Startup Showcase

In six days ATDC is going to host its Startup Showcase and 30th year celebration.  I reckon those 30 years make ATDC one of the oldest startup incubators going.  Not only is ATDC old, it's good, having recently been named by Forbes as one of 10 technology incubators that are changing the world.

It has been amazing just to watch the growth of the Showcase itself.  In the past four years it has expanded from a somewhat intimate setting in the Technology Square Research Building, over to the grand Biltmore, and this year moving on to the more spacious Georgia Tech Hotel & Conference Center.  It's going to be a big show. Registrations, even with an entry fee, are on pace for last year.  When it is all said and done I expect the largest attendance yet.

Bud Peterson, the president of Georgia Tech is going to kick things off and then vice president Stephen Fleming is going to give an update on how the new ATDC is working and what to expect over the coming year.  Then the show will move on to graduate members CommerceV3, Endgame Systems, Izenda, and Purewire (acquired by Barracuda) presenting their stories before the member exhibits open up.  The day will conclude at the bar with a special version of Startup Drinks.

Please join me, my partners in crime at ATDC, our expanded member companies, and a big hunk of the Atlanta technology world at the Startup Showcase by registering to attend. 

After this one is over I am going on vacation.

GRA/TAG Business Launch Final Four

When David Sung left ATDC for the greener pastures of the private sector I was once again charged with leading the process of screening the companies that applied to the GRA/TAG Business Launch competition.  Yesterday TAG announced the final four.  They are:

Khush, intelligent music applications for mobile phones;

SolidFire, a next-generation storage platform for cloud computing providers and other enterprises that need scalable, reliable storage for thousands of servers;

Toomah, a suite of interview management tools that dramatically reduce hiring costs by automating the scheduling, conducting and voice recording of phone interviews, which are then captured and stored via the web;

TransactionTree, an event driven digital receipt and marketing delivery system.

These four companies are slated to make their final presentations on June 2 at IBM as they go for over $300,000 in prizes including $50k in cold cash.

The final judges include my current leader Stephen Fleming, Vice President, Enterprise Innovation Institute; Tom Crotty, Managing Director, Battery Ventures, whom I got to know in my CipherTrust days; and Alan Taetle, General Partner, Noro Moseley Partners, the guy that took a chance on me when I wanted to get in the tech business. 

Just as important as these guys are the people that helped in the early stages of the process.  That included Mike Eckert, investor; Lawrence Guillory, CEO Racemi; Jeff McConnell, serial entrepreneur; Karen Robinson, Managing Partner, Atlanta Technology Advisors; and Gordon Rogers, President Atlanta Technology Angels.  These folks spent time reading through the final business plans, listening to short pitches, and debating what twelve companies were worthy of going forward.  It is somewhat interesting that this group picked only two of the final four.

Once the twelve were selected Glenn Bachman, President, Bachman International: Mike Lowry, investor; Craig Miller, Miller Ventures; and Nandan Sheth, President and COO, Acculynk spent a day of their valuable time coaching the contestants on their pitches.

Thanks again to all the volunteers for devoting the effort it takes to make the GRA/TAG Business Launch a success.  While your time is quite valuable your expertise and insights are invaluable to the entrepreneurs. 

And congrats to the final four!  If you are an entrepreneur and want to come see what a good investor pitch looks like when there is real money on the line go and register for the finals.  It's going to be a good show

Rock Analogy

Back in my Mobil days we were graded by our use of analogy.  This is a good one by Shane Snow via Fred Wilson.  Like all good analogies it speaks for itself.

More Thinking About Shotput Ventures

Last week Shotput Ventures announced they had decided to "blow up" their summer program and turn it into more of an ongoing application process.  This week David Cummings provided a little more insight into the why of the change. 

Both Sanjay Parekh and David cited an underlying cause for the change that did not surprise me.  There is a small supply of investable seed stages companies and little demand for a capital light web accelerator program in the southeast.  When Shotput, and its never funded predecessor BoostPhase, where in their formative stages I estimated the supply of investable companies in the southeast to be four.  Shotput invested in eight in 2009, three from the southeast (and intend to do three to five deals annually going forward). 

The five from the 2009 class not from Atlanta left when the summer program was over.  The saddening fact is they saw no follow on funding.  Not enough VCs and angel investors interested in the deals.  To the best of my knowledge, two four Shotput companies (Eventhive, Khush, Looxii, and OpenHatch) received follow on funding.  Solve that problem, like the TechStars results show, by getting investors from around the country at investor day, and the class structure could work.