Yesterday I walked down the hall at Tech Square to sit in on a few sessions of the Georgia Angels Meetup. I had a particular interest in the deal flow panel that included Stephen Fleming, Jennifer Sherer, Jennifer Bonnett, Michael Blake, Sanjay Parekh, Katie Elizabeth, and Allyson Eman. Quite the group. And so were the folks in the audience and on the other panels. 

Here are my takeaways.

1. There are a lot of startups in Georiga. The Atlanta Technology Angels (ATA) had 413 companies apply for funding in 2013 and there are currently 470 ATDC member companies. Add in the 175 or so that are members at Atlanta Tech Village and that is a lot of startups!

2. According to Stephen Fleming Georgia Tech alone is producing over 100 startups a year.

3. Due to the tremendous growth of the Atlanta startup community the original mission of StartupLounge has been acheived. Michael Blake, one of the StartupLounge founders, declared mission accomplished. To quote, "there is plenty of Series A funding to go around." I agree. Michael seems to think the issue now is getting a Series B. He also thinks it is a much more complex problem to solve.

4. The ATA funnel looks like this. 413 startups applied for funding. Of those that applied 79 were screened. About 20% made it to the screening. Twelve investments were made. Approximately 3% of the companies that applied to ATA were funded. 

5. Due diligence matters. The rate of investor return increases dramtically when they invest more than 40 hours in due diligence.

The meetup was a good one with more capital in the room than I care to count. Hundreds of millions of dollars looking to find a home in Atlanta startups. Good stuff.