who was the CTO at the time at seat of San Antonio, invited us to pitch them and they were already transitioning their tools to something more modern and and more engaging.

They wanted to have more people involved, leveraging our tools.

And so by the time they put out the RFP, we were well aware that they were going to do so.

And so we were equipped, we were ready.

But let me tell you one thing.

We were only three people in our team and we were competing with Motorola, with Citizens Connect with Giants right in the space, but we didn't give up and I'm thankful for the city of San Antonio for giving me that opportunity.

And I respect the city of San Antonio for doing so today.

That product, the three one, one and C app is widely celebrated.

We have hundreds of thousands of users and they have reported hundreds of thousands of reports.

What I do know is that the rate of success is between 88 and 92% usually, right.

It is a widely celebrated product and we take a lot of pride in that.

But eventually.

Right, we moved on from just working with city governments, right?

We raised some venture capital as a result of this success.

We went through the Techstars Arcadis accelerator in Amsterdam and we were the number one team in that accelerator and eventually raised capital.

We raised about $1.5 million and that was matched by a seabird grant, a small business innovation research grant.

And I want to talk about that because I think it's important for entrepreneurs in the area here in San Antonio to look into these type of funding efforts that, for example, the Air Force is putting out there.

Right.

So that 1.5 was matched by the by the Air Force through the sea Grant.

And this is an initiative that is called F Works, right?

And so there's a lot of funding that is going on here in San Antonio regarding US Air Force R&D products and research.

And so for us, you know, we knew that we wanted to pivot as well because we were running into obstacles in selling our products to cities because the pandemic was at an all time high and city governments were focusing their resources on PPE products.

Right.

And so we had to act quickly.

We had money in the bank, right?

We had made hires.

I mean, we were almost 20 people at the time in our team, and we were stuck globally.

We had to act.

And so thankfully, the Arcadis Enterprise, which is a global engineering firm, was already doing public involvement meetings that required data collection.

But because of COVID, right, they passed US effort.

So they needed an app where people can actually communicate some of the issues that they were facing in terms of infrastructure and specifically on the coast region of the US in New Jersey, right where they were focusing on resilience, planning for sea level rising and flooding.

So our application, the same backbone that we have here and through, I want to say became a public involvement tool.

So we ventured into that space with the private sector in terms of resiliency planning.

But we also ventured into the US Air Force and we started implementing similar R&D products like the 311 to say, military bases.

And so that was our introduction into the military technology space.

And this when you talk about the pivot, this is going from city flag to to Iris.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so we changed the name because Iris is the part of your eye that allows you to see structure in color, but it can also be the name of your neighbor, right?

And so it's about community and it's about understanding what's around your community.

And so we transfer, you know, the, the company.

And we made that transition to becoming Iris because we felt that it was more inclusive of the efforts that we were leading at the time.

You've been based geekdom, which yeah, that's San Antonio's downtown's tech incubator, and you moved your base over to the west side of San Angelo.

What was your you're thinking about growing up in South Texas?

I, I never saw a tech entrepreneur that looked like me when I told my parents that I didn't want to pursue a career in the law that were puzzling.

Right?

Because I wanted to become a tech entrepreneur.

They were thinking the Bill Gates of the world.

Right?

And so I think the reason why we moved to the West Side, right, was to inspire the next generation of leaders to think that pursuing a career in tech or STEM is possible.

And it took me a while to realize that we shouldn't put ourselves, you know, in a position to to to limit, you know, our abilities to influence different industries just because of the skin or a color.

And so for me, it's important that we are in the west side, right?

Historically Latino community and that we can inspire young people.

Right.

And so we welcome interns right from the West Side to work on our products and to learn about tech.

And hopefully that can serve as inspiration.

And it's been a great experience, you know, because at the end of the day, at the core mission of our company is the community service.

That's how we started with 311 to say, well, along those lines, I mean, your latest venture is a nonprofit that are Futures Institute.

Yeah.

Which as I understand it, is about really about nurturing, developing young talent.

Yes.

How does it work exactly?

How do you have you see it?

Yes.

So we started this effort about seven months ago, Right.

Eight months ago.

And I wanted to tell stories about San Antonio that are impacting, you know, our community from multiple sectors and angles.

And I think it's important to celebrate the collective wins of San Antonio because that shapes and that tells a story of who we are.

Number one, if we want to retain talent, I think it's important for younger people to also see themselves as part of their story.

Right.

And if we want to welcome talent, they've got to see what's happening in San Antonio.

We got to walk with a little bit more swagger.

Right.

And I think that's what I wanted to highlight some of the victories and some of the wins.

But behind those wins and victories, there's a lot of sacrifice and failure, right?

So when you get to the root cause of why an entrepreneur started a business, there's more than just, you know, the concept of making money, right?

And so I wanted to highlight the stories of entrepreneurs and interpreters to in organizations, right.

And advocates.

And so that's how we started.

And, you know, the company evolved to what we're doing today.

We, the nonprofit, we knew that we wanted to create some impact immediately.

We wanted to have outcomes.

And so the inputs and resources look in the form of creating internships so that more young people can actually step into the STEM field, right?

Because by 2030.

Right.

2040, you know, there's going to be a lot of replacement of jobs right through.

And so if we don't equip young people today, then we're doing a disservice in terms of competing in the in the industry 4.0 economy.

Right.

And so that that worries me, but also makes me proactive.

Right.

And I think, you know, getting young people interested in STEM at an early age matters.

And so that's what we're doing the first vertical right?

And the second vertical is research on the South Texas Triangle.

You know, historically you have the Texas Triangle, right?

San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston, back to San Antonio.

But what we flip that triangle to South Texas, right?

There's a lot of strengths in South Texas.

Yes, absolutely.

Corpus Christi.

Right.

But I think we need to understand the complexities in our economy.

And by that, I mean, what are the strengths of each city, each region?

And we should talk to each other.

We have more in common than what separates us.

And we're doing a disservice if we're not exploring the strengths in our economy as a whole, as a South Texas region.

And so we are hoping that we can put out their research papers and advice, you know, from policymakers to industry leaders, private sector leaders.

And we we're doing already we partner with the Express-News and we launch the San Antonio Forward series.

And it was well received in the community here in San Antonio, but also in South Texas, in the river Valley and nor Mexico.

When we talk about North Mexico, we need to capture the momentum that is happening today, you know, in Mexico, in Monterrey, for example.

Right.

The nurturing opportunities.

So that's also something that we want to explore because that's going to create jobs and it's going to stimulate our economy here in south Texas and in San Antonio.

And the third vertical is the storytelling.

You know, the Better Future series, the one that I spoke about, about, you know, highlighting the stories of San Antonio's that are impacting our community for the better.

Well, you know, we're quite a ways away from San Jose's next mayoral election.

It's going to be in May of 2025.

And so, you know, a lot of time between now and then, but your name has come up quite a bit and someone who because it's going to be a wide open seat for the first time in since two thousandeight.

And your name has come up as maybe as a possible candidate and obviously if you haven't run before but you know you're someone who's had a big impact here, my sense is that this is something you're at least considering.

I mean we're we're what can you tell us what breaking news can we get about what your thought processes this.

I am exploring the idea of running for mayor, but today I'm listening.

I'm sitting down with people and learning about their challenges all across the city of San Antonio.

I'm the son of immigrants that came to the U.S. for a better life, and they found it.

And I take pride in being American, but I also take pride in being San Antonio because I found opportunity here in San Antonio, an opportunity to start a business and scale it from three people to 70 people impacting our national security efforts.

Opportunity to start a nonprofit impacting STEM education for the youth in San Antonio.

Opportunity to get civically involved, opportunity to find lifelong friends in San Antonio and start a family.

And that's the same opportunity that I want to give back to San Antonio's.

But today we're facing generational challenges that require generational change from housing, poverty, transportation, transit efforts, homelessness, economic development, jobs, digital connectivity, public safety.

This is these are issues that we need to address today.

Explosive growth.

Yes.

And we cannot sacrifice our identity for that growth.

And it's a balance that we need to strike and we need to set a vision forward that is not only inspiring, but that it sets a tone and a momentum so that we can capture a productive future.

And so that makes my heart beat faster.

But at the end of the day, it's about people.

And today I'm listening and learning about their concerns.

Do you have any kind of timetable for yourself as to when you might make a decision?

Again, there's no there's no great need to do it because it is so early.

Having said that, there are some council members who are already kind of indicating that they might.

Yeah.

Look, I mean, I hope that in the next few months I come to a decision, but I think as I formulate my theory of change, right, it's important that I put people first.

It's not about me, right?

I started a business, a nonprofit.

I feel that I'm contributing to that impact.

And if I'm going to run for office, I got to do it with the virtual and the consensus of people.

It's not again, it's not about me.

And so to your question, there's a timeline.

There's always a timeline.

But the time to listen, to pay attention, to formulate a theory of change and to understand the concerns and the issues that are happening here in San Antonio today.

And that's what I'm focused on.

Putting aside your own personal decision as to what you want to do, do you think that there's a of an argument to be made that bringing someone in from outside the council, from someone whose experiences in business entrepreneurship, that there is a benefit to the city to have a leader who has that experience?

Cause our pattern has generally been the people get to the mayor's office through the city council.

Absolutely.

I'm focused on on systems change, right?

I think my set of skills being an executive can definitely support the endeavors that we have as a city, and I think the executive of the city needs to leverage the bully pulpit to tell a story, to bring and attract more enterprises and jobs to San Antonio to address the issues head on, but most importantly, to moderate a conversation with the community.

And I think that's what I bring, right?

It's about putting the right team together that can address the challenges that we're facing, is about pursuing the right projects and branding those projects so that we can tell a story so people can get excited about the future along those lines.

I mean, we just have a few seconds left, but I know when Willie Castro is mayor, he was I think he he emphasized the idea that when it comes to cybersecurity and different things, I mean, certainly now biotech.

Yeah.

That these that center maybe doesn't always market itself to the to the nation into the world as much as we should have a little bit of wood.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts about San Jose?

You could maybe do that, but we need to do a better job.

Look, I'm a startup, right?

That last week announced that we acquired a cybersecurity firm.

It's one of the oldest firms in cybersecurity in San Antonio.

That is a type of success stories that we got to tell.

One in six individuals already work in biotech, and when you look at the data, it's about 17,000 information technology employees in San Antonio already working cybersecurity.

We need to become the military city and cybersecurity hub for innovation, and I think we're doing it.

But I think we need a market even better.

We need to hit the road and promote it and get people excited about moving to San Antonio, move companies to San Antonio, but reinforce the idea of who we are in our DNA and support our community and the small businesses as well.

And so thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you, Gilbert.

Appreciate it.

That's all for this edition of Texas Tech.

Thanks for watching.

We'd love to hear from you.

And do you have any thoughts or questions you want to share with us?

Please email us at Texas, talk at KLRN.org We'll be back next month with a new guest.

Until then, take care.