I love doing business in Austin, but there's still plenty to hate.

Austin, Texas, is not the city I grew up in as a child, but it's the city I've grown up in as a businessman. This city's openness to new ideas, new businesses and different types of people is what makes this the city I love to call home despite many challenges facing Austin which I'll get to in a bit.

I was born about an hour away, but moved to Austin at 18 years old when I started as a freshman at The University of Texas at Austin in 2001. I'd actually started coming to Austin during my junior and senior year of high school either for track and cross country meets in the area or to see concerts in the Live Music Capital of the World. I vividly remember seeing Outkast perform at the Austin Music Hall for my 18th birthday just before I headed to college. I also remember the first time I jumped in the cold but refreshing pool at Barton Springs and when I had breakfast tacos for the first time. But moving to Austin for college is when I really fell in love with Austin and began crafting the story of my life with the city as the backdrop for my future.

Over the years, whether I was working for the Texas Longhorns athletics department or creating events with SXSW, opening a sneaker boutique or launching a tech startup, I've always appreciated Austin for it's willingness to embrace new ideas, new concepts and different people. And I'm not the only person to see this as fact. Austin tops just about every list, every year, whether it's a healthy city, a fun city, a family city, a young person's city, an outdoor city or a live music, eating and drinking city. In naming Austin the #1 metro area in America to start a new business, earlier this year, CNBC wrote:

"There's a young, educated workforce (the University of Texas is based in Austin), no state individual or corporate income taxes, and enough different industries represented to offer an array of opportunities for start-ups. It ranked No. 1 on our list for the highest number of small businesses created, as well as the metro area with the fastest population growth. Technology is a key driver of small-business growth. According to commercial real estate and investment firm CBRE Group, Austin ranks fifth in the nation — behind the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington, D.C., Seattle and New York City — for its ability to attract and retain tech talent."

So there you have it. Plenty of talent, fewer taxes and lots of different industries rather than leaning on one city as Silicon Valley does with tech, New York does with finance and Washington, D.C. does with government. There's a lot to like as a businessperson.

But, truth be told, there's also a lot to dislike. Here are 3 things I hate about Austin today that make it less attractive for new business creation. These three areas are aspects that I fear may be headed in the wrong direction at the moment, but with the right focus and leadership could easily turn around and ensure the long-term viability of Austin as an economic hub for founders, business owners and entrepreneurs of all types.

1. Limited diversity and rising segregation

In a recent study by University of Texas researchers, it was found that Austin was the only U.S. city experiencing double-digit population growth that saw its African-American population not only not keep pace, but actually decline. In a KUT story, the study's author Dr. Eric Tang said, "Indeed, between 2000 and 2010, Austin was a statistical outlier; it was the only major city in the United States to experience a double-digit rate of general population growth coincident with African-American population decline."

Tang continued, "It is the history of segregation of the African-American community in Austin, followed by an intense period of gentrification of the neighborhoods to which they were segregated...In 1928 the City of Austin created what it called the Negro district just east of downtown. The gateway today is Franklin Barbecue for those people familiar with Austin. The city effectively pushed 80 percent of the black population – which before 1928 lived all over Austin – into this segregated district within two years. Fast forward to 1990s, early 2000s – that same area became prime real estate for developers for new development."

And for a good look at the development Dr. Tang references, check out this Austin American-Statesman gallery showing the evolution of Austin's downtown (the backdrop for this weekend's Austin City Limits Music Festival) from 2005 to now.

And, recently, in an effort to enhance Austin's political representation and diversity, the City Council transitioned from seven at-large seats to 10 distinct districts, an effort that has led to the city having more than one Hispanic member and at least one member under 30 years of age. Still, Texas Monthly writer Cecelia Balli posed the question of whether or not Austin may be the most segregated city in the state of Texas.

"I’d lived previously in Brownsville, San Antonio, El Paso, and Houston, and I’d visited Austin countless times as a contributor to this magazine. But I’d always found it wanting in a way that was significant to me: it was the first place in my home state where I was frequently aware of my ethnic difference...sometimes when I had lunch with my editor in downtown Austin I noticed I was the only non-white patron in the restaurant. Things weren’t much better at UT, where the faculty was just 5.9 percent Latino (and just 3.7 percent African American)."

Later in the Texas Monthly writeup Balli added, "The question is how increasing diversity in political representation will eventually make Austin a more genuinely multicultural city. Politics is one thing; the next step is getting citizens from different backgrounds to know one another, to eat in the same restaurants, to move through the same spaces...I sorely missed this sight when I moved to Austin, this visibility and celebration of cultural difference."

Recommendation: A dual-track program in which Austin creates an "Entrepreneur in Residence" or "Executive in Residence" program to recruit some of the brightest African American business leaders and founders to the city to support early- and growth-stage startups and help these companies reach their potential while helping these executives and entrepreneurs gain experience to launch their own businesses in Austin. The second track would involve recruiting management-level applicants from some of the best-run small businesses in America (such as restaurants and live music venues) to re-locate to Austin, provide seed funding and launch local businesses here.

2. Limited access to venture capital

While Austin is a leading city in the country for angel investments, typically checks for $25,000, the city is not quite making a name for itself with regard to venture funding as is the case in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, Los Angeles or even smaller tech markets such as Chicago and Seattle.

In a Medium post earlier this year, entrepreneur Richard Bagdonas commented on Austin's lacking VC capital and told KUT, "There’s an imbalance on the number of investors, the amount of capital that’s being invested in Austin, compared with the number of startups that have begun over the last few years. So, I believe we’re in the Dark Ages of venture capital here in Austin, and I look forward to moving into more of a Renaissance period.”

I, myself, had to consider moving my company to Silicon Valley to attract meaningful capital to grow my business after establishing a strong level of product-market fit. I didn't have a good experience pitching Austin Ventures, the well-known VC firm in Austin for years, but their recent downfall has certainly created a vacuum that has not yet been filled by newer firms such as S3 Ventures, LiveOak and Next Coast Ventures.

And a recent a study by the Munday School of Business at St. Edward's University comparing Austin to other startup boomtowns provides the most detailed look yet at the city's venture capital and startup ecosystems, according to Austin Inno. "For years, tech and startup leaders, angel investors, venture capitalists and politicians have noted that Austin generates loads of seed money to fuel young businesses but lacks the Series A, Series B and late stage funding sources to really drive a company's growth to new levels...The new study, released by the Austin Technology Council and Austin Chamber of Commerce and led by David Altounian, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at St. Edwards University, blames that lack of funding on the city's diminutive funding network."

Recommendation: Looking at Columbus, Ohio-based Drive Capital and the Columbus Partnership as a model, Austin's business and tech leaders should join forces to recruit Silicon Valley or New York-based venture capitalists to move to Austin (many of them have Austin connections, e.g. Mike Maples at Floodgate or Conrad Shang at NVP) and launch a fund of at least $150 million for consumer tech and Series A/B investments. The current investors here have a preference for software and b2b tech so I believe this is an important gap to fill here.

3. Limited public transportation

In a writeup this May, the Austin Business Journal wrote a story titled, "Austin region population boom not slowing, latest Census data shows."

"While the Austin region's population estimate moved past 2 million between 2014 and 2015, the Central Texas region saw an average overall gain of 157.2 new residents (births, deaths and migration) per day last year. And 52.4 of those new daily residents landed — by plane, train or birth — inside Austin's city limits."

Population growth is great for the city's economy, recruiters and hiring companies, but it's not so good on the city's transportation network, which was designed with 500,000 residents in mind (a population the city eclipsed nearly two decades ago) not 2 million. In INRIX's annual traffic scorecard, Austin ranked 4th worst in America ahead of New York, Atlanta, Boston, Seattle, Washington, D.C. and several other major metro areas.

In 2014, I supported an effort to get a light rail line approved and built here in Austin. A line that would connect major segments of the city's educational, healthcare, political and business hubs including the University of Texas and Downtown. Unfortunately, as reported then by Next City, the effort failed.

"Last week, Austin’s light rail proposal failed, marking the city’s second unsuccessful attempt to lay financial groundwork for such a line. But as one of the country’s fastest growing and most congested metro regions, Texas’ capital can’t rely on packed freeways forever."

And therein lies the rub on why public transit is such a huge issue: Austin is a city that traditionally embraces new ideas - be they new types of food trucks or new types of festivals or new startups - yet the city continues to show a deeply-held resistance to the kind of public transit infrastructure a city with this kind of population growth requires.

The reason public transit has become such a pressing issue today in Austin is not just because of the short-sighted decision of Austin's City Council to enact regulations this spring that ultimately led to Uber's and Lyft's departure from the city. Public transit is a critical matter in Austin because the city has grown tremendously despite a belief by many that if the city didn't build public transit people would choose not to move here.

Recommendation: Support Mayor Adler's transit bond initiative for 2016 then seek out a public-private partnership (with significant business backing) to partner with Capital Metro and create a citywide initiative focused on ensuring the next transportation bond (likely in 2-4 years) includes light rail and wins. Perhaps the third time is the charm.

Parting Thought

And if I've learned anything from Brexit or Donald Trump's candidacy or seeing Uber and Lyft regulated out of Austin, it's that the ways I see the world may not be how other see it and that the silent majority doesn't always win. So I refuse to be silent as an Austin businessman about the things I see challenging the city's image as a great place to do business today and in the future. I love Austin because we love new ideas. At this moment, I fear that we may lose sight of that in the midst of Austin's lack of diversity, limited access to capital to fund new ventures throughout their business lifecyle (pushing entrepreneurs to other markets) and the lack of public transportation infrastructure that may make the city and its roads unbearable altogether. I hope others share my concerns, speak out and find the local officials focused on improving the situation. On October 10th, I'm co-hosting a happy hour for a City Councilman named Greg Casar whom I believe shares many of my concerns, and I'm eager to find others in elected office or other leadership positions in the community and business to help.