Austin, TX
UT Austin students and childhood friends create production company
AUSTIN, Texas – A couple of entrepreneurial 19-year-olds from Austin created a production company that they continue to run in their spare time in between classes at UT Austin.
Like every great business startup story, theirs started in college while they were both sitting on the couch.
Creating JHMG Productions
What they’re saying:
John Houston and Mark Greenberg are childhood friends, fraternity brothers at the University of Texas, roommates, and business partners.
“Mark and I are actually lifelong friends,” said John Houston. “I’ve known Mark since I was probably third or fourth grade.”
Greenberg and Houston combined their initials and connections to form JHMG Productions last year as freshmen.
“We were just like sitting on our dorm room couch and just going back and forth,” said Mark Greenberg. “So this past summer, kind of at the end of June, we had our first concert with him down on Sixth Street, where we sold out roughly 700 tickets.”
As social chair of his fraternity, Houston already had experience booking events and venues.
“Live music is crucial, like to that Austin social scene, and it was kind of missing from the UT social scene,” said Houston.
They both wanted to breathe life into the art of live music.
“You might think, ‘Oh, that’s obvious, you would need to get insurance,’ but to a 19-year-old kid in college, that’s not as obvious as you would think,” said Greenberg.
The pair took an idea, turned it into a company, and are learning along the way.
“We had an idea. We didn’t have any money to start it,” said Houston. “If you’re driven, if you put whatever you have into that, good things will come from it.”
With their next show only weeks away, JHMG Productions expects their largest crowd to date.
“49 Winchester really is the pinnacle of what JHMG is supposed to be; that’s going to be our biggest show thus far,” said Houston. “This venue is a lot bigger than, you know, 750 capacity. You know, we could fit 3000 people in here.”
The next show is on April 10, 2025, at the Far Out Lounge in Southeast Austin.
They are giving out a discount code for viewers. If you use the code “FOX7” at checkout, you will receive 10 percent off your tickets.
The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin’s Katie Pratt
The brokerage founded by reality TV personality Washington Ho is planting a flag in the Texas capital.
White House Global Properties, a Houston-based commercial and residential real estate firm founded in 2023, has expanded into Austin, with plans to hire 30 to 50 agents over the next few years, the Austin Business Journal reported.
The office is operating out of The Malin, a coworking space at 1515 East Cesar Chavez Street in East Austin, and will be led by managing partner Aaron Brandom.
The brokerage tends toward luxury listings, but it intends to represent all sectors of the Austin market, including lower-cost residential, commercial, industrial and development properties.
The firm is in talks with developers to secure listings for over 60 units across undisclosed locations in the Austin area, CEO Angelica Smart said.
Commercial targets include hotels, restaurants and retail sites. Ho said he sees each major market as uniquely challenging and is treating Austin as its own ecosystem.
Ho is known for starring in HBO Max’s “House of Ho,” a show about his family’s multigenerational wealth and business empire. He grabbed attention last year for listing Houston’s “Darth Vader” house at 3201 University Boulevard, which asked nearly $4 million before it was taken off the market last month.
He has pitched White House Global Properties as an ambitious real estate venture that aims to disrupt traditional brokerages by way of training agents that can move between residential and commercial sectors with ease.
The firm has a 40-person team in Houston — 32 residential and 8 commercial agents — and sees Austin as the next logical step in its regional push. He imagines looking into a Dallas-Fort Worth expansion next.
Ho co-founded the brokerage with Smart after leaving eXp Realty in 2023 over disagreements with its commission structure.
The duo launched White House Global Properties with a tiered fee model designed to better reward top-producing agents and to keep more of the brokerage share for themselves. Ho is also behind a THC seltzer startup called HoBuzz.
— Judah Duke
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Austin, TX
No. 5 Texas baseball falls to Texas State as the Bobcats win their fourth straight in Austin, 5-3
A week into his tenure in Austin, Texas basketball coach Sean Miller has begun to rebuild the Longhorns’ roster.
Miller received a portal pledge Tuesday from Dailyn Swain, according to multiple reports. One of Miller’s former players at Xavier, the 6-foot-8, 220-pound wing who projects as a future NBA player has two remaining years of eligibility.
Swain had a breakout season for Xavier in 2024-25 while averaging 11 points, 5.5 rebounds and 2.6 assists. The former four-star recruit and one of the top prep players in the state of Ohio for the 2023 class visited Austin on Monday. The No. 20 player in On3’s portal rankings also reportedly had visits scheduled for Ohio State, Kentucky and Arkansas.
Swain projects as an instant starter on the wing for Texas next season, considering his versatility and experience. He shoots just 25% from three-point range but is an effective scorer with his midrange game and at the rim. In Xavier’s loss to Illinois in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, however, he showed his offensive potential by making three of his five three-point shots while scoring a career-best 27 points. He also had eight rebounds, three assists and three steals against Illinois.
Swain can also handle the ball and has shown the ability to guard multiple positions during his two years at Xavier.
The spring portal window opened March 24, the same day that Texas officials announced Miller as the replacement for the fired Rodney Terry. Miller and his staff have their hands full rebuilding the roster, considering five Texas players used up their collegiate eligibility: forwards Arthur Kaluma, Jayson Kent, Ze’Rik Onyema and Kadin Shedrick as well as guard Julian Larry. Wing Devon Pryor has entered the portal, and Tre Johnson, the SEC’s freshman of the year, is expected to declare for the NBA draft any day.
MORE: Sean Miller was the right hire for Texas’ future. Here’s why. | Golden
That likely leaves Miller with three players — junior guard Jordan Pope, junior guard Chendall Weaver and graduate guard Tramon Mark — as the only eligible returning players who averaged at least 10 minutes a game from a team that went 19-16 and lost to Miller’s Xavier squad in a First Four game.
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