"There's a lot of hot air in the business that we'd all be better without...a lot of useless pontificating in front of entrepreneurs who are devoting their lives and are working a lot harder than we are on their enterprises."
Mike Moritz
I am quite sure that the Georgia Research Alliance and Technology Association of Georgia will get around real soon to officially announcing the finalists to the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition. But since I was in the room and people keep asking me I am going to give you loyal FoG readers the scoop. Here they are.
ATM Direct. Founded and funded by Nandan Sheth, the co-founder and COO of Harbor Payments, ATM Direct seeks to become the leading alternative payments provider with a platform technology that enables PIN debit payments on the Internet.
Global Crypto Systems. Global Crypto provides strong, easy to use authentication software to companies that expose sensitive information on the Web by embeding cryptographic information in digital images. Or said another way, they protect consumers and financial institutions from phishing. CEO Todd Merrill went through ATDC's CapVenture program last fall and word is they are about to close a small angel round.
ProperNotice. Made their way into the semifinals as the winner of the Peoples Choice video competition. The company bills itself as a penalty prevention service. They have a web based notification system to save a user money by enabling informed business decisions and eliminating contractual penalties.
SkyBlox. Founded by a bevy of key members of EarthLink's former muni wi-fi group, SkyBlox is working to become the leading site for neighborhood wireless networks and the source for up to the minute information about those neighborhoods. They currently have a pilot program up in Virginia-Highland. While it looks like a network play, long term this is a hyper local advertising business. And they have the best logo.
The final four. Congrats to each of them. And the 15 companies that made it to the semifinals.
If you are interested in seeing the final four companies make their pitch for $300,000, presentations are open to the public and will take place on June 4 at IBM.
Update: Here is the official release.
I try to stay away from the whole event listing thing because it really is not what this blog is about, but with the flurry of activity coming up this week it is a must. Hope to see you Atlanta peeps and visitors from afar out and about. Here is what is going on in the ATL over the next week or so with a bit of a personal slant.
Cleantech Georgia 2008. May 14th. Georgia is making some noise in the emerging CleanTech space and this is the place to learn about it. John Baumstark of ATDC member company Suniva will be speaking as well as my former partner in crime Mike McQuary of RTEV.
ATDC Entrepreneurs Showcase. May 15th. If you are in Georgia you need to join the 579 folks that have already registered to attend this event. Afterward it is to The Globe for StartupDrinks and then the Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs where I am the expert speaker on startup fund raising.
Startup Riot. May 19th. With over 70 companies presenting it very well may turn into something riot like. At least one of the companies of particular interest to me is Skribit, which continues to gain traction. It will also be interesting to see if people grok BackNoise.
CapitalLounge. May 21st. Formally called Capital Connections, Scott Burkett and Michael Blake are at it again with their quarterly entrepreneur/investor networking event. They have killed the demos so the geeks can't hide behind their computers. A must attend for entrepreneurs seeking early stage funding.
This whirlwind of activity makes sleeping in a tent in Douglas County on Saturday night tame.
If you have:
* System software development experience with C/C++ and Java, but
also the ability to develop in Ruby and/or Python if the need arises
* An ability to provide technical leadership
* Work experience in the Internet security field
* Expert user level understanding of UNIX-based OS and shell commands
* TCP/IP networking and higher level protocol knowledge
* Comfort using SQL
* The ability to perform at a superstar level in a fast paced environment
* Communicate skills relatively strong for someone this geeky
And want to work hard in a team-driven environment with for a startup with a lot of potential upside I may a a job for you.
Good comp and benefit program. They even have free snacks and beverages.
"Like the popular kids, Facebook will end up living in a trailer —just down the gravel road from Friendster."
Ian Daly
Courtesy of Paul Freet.
Seems to me over the past week or so Google alerts has gone a little crazy. I am getting all kinds of alerts on both old and odd news.
In order to help manage my online identity I have an alert for "Lance Weatherby." The other day an alert showed up entitled Twitterholic.com :Stats for Lance Weatherby (lance) which I found interesting enough to click through.
One of the interesting tidbits I found there was 11,711th person to sign up for twitter. But I also saw this chart with a recent large increase in the number of my twitter followers. I have been getting lots of followings from folks who I do not know or know of. Just bizarre profiles trolling for followers. Followbaiters.
The graphic ain't too clear but is it obviously heading up. I did a little investigating by merely changing out the user names of folks I followed in the tail end of this URL http://www.twitterholic.com/twitter/lance/ . Every single one I looked at showed the same type of graph.
People have stopped starting following other people on twitter because they are personal friends or acquaintances in some way. They have started following people to get more followers or to drive traffic. Or put another way, for the good of themselves instead of the good of the community. That is a bad thing for twitter.
And it is really starting to get out of hand. How to you respond to this:
Jesus Christ (Jesus_Christ) is now following your updates on Twitter.
Check out Jesus Christ's profile here:
http://twitter.com/Jesus_Christ
You may follow Jesus Christ as well by clicking on the "follow" button.
Since I don't have a personal relationship with Jesus_Christ, I decided to delete the message.
Yesterday RTEV launched over at the Georgia Tech Conference Center. RTEV is an electric vehicle (EV) company focused on delivering affordable electric low speed vehicles (LSVs). The keys words here are affordable and low speed, a strategy a bit different from the high end aimed Tesla and Fisker cars that were featured in a Wall Street Journal on the same day. Low speed vehicles are a U.S. Department of Transportation classification for cars that can be licensed and driven on roads that have speed limits of 35 MPH or less. RTEV intends to produce such cars and sell them to short distance commuters in the $20,000 range.
Like its fellow Georgia car company Carbon Motors, this is an interesting story. RTEV is led by Mike McQuary. Mike was the President and COO of MindSpring and then EarthLink (ok, he really was not the COO at EarthLink even though he had the same responsibilities, but that is a story for another day, he was also my direct boss during those seven years.). In addition to being CEO of RTEV Mike is a partner in Ellis, McQuary, Stanley and Associates. Those three and their associates are into all types of stuff that more often then not turns out well and one of the things they decided to do was go buy a company called Ruff & Tuff Products and convert it into an EV company.
RTEV is comprised of two divisions, Ruff & Tuff and Wheego. Ruff & Tuff currently manufactures and distributes recreational vehicles under its Ruff & Tuff brand, all of which are easily and inexpensively converted to be street-legal LSVs. Last year they sold about 1,000 of these at $8,000 a pop through a distribution network that they have already put in place. In the second half of this year RTEV will introduce a line of electric scooters and bicycles under the Wheego brand, to be followed by the auto shaped LSVs in 2009, and full-size, full-speed electric vehicles in 2010.
RTEV is essentially using the profits of Ruff & Tuff to help fund the development of Wheego. Last fall the company raised $5 million (full disclosure: I am an investor). They expect to go out and get a venture round sometime within the next year.
In addition to its middle market approach and distribution, RTEV claims a few technical advantages that distinguishes it from other electric vehicles currently on the market. The company uses long running dry cell sealed (AGM) batteries, which require no maintenance and will not harm the environment. The vehicles also feature on board high tech chargers and battery systems that can be upgraded to travel up to 70 miles on a single charge—and plug in for a recharge on any standard home 110 volt electrical outlet.
Mike pretty much imported MindSpring's core values into RTEV and added a new one "We care about the environment and believe that if everyone does a little bit to help with preservation it can add up to a big change for the better." In the launch announcement he said something very CEO like about "a perfect storm of macro-events." At the event he climbed into the trunk of the prototype and rode around in there so he could pitch reporters while they test drove. A sight to see. Classic McQuary.
It will be interesting to see what "McQ" can do with this one. I made my bet that he can turn it into something.
Update: A profile on McQuary appeared in the Atlanta Journal the day after I wrote this article.
Just like they did with RSS, the folks over at Common Craft do a most excellent job of explaining twittter in plain english.
Seems like in the past month or so twitter is moving beyond a "what are my friends doing microblog" to something else. What that something else is seems less useful to me. It feels I am currently using twitter a lot less then I was a month or two ago. My TweetStats seem to back that feeling up.
"Don't just not be evil. Be good."
Paul Graham
My philosophy on both life and startups. Hence the title of this blog. A worthy essay to spend a few minutes reading.
One of the leading suggestions in my Skribit is the subject of Atlanta Investors. I was fortunate enough to sit in on a talk that Sig Mosley, the unwitting godfather of early stage technology investing in Atlanta, had with the companies in the ATDC incubator program. Sig got me motivated. So today I am going to write a bit about Atlanta early stage investors.
But before I do that I think some of the things that Sig had to say about the state of early stage technology companies is also of interest. According to Sig, there are more good opportunities going on in Atlanta than in the past four or five years. In 2007 Imlay Investments did eight deals. They have already committed to three in 2008. Typically the firm does three deals a year. Deals are flowing at the moment. Sig finds the new media and video spaces to be very interesting at the moment.
Switching to Atlanta investors, Imlay is not the only game in town. There are a host of individuals that do angel investing. Most of them would not appreciate their names being published here. If you want to find them I suggest finding a CEO of a company in your space that has been funded, ask them out to coffee, and find out the folks that were interested in their deal. Try to get an introduction.
More formally the Atlanta Technology Angels is the biggest and oldest angel group in town. They mostly do enterprise software type deals. But if you have something else Knox Massey may be able to direct you to specific individuals within the group that may have an interest in your venture. The Seraph Group is a well funded professional early stage venture fund based in Atlanta. Seraph is one of those companies that is bridging the gap between traditional angel and VC investment, so they are really looking at companies that are raising more than $500k but not as much as a typical venture round.
What is really exciting are the new early stage investment vehicles that are being created. All the talk over the last year or so about the need for a seed stage fund is starting to be more then talk. A seed stage investment company called Profounder, of which I am an investor, is in the process of being formed. There is another seed stage group being formed by two or three of the biggest names on the Atlanta technology scene. Value-Plus Ventures is making its first set of angel like investments. And don't forget the Edison Fund if you have some loose connection to Georgia Tech.
To top all of this activity off, the folks over at StartupLounge have started the AngelLounge.
While this is more of a networking event for angels as opposed to an
angel group per se, I predict that it will result in at the very least more engaged
angels and perhaps yet another seed stage fund.
So if you are an early stage entrepreneur there are lots of options. And the deals are flowing. Go get yours.
And if I can help you know where to find me.
This is what I have been doing with my time the past week. Reading these business plans for the GRA/TAG business launch competition.
On Thursday the screening committee had a three hour meeting to get the 45 final entries down to 15. Lots of concepts. It was a tough job. Next Thursday the recommendations will be presented to the GRA/TAG Task Force and the semifinalists will be notified. On the afternoon of Monday May 5th I am going to hold a pitch presentation workshop for the semifinalists.
Special thanks to Ashish Mistry, Nelson Chu, and Sig Mosley for lending their time and expertise and helping in this stage of the competition.
TAG/GRA Business Competiton final entries review + ATDC Web site relaunch + lots of applicant meetings + coworker vacations = no time for blogging this week. Back soon.
"The biggest factor determining how a VC will feel about your startup is how other VCs feel about it."
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece today about how Cisco, one of the leading acquirers of small technology companies, is changing their takeover game plan.
Cisco's acquisition playbook is the stuff of Harvard Business school case studies. The bada bing, bada bang plan includes new business cards the day the deal is announced, new Cisco bosses, new Cisco comp plans, and sale force integration in short order.
However, Cisco's strategy started to change when they bought Linksys. It made little sense to kill the consumer brand and the sales force called mostly on retailers. Cisco rightly left the Linksys brand alone (it has more brand equity with consumers then Cisco). The Scientific Atlanta acquisition also led to a change as most of SA's more than six thousand employees remain in Georgia (and a target rich environment for startup technical talent) and not integrated within Cisco. It then left WebEx alone when it bought that company. Featured in the article is how the acquisition of IronPort unfolded.
The leave the smart people that know these businesses alone, and let the brand stand strategy seems to be working. All of the above mentioned companies in my mind continue to grow and innovate within Cisco. Unlike the borg type strategy that Google is using on companies such as Urchin that kill innovation (compare the Urchin site to the IronPort site), Cisco's new model seems to be working pretty darn well. Cisco is adapting with the times and seems to be a strong suitor for a wide range of startup companies. Startup entrepreneurs would be wise to follow their activities.
If you have an interest in reading the entire Journal article you can find it here.
As a personal aside, I got to know Scott Weiss the CEO of IronPort a bit when he was running business development at HotMail. Our paths crossed again when IronPort competed with CipherTrust and its IronMail product. Nice to see him get some ink.
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Kevin Kelly: Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World
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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
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