With a URL with the extension of "maybe" Paul Graham wrote an interesting essay about how a city could go about buying a Silicon Valley. Towards the end he poses a series of question any city should ask if the scheme will work for them. Here is my take on the answers.
Do you have good weather?
With the exception of July and August when the heat and humidity forces everyone indoors, the answer to this question is yes.
Do people live downtown, or
have they abandoned the center for the suburbs?
Partially yes. The vast majority of Atlanta's 5.5 million people do not live downtown. But a lot do. According to a recent TAG survey 38% of Georgia entrepreneurs said they were located with 10 miles of Technology Square in Midtown. Sixty percent were within 15 miles. I believe this is dense enough.
Would the city be
described as "hip" and "tolerant," or as reflecting "traditional
values?"
With the exception of small pockets inside the perimeter you can't exactly call Atlanta hip and trendy. It is a traditional town in a traditional state. More tolerance is needed in the city too busy to hate.
Are there good universities nearby?
Without a doubt. Three major research universities are within five miles of each other. Emory, Georgia Tech, and Georgia State. Major strength of Atlanta.
Are there walkable
neighborhoods?
Yes. Despite the way some folks drive around Atlanta doing 60 miles an hour on 30 mile per hour streets, there are walkable neighborhoods. Morningside, where I live, is quite walkable. It's part of the reason I live there. So are adjoining neighborhoods like Virginia Highland and Midtown. Midtown being most important. It is literally work/live. And adjacent to Georgia Tech.
Would nerds feel at home?
I don't know. I am not a nerd. I am a semi-geek. More of a business guy. But I did once see a coed walking down 5th Street with a "Talk Nerdy To Me" t-shirt on. So am going to give it a non-qualified to answer yes.
So there you have it. Hipness aside, Atlanta seems like the type of town that might be able pull off Paul's plan if it wanted to do so.
What do you think the answers are to Paul's questions for Atlanta or whatever town you happen to reside?
Force of Good turned three 10 days ago. Unlike previous years the day came and went without notice. FoG continues to grow, and grow at an accelerating rate. Here are some stats for the past three years. Visitors and comments are cumulative.
Traffic is up 325%. Visitors in 2009 have already surpassed the number for the entire year of 2008. The current run rate indicates about 90,000 visitors this year.
Comments are up more then traffic. And while I have no hard evidence to prove this, it is my firm belief that comments are a prime driver of traffic growth and not the other way around. My writing has pretty much stayed the same since I started FoG. The community has grown and is feeding off itself. The community and the content that it is creating is improving both the quality of the conversation and the intensity of the discussion. It's a good thing. A beautiful thing.
The purpose of sharing this information is not a chest pounding exercise. It's to share a real world example of something you hear experts say all the time. It takes time to build a blog. FoG is a living example of that premise. If you keep at it long enough all of a sudden your blog tips. I think that point is when the number of comments exceeds the number of posts. It took just over two years for that to happen here. And once that happens it really is no longer my blog. It belongs to the folks that read and the folks that comment. I just try to get things started by providing interesting pieces to get the conversation moving.
My purpose for creating FoG was to find my voice again, learn about social media, see how it works, and a bit of shameless
self-promotion. I have achieved these objectives. I have also accomplished something that I really did not set out to do.
A few years ago I was introduced to Kirsten Dixson. Kirsten is a personal branding guru and coauthor of Career Distinction: Stand Out by
Building Your Brand. We hit it off and she encouraged me to go through a personal branding exercise. Part of this exercise included 360 degree feedback where people that you have worked with in the past essentially describe the brand attributes of you. The single word that people used most to describe me? Intelligent. There is a problem with intelligent. It's like cool. If you say you are cool, you're not. If you going around saying you are intelligent it's worse. And what I think FoG has enabled me to do is demonstrate to a part of the world that interests me that I am smart capable person without actually having come out and say it. Until now. The point being a blog enables you to establish what you are and what you stand for to an ever growing audience.
The other brand attributes? Enterprising, passionate, visionary, and unique. Unique really was quirky, but who wants to be known as that?
This is the second in a series of articles that discusses the stages of a startup. Previously the concept stage was covered. Today the seed stage is addressed.
The seed stage is the second stage
of a technology startup.
The
key element being addressed in the seed stage is product development. Building a prototype, demonstrating it in a controlled environment. Getting to alpha with friendlies. Beta testing with people that could become real customers. Essentially testing and validating the ability to bring the concept to life.
The business focus is on researching the market and potential opportunity. Refining the business plan and model. Defining and validating the product offering with customer and expert surveys. Then taking this information and refining the plan.
The team is growing. In addition to the initial founder(s) one or two people are making their way on board. Not all necessarily working full-time, but all increasing their commitment to the company. There is most likely at least one person totally committed to the project at this stage, particularly if the company requires outside capital. If you obtain funding the rest of the team comes on board in short order.
You are prospecting for potential customers and partners. Hopefully potential customers are starting to express interest. Use the product. Perhaps even pay for it. But revenues are small. Say less than $500,000. More often than not non existent. Put you are starting to see significant use traction.
If there is the potential for intellectual property protection it is being pursued. Patent strategy is discussed and formed. Provisionals are filed. Later in the seed stage patents could be pending.
Funding
at this stage is between $100,000 and $1 million. More than $1 million for capital intensive startups. The earlier the company is in development the less funding it will attract. The funding may still come from founder(s), family, and friends (you need to have really good family and friends). Government and SBIR grants still can play a lead role. The pros may show up in the form of Angels. It is very rare for venture capitalists to play here. It's too early. The valuation range is broad. Say $250,000 to $3 million pre-money. Funding could take the form of common stock, convertible debt or preferred equity.
The seed stage is a long haul. It lasts from nine months to two years. The big mistake I see made over and over again in the seed stage? Not focusing on product dev, research, and refining the business model. Focusing on raising money. Too much money too soon. It becomes the entire focus. Poof! End of startup. But some companies make it through this marathon and enter the growth early stage.
And the growth early stage is when things really get fun.
For the past two years I have given up some form of Internet technology for Lent.
Two years ago it was Google and Yahoo! I went back to them both for awhile. These days it seems like just about everybody has given up on Yahoo!. And the GOOG borg just keeps sucking us all in.
Last year I give up social networks. Never really went back to LinkedIn and Facebook. Twitter has become my social network of choice.
I have been contemplating what to do this year for some time. Give up Twitter. No way. Drives too much traffic. I thought of giving up follower scrutiny. Doing auto-follow. But that didn't feel right.
It seems I have started a bit of a trend in Atlanta with this giving up technology thing. Stephen Fleming announced he was giving up Twitter for Lent. Knox Massey said all social networks, blogs and limited email.
When others are zigging it's time to zag. I'm keeping my technology this year. All of it.
It's just past midnight. For Lent I am giving up staying up during the work week.
Let's see now that goes.
Update: Perhaps I did give up something technical for Lent. I killed www.weatherby.net. For the time being blog.weatherby is my home on the Internet. I also am giving up checking my lance@mindspring.com email address. Had it since 1995.
It all started innocently enough when I read this tweet.
What's that all about I wondered? Well it turns out that a pack of Web celebs created charity auctions on eBay to benefit charity: water (a worthy cause). Julia Roy was offering a 6 hour dinner and drinks outing. Being a semi experienced Ebayer, I decided to have a little fun.
It seemed to work.
Emboldened, I went too far.
Too far, as in putting in a bid for $1,200. It was a too much for d***e. He dropped out at $1,101. I was currently the winning bidder at $1,126. I sent Julia a direct message.
I am indeed happily married with a great wife and two great kids. And I was mortified, absolutely mortified, that no one was going to outbid me. Julia sent me back this nice message.
Which sounded all well and good. I have a personal slush fund that I can do whatever I want with. Abby, my wife, is an understanding lady that let's me do lots of things. But I was having a real hard time figuring out how I was going to explain spending $1,200 on a charity in conjunction with dinner and drinks with a twenty something blonde in NYC that had been referred to as "the world’s hottest geek". It would be a cold spring in Atlanta if that came to pass.
Eight days went by. No other bids. Deepening distress.
Julia and my $1,126 bid made its way to the front page of eBay.
I started scheming up some ways that I might be able to get a little value out of my donation. Julia seems smart. Understands social media. Perhaps I could use some of those six hours included in the auction as social media consulting time. If the bid stood that was my plan. See if Julia would agree to do some consulting work when I went off to do my next big thing.
I was explaining all this to Calvin Yu and Paul Stamatiou during our bi-weekly Skribit meeting . Paul got pretty excited. He knows Josh Spear who founded Undercurrent. Julia works there as a Senior Agent. He offered to go in half. I told him he did not need to do that. But I was more than a bit relieved when I saw this.
Paul went on to win the auction at the price of $1,549. He published his thoughts on winning.
My thoughts. All's well that ends well. In a roundabout way I helped raise money and awareness for charity: water. Paul is going to NYC to hang with his friend and meet a new one. Increased exposure for Skribit and him are sure to result. And I learned a lesson.
Natasha Wescoat also has an auction on eBay to benefit charity: water. I am currently winning.
Nine firms. Five of which are less then a year old. Too many individual angels to list, including the Atlanta Technology Angels. Who says there is no money in Atlanta? But why are all these investors flocking to a show put on by Sanjay Parekh and a handful of volunteers?
Because companies that presented at Startup Riot last year got funded and or acquired.
Purewire launched at Startup Riot. Raised $2 million. Pre revenue, pre product. Seed stage.
Global Crypto closed a round led by Imlay and included the Atlanta Technology Angels. Pre revenue, pre product. Seed stage.
Skribit took a little money from the Edison Fund. Money that kept Pul Stamatiou from making the trek to the valley when he graduated. Pre revenue. Seed stage.
Jungle Disk was acquired by Rackspace. While the amount was undisclosed, based on this report I would venture a guess that Dave Wright is going to put something between $5 million to $10 million in his pocket. Good for him. But this is a deal that at least one of the above named venture firms would have liked to take big.
Investors are going to Startup Riot because it is a source of good deal flow. And rumor is more deals are in the works.
Yesterday was the second rev of Startup Riot. Forty nine companies and one make believe company gave three minute pitches on their startup. Once again, it was a fantastic event. Improved in every way from last year.
WifiCat was a highlight. WifiCat is in integrated cat collar and Wifi access point. It's a joke. The parody that Scott Burkett presented on everything not to say and do in a presentation was laugh out loud funny. Even more so because some of the morning presenters had violated the unwritten rules of pitching.
Paul Freet gave the best presentation of the day. Three slides. Three pictures. You had to listen to him to understand. It forced people to look up from their laptop and phones. While not the most technology driven company in the bunch Offload.me's value proposition is clear and compelling. They provide remote personal assistants for busy executives. Eight words. Use that many to describe your company.
There were three Atlanta Startup Weekend companies in the bunch. Kidkey, Jumbis, and Twitpay. I got a shoutout from the latter with a Madoff comparison. We used my business PayPal account to alpha test the Twitpay service during Startup Weekend. I can assure you, all funds have been returned.
I believe for the first time we had companies traveling from out of state to attend Startup Riot. ShoutNow (another Startup Weekend company) made its way from Indy and Kansas City, while WOMBeat! traveled from Tampa.
Somehow or the other the keynote speaker Chris Wanstrath, the founder of GitHub, joined our lunch party late and squeezed in next to me. He was late to lunch because he had to go take a shower after his presentation. Puts Melanie Brandt's comment about the desire to wash his hair in perspective. Overslept it seems. Both a nice and witty guy. Had our end of the table rolling.
Kudos again to Sanjay Parekh. Too many good companies to mention. More investors in the audience. Companies traveling from afar. Great networking between sessions. Better in every way.
Two suggestions to make it better. The Wifi failed before the show started. We need more IP addresses available. Get that and make folks pay for their own coffee. As for the community. Everyone, including me, needs to treat the presenting companies with more respect. These folks are trying hard. I feel sorry for the guy that was on stage when someone in the audience got rickrolled. And some of the comments on BackNoise were down right mean spirited. Sanjay started Startup Riot to help entrepreneurs and startups. We all need to act in a way to further his mission.
One more thing: Stop with the walking down to Publix and buying six packs of beer. There is a time and place for everything. There are professional investors in the room that are starting to take an interest in concept and seed stage startups. The after party starts at 5:00. Show a little restraint.
Doing those two things will make Startup Riot 2010 the best yet. Even better then the fantastic 2009 version.
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DISCLAIMER
The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone (with the exception of comments by others of course). They do not represent the opinion or position of any other person or entity. All postings adhere to my personal values.
