It Bothers Me

One of the things my mama taught me was that "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything."  As I have grown up and entered the business world this saying morphed a little.  More along the lines "don't just bring problems to the table, bring potential solutions."

Before I got back to my office after the GRA/TAG business launch competition my mobile phone was ringing in response to the initial announcement and it was not too long before the tweets were flying.  The conversation was taken to the next level when Scott posted an article on the matter.  I am glad that Scott posted what quite a few people were thinking.  Having the conversation out in the open is healthy. 

I understand that ATM Direct winning the competition bothers a lot of people.  I understand why it bothers a lot of people.  But what really bothers me is no one has any suggestions for positive change.  From my point of view you can whine, suggest ways to make it better, or get out your pen and stroke a $100k check.  I am going for the positive inexpensive option.  I encourage you to add to or take away from this list as you see fit in the comments.

So, if I were in charge (and I am not), I would change the terms and conditions of the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition to include:

1.  In operation for less then two years.
2.  Any form of funding must be less then $500k.
3.  Revenue since formation must be less than $100k.

Moreover, if I were in charge (and I am not), I would move away from the focus on clusters and let any startup that meets the core criteria enter the contest.  In my mind the more entrepreneurs that are involved the better.

What would you like to see GRA/TAG do to improve the competition?

CapVenture is Back

This fall ATDC, along with our friends at TAG, will once again is put on the wildly successful CapVenture that is designed to educate and equip early stage technology companies to go out and get their first institutional round of funding.  Actually, it is not just designed to do so, it has been highly effective in getting participants meetings with investors and actual funding.

Apply.

Quote of the Week

"No one is going to run a mission critical application on Windows.  It has a tendency to crash."

Jim Whitehurst

ATM Direct Cashes In

ATM Direct, led by Nandan Sheth, the co-founder and COO of Harbor Payments, is the winner of the 2008 GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition.  ATM Direct seeks to become the leading alternative payments provider with a platform technology that enables PIN debit payments on the Internet.

$100,000 in cash.  $200,000 in services.  Cha-Ching!

ATM was selected by a group of judges that included Adam Coyle of Advent Group, Tom Crotty of Battery Ventures, Cynthia Glassman of the U.S. Department of Commerce , Mark Johnson, formerly of CheckFree, Chris Klaus of Kaneva, Ann Lamont of Oaks Investment Partners, and Fred Sturgis of H.I.G.  Why did this stellar team chose ATM?  The company has great management with a unique solution that is addressing a large and growing market.  They present well.  What more do you want?

This was a great year for the competition.  Seventy five companies, the most ever, initially applied.  Thirty one mentors helped the companies refine their businesses and presentations.  Forty five companies completed the second stage of the competition.  And ATDC played a larger role then ever.  Leading a kickoff luncheon, evaluating the initial applicants as well as the full business plans and recommending the semifinalists. 

Most importantly I am proud of the fact that I, (along with my partners in crime Scott Burkett, Nelson Chu, Alan Graber, Melanie Leeth, Sig Mosley, and the whole ATDC gang) helped to move these companies along and make them stronger startups.  How did we do this?  With pitch coaching for the semifinalists and finalists.  With one on one coaching with companies that requested it.  By providing feedback to companies when they missed a cut.

How do I know we helped them?  Because they told me and GRA the value they were getting.  It took a lot of time and effort to support this effort from the time it launched in January.  It was time well spent.

Congratulations to Sid Elliot of GRA and Tino Mantella of TAG for putting together the best competition yet.  It is a great program.  One that deserves continued support from GRA and from the community at large.

And congratulations to ATM Direct and all the companies that utilized the competition to make their startups stronger.

Open Source Cluster

Atlanta has long been known as  a center for the InfoSec industry.  It seems that ISS alum with the quiet support of Tom Noonan spawned a nice little cluster of well over 30 startups.

Well leave it to a guy from North Carolina to point out that another such cluster is raising in Atlanta.  An open source cluster led by JBoss alum.   With the support of Marc Fluery.  Who does nothing quietly.

In an article explaining why Marc is his hero, Mark Hinkle lays out the following:

I think one of the biggest contributions Marc made to open source was that he infected a bunch of guys with the bug to go make it on their own. Many of them walked away with more than a little pocket cash and they started their own open source companies. Here’s a list of JBoss alumns and what they are up to now.

Appcelerator - Rich Internet Applications
JBoss alumni: Jeff Haynie, Ben Sabrin, Matt Quinlin

LoopFuse - Marketing and Sales Automation
JBoss Alumni - Roy Russo, Tom Elrod

RingSide Networks - Social Networking Server
Jboss Alumni - Bob Bickel, Rich Friedman, Mark Lugert, Shaun Connolly

All of these companies made Mark's list of future open source superstars.  The beginnings of I nice OSS cluster in Atlanta. 

And finally I have news for you.  The real reason Marc F is not Mark Hinkle's hero... I AM! : )

Social Net Lent Experiment

Golly I have been busy. 

Lent ended on March 23rd and along with it my experiment in giving up social networks.  Unlike 2007 when I gave up Google and Yahoo! for Lent and quickly returned to them, I have yet to really engage again with LinkedIn and Facebook.  I deleted my MySpace account.  I cheated with the social networking aspects of Twitter long before Lent was over.

I don't miss LinkedIn or Facebook at all.   At the moment I have 119 messages in my LinkedIn account and 49 messages in my Facebook box and 2 requests.   I try to keep up with requests for joining the groups I created on Facebook but other than that interact little with either site.  I did try to use LinkedIn to find a network engineer to create a network architecture for Piedmont Park (more on that later) and found their new layout a bit confusing. 

When I did the blog redesign I removed my LinkedIn profile.  Search works just fine for finding me and getting connected.  Interested to know if you find yourself using broad based social nets more or less these days.