Hi,
I am Austin Vance the CEO and Co-Founder of Focused. A co-host on ./deploy. I have been published in FastCompany and Forbes. I also have had the opportunity to be a guest on CodeStory, TechInnovators. I have also spoken at DataNYC, AgileDenver, AI London.

I am a proud father of three boys. I live in Colorado.

Cheers,

Featured Appearance

Convergence PodcastApril 2025
Watch

Building Agentic Apps With Craft: Field Stories from Austin Vance

In this episode, I share field stories and hard-won lessons from building AI systems that go beyond flashy demos. I break down concrete criteria for identifying where AI makes sense—and where it doesn't. From legal assistants to government transparency tools, we explore practical applications that deliver real value.

Media & Publications

Convergence Podcast2025-04

Building Agentic Apps With Craft: Field Stories from Austin Vance

Sharing field stories and hard-won lessons from building AI systems

InfoQ – Engineering Culture2025-01-10

Intentional Culture and Continuous Compensation

Onboarding, values-driven culture, and continuous small raises

Code Story2025-02-25

Code Story S10 E21 – Austin Vance, Focused.io

Founding story of Focused; "services company that deprecates itself"

Your AI Injection2024-12-17

Why Generative AI Could Make Programming Languages Obsolete

Future of AI & coding; enterprise self-hosting of small models

Focused Labs Blog2025-04-01

Developing AI Agency

Focused Labs Blog2024-01-23

Chat With Your PDFs – End-to-End LangChain Tutorial

Dev.to2024-12-19

Why Big Classes Get Bigger: Understanding Preferential Attachment in Your Code

Fast Company – Exec Board2022-05-27

Why You Can't Retain Talent with Annual Reviews and Raise Budgets

PYMNTS.com2024-04-25

Meta's AI Spending Plans Leave Investors Unnerved

Forbes2022-08-16

Upgrading The Digital Customer Experience With a Modern Software Team

Techstrong TV2024-07-23

AI Tools and Code Development

Video interview on AI's effect on DevOps

Enterprise Generative AI Summit West Coast2024-05-21

Choosing The Right Generative AI Tools - Why & How?

Panel discussion on AI tool selection

WGN Radio 720 – Wintrust Business Lunch2022-07-18

Rising Credit-Card Debt, Focused Labs, and SEC Agenda

Chicago radio spot introducing Focused Labs

GitHub2025-03-20

HotMic - Open-source voice dictation tool

An open source version of superwhisper for dictating emails using voice recognition

GitHub2024

Dino - Ruby gem for Arduino prototyping

Most popular open-source project with 389 stars