Quite some time ago someone anonymously suggested via Skribit that I write about the reasons for the lack of consumer oriented startups in Atlanta.  The suggester used the word "dearth" which seemed a little harsh to me.

The reality is that there is a pretty vibrant group of consumer startups in Atlanta.  I saw founders of these companies at BarCamp and StartupWeekend.  I got to know quite a few of them better via the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition, Startup Riot, and CapVenture.  Just amassing the list of these startups in one place to demonstrate the point was going to be a massive undertaking.

That task has all been made quite easy by ATLlogos put together by Paul Freet.  ATLlogos is a nice place to visit that lists all the startups in Atlanta that have come to Paul’s attention.  There is an RSS feed to stay up to date on startup company news. They are tagged by industry.  If you click on the consumer tag you will find 28 consumer oriented startups.  That about 25% of the total.  These companies range from more well established startups such as Kaneva, to up and comers such as JungleDisk, to just cool ideas such as Tag6, to Esgut which just sold for a nice quick exit.  So there is a group of companies out there playing in the consumer space.

But to many this does not seem to be the case.  Perhaps because not many of them make it big.  Why is this?

I’ll try to answer that question next week.