If you have been reading FoG for a while you know that I firmly believe that density matters. Denisty is extremely important for startup communities. And with all its sprawl Atlanta has a startup density issue.
The reason I bring this up is that Urvaksh Karkaria set off an Atlanta startup firestorm on Twitter last Friday with his article on how the downtown Flatiron Building could be redeveloped into an entrepreneurship hub. Urvaksh followed up on that article today. Evidently real estate in the technology section creates page views.
My initial take, inspired by a NPR interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson on the new Cosmos series and the gravitational forces acting on Europa, was this. Potential energy is decreased by the distance between gravitational masses. It's just a scientific fact.
Having startup hubs located in Downtown, Midtown, and Buckhead is not optimal. They are too far away from each other to create the kind of density Atlanta technology startups need now. I say this from a somewhat unique viewpoint.
These days I spend about a third of my time in Tech Square working out of the offices of BLH Ventures/KontrolFreek. I took Kyle Porter up on his offer and also spend about a third of my time working out of the SaleLoft space in Atlanta Tech Village. I don't mix Tech Square and Village days. At six miles they are just too far apart. But there are great things going on in both places. It is interesting to see a startup start out in one location and then end up in another. It happens quite often. But once a startup gets settled in one of these places it is seldom that I see it at another. The Atlanta startup hubs are fairly distinct in population.
While on a micro level Downtown, Midtown, and Buckhead are too far apart, on a macro level something very different is happening. A stronger gravitational mass across the city of Atlanta has the ability to increase the pull of other startup resources in the direction of the city when taken as a whole. Resources from other industries. Resources from other parts of the country. The Atlanta technology community is becoming more interesting to those that are currently not involved in it. It is creating more gravitational pull.
Sometimes more is more. In this case more is good.