The Hill Country Venture Fest will host its October 1, 2026, student pitch night at Mason's Odeon Theater and has detailed the event on hillcountryventurefest.com.s. Named the **2025 Texas Venture Fest of the Year** by the Texas Venture Alliance, the free, one-evening festival invites rural Hill Country students to pitch real ideas to real judges in front of a community that shows up for them.
"A local kid's story once went out to the whole world from that stage," Milton Jordan said. "On October 1, our students step onto the same boards and pitch what they want to build. That's not a metaphor we invented - it's the history of the room."
The Hill Country Venture Fest is free to attend and free to enter. It is co-hosted by thetownie.ai and SimpleEDO.ai, organized by Katie Milton Jordan since it began as a single-campus event in Kerrville in 2023, and is part of the statewide Texas Venture Fest network. Reservations open through hillcountryventurefest.com and close August 28; because the Odeon is a small house, seats are first come, first served and may fill sooner.
