Why I Am A Chicago Bears Fan

Have not been blogging much this week. Most of my spare cycles have been spent trying to find a seat at Super Bowl XLI. I have been to four Super Bowls. I am starting to resign myself to the fact that I may not get to this one.

But I am a Bears fan. Why?

The Wall Street Journal, of all publications, seemed it up pretty well today.

And the names of famous Bears and bits of Bearsiana are so hallowed you expect to hear an echo when you say them aloud: George Halas. Red Grange. Bronko Nagurski. Gale Sayers. Walter Payton. Mike Ditka. The Monsters of the Midway. "Brian's Song." The Super Bowl Shuffle.

On on top of this, defense has always been the key for the Bears. I have been a defensive kinda guy since my days of playing at Westport.

A little later in the week I will outline the keys to a Bears victory. Right now I am just playing out my last hopes for a ticket.

10 Ways to Improve Your Web Presence

Tony Antoniades and I recently gave a presentation at an ATDC "Brown Bag" entitled 10 Quick, Cheap, & Easy Ways to Increase Your Web Presence.

It was a well-attended event with nearly a third of the companies in the incubator present. A lot of the entrepreneurs told me that they got great value out of the discussion.

In the future we are going to start Webcasting some of these events, but for now I thought I would share the 10 tips.

1. Get One

Yes believe it or not, not all tech companies have a Web site. It is your face to the world and your first point of interaction with analysts, customers, employees, and investors. For most start-ups it is the only outlet to portray their brand.

2. Set Goals

You really need to determine the purpose of the site. Are you trying to build some awareness, generate leads or actually create revenue? The goals need to be specific. Quantifiable. That way you can track results and measure success.

3. Study Your Stats

Most hosting providers have a free stats package and if they do not there are free third party packages such as Google Analytics. Learn where you visitors are coming from, the time they come to your site, the search terms used to find you. Knowing this info helps immensely on SEO keyword phrases.

4. Keep It Current

The most not so obvious tip is not to put dates on things that don't need them. Don't call it a weekly update if you really are not committed to updating it every week. When leaders join get them on the site pronto. Set a schedule for updating news and stick to it.

5. Clean Up Content

Less is more. People prefer clicking to scrolling. Page depth also helps with SEO for specific terms on specific pages. Seems like to me around less then 150 words a page is about right. Clearly identify downloads as such and put your deeper content such as tech specs, white papers, and case studies in those. Make sure that your site architecture is flexible and easy to change by someone less technical.

6. Be Found

SEO is designing your site so that it is friendly to search engine robots. While this is a subject in and of itself, at its core SEO is ensuring that robots can access and read all the content from your site. Robots can't read scripts and they can't read images.

7. Be Relevant

Relevence is key and the proper keyword phrases must be used. Both Google and Yahoo have nice keyword generator tools. Use keywords strategically on your site in content, inbound links, meta tags and titles. Don't use them in images. And as in all marketing, density matters.

8. Be Popular

Think of inbound links as votes. You have to campaign. Do so by blogging, commenting on blogs, and getting links from customers/partners. Put your site in your LinkedIn profile. Make the votes count with links to your site that are hyperlinked keywords.

9. Buy Some Friends

I little efficient PPC campaign never hurt anyone. Be cheap with by focusing on $.05/.10 keyword phrases. Implement the ability to track conversion.

10. Stop Procrastinating

Just do it! Andy Monin from Vendormate started implementing these suggestions right away and for that he gets a little vendor credentialing and compliance love.

More on NDAs

I first wrote about VCs and NDAs last November.

Well last week Rick Segal had a whole series of rants on the subject.

First he explains how you should go for confidentiality in the term sheet.

Second he outlines how to handle it in an execution play.

Finally he piles it on by analyzing the last 100 unsolicited business concepts that has been sent to him and were marked as confidential in some manner.

If one of your goals is to raise money in 2007 these are must-reads.

And BTW, the ATDC does not sign NDAs.

Breckenridge Bound

Heading out to Breckenridge for four days of skiing.

For a guy from the south its gonna be cold. High of 17 on Sunday.

I think I might have to come in early and watch da Bears. The Saints have a nice story but it ends here.

AT&T Humor

Can AT&T be humorous?

I suppose in a geeky kind of way they can be made fun of.

Courtesy of Scott Ryan at Asankya.

If I Had $130 Million

And smoked pot I would pay someone to tote it around for me.

Unlike Michael Vick .

No wonder the Falcons can't put audibles in the playbook.

Preparing for an M&A Exit

In partnership with Morris, Manning and Croft & Bender, the ATDC is putitng on an event called "Preparing for an M&A Exit: Practical Advice for Technology Entrepreneurs from Experienced Executives & Advisors." Some of Atlanta's most respected legal advisors, investment banking firms, and entrepreneurs who have recently sold their companies will be part of the program.

Panelists will include Doug Guess, Steve Hufford, Glenn McGonnigle, Said Mohammadioun, and John Yates.

In addition to getting great advice from highly respected entrepreneurs, you will also learn about current M&A trends, including recent technology sector transactions, what you can do to be prepared at all times for an M&A exit, and how to work with M&A advisors to better manage the transaction and maximize the value of your company.

The event is Thursday January 25 from 7:15am to 10:00am in the TSRB auditorium. The official address is 85 Fifth Street, Atlanta 30308

If you are interested in attending please RSVP to events at atdc dot org by Friday, January 19.

It should be a good show!

Open Marriages

One of the not written but much spoken policies at the ATDC is that we do not let competitive companies into the incubator. Since I joined last October I have questioned the wisdom of this from time to time.

Just because a particular entrepreneur comes to us first should not necessarily preclude another with a good concept and plan from joining I have said on more than one occasion. After all our job is to help entrepreneurs launch and build great companies and in the process increase the Georgia technology base. The more the merrier. Right?

Union Square Ventures has explained why they don't invest in competitive companies.

Their logic has me rethinking mine.

GRA TAG Business Competition

Seems to be the season of the business plan competition.

The Georgia Research Alliance and Technology Association of Georgia have announced the GRA/TAG 2007 Business Launch Competition.

They are awarding a $100,000 cash prize plus a suite of services valued at $150,000. Instructions to apply are here. Applications are due February 19.

I participated last year as an entrepreneur. It was a great experience and this is a great program. GRA and TAG have asked the ATDC to partner with them on this program. As a result I will be judging some of the preliminary submissions. My advice is to use the template on the ATDC web site for your preliminary executive summary.

For reasons that I don't quite understand, submissions are limited to companies with financial service and supply chain managment technologies. In my mind we should just be looking for the biggest opportunities.

And somebody please remind me to place the disclaimer that the views represented on this blog are my own in one of the side bars real soon.

Long Weekend

Going to the beach!

Sunny and 77.

MLK was a great, great man.