I am killing the ATDC marketing circle and Internet circle. These were small monthly gatherings of startup types that were interested in either topic. I will continue to support Brandy Nagel who spearheaded the marketing circle effort.
If anyone wants to engage with me about either subject hit the BookNow button in the right side bar and make yourself an appointment.
Update: The marketing circle lives on. Brandy has moved the event to Friday mornings from 8:30 - 10:30. You can register here.
Today at the sold out SoCon10 I am giving the presentation you see below entitled "Measuring Social Media ROI: An ATDC Case Study."
The genesis of the presentation is twofold. First and foremost in the summer of 2009 there was a lot of talk about how you could not or should not measure the return of your social media efforts. I do not believe either to be the case. Second, Stephen Fleming become the acting director of ATDC and decided we were going to change strategic direction. He announced this at a Monday staff meeting and wanted it implemented in seven days. That time frame pretty much limited our marketing efforts to online and we exclusively relaunched via social media This provided a great opportunity to demonstrate that social media ROI could be calculated and how to go about doing it.
SoCon, the Southeast's premier social media and social networking conference is quickly approaching. In its fourth year, SoCon10 will be taking place on January 29th and 30th. The event kicks off on Friday night with a networking dinner at Maggiano's that has been fantastic in previous years. On Saturday things move over to Kennesaw State University for a day full of discussions.
SoCon10 is getting down to brass tacks with its theme of "Enough Theory; Now Show Me the Money and the Love." Keeping with this theme I am leading a break out session called "Measuring Social Media Marketing." The session will be a case study of the relaunch of ATDC, how social media was used in that effort, how the campaign was measured, and how others can use the same methodology to measure their social media efforts.
Should be a lively discussion and a great event. Get yourself registered.
Paul Stamatiou, the guy that conceived the Skribit concept, Calvin Yu and Alex Coomans are super excited about the release. So that people can take full advantage of the Pro features of the account they are offering a special deal. First year is $1. Go to sign up and select the Pro account plan. When you get to the payments page enter sign up and you’ll be taken to a payments page where you can enter in promotional code “lance”
to get the special deal.
Congrats to everyone that has had a hand in getting Skribit this far.
ChubbyBrain, whose name is perhaps only surpassed by BackPackBuddy, is issuing a series of reports on the state of incubators around the nation. They recently covered Georgia. Not surprisingly, ATDC dominates the market with over a 50% share when you combine the Atlanta and Savannah results.
ATDC is really not just an incubator any more. It is more of a venture accelerator with an incubation space for companies that need it. If you do the math on the old ATDC data that CubbyBrain used of 39 companies it would put the total market at about 75 companies incubating in Georgia, or 36 non ATDC companies. ATDC now has 218 member companies. The ATDC share under the new model is more like 86%. It also makes ATDC the largest program in the country.
On October 28 I am going to be making my way a few miles east to Emory University and the Goizueta Business School to moderate the Emory Entrepreneurial Leadership Event.
Sitting on the panel are Don Brown, Founder & President of Twitpay, Scott Geller, CEO of Zooz Mobile, and Scott Ryan, President and CEO of Asankya.
While billed as a way for folks to learn about ATDC I am really looking forward to getting connected with and learning about what is taking place within the Emory entrepreneurial community. The Goizueta Alumni Entrepreneur Network, Emory Undergraduate Entrepreneurs Network, Goizueta Technology Association, and Goizueta Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Club are all involved.
Should be a fun night. Major props to Dave Williams of BLiNQ Media in leading the charge in bringing all these people together.
Startup Weekend is back. Atlanta Startup Weekend 3 is taking place November 13 - 15. ATDC is once again playing host sponsor.
In addition to ATDC, A Small Orange and MailChimp have stepped up to sponsor the event. It's great to see local tech companies getting involved with such a community building event. I hope some more jump into the mix.
Atlanta has produced a few of the more successful Startup Weekend companies. Both Skribit from 2007 and Twitpay from the class of 2008 have secured seed funding and are still operational. We expect this year to be another good one. Based on feedback from the community we are keeping the format pretty much the same as 2008.
I will provide the essentials at the ASW3 blog, but in a nutshell it starts on Friday night when people come in and pitch then vote on startup concepts. Somewhere between six and eight ideas will be chosen. People then spend the rest of the weekend creating the concept. The event concludes on Sunday night at 7 with presentations on what the groups achieved over the weekend.
I can't promise that you will launch something, that is up to you and your team. I can promise you will have a most memorable weekend.
Hands On Small Business is a program that intends to deliver over 100 events in October and November in 20 cities across the United States and Canada. Atlanta is one of those cities.
Hands On will be just that. The sessions are designed to offer practical advice, direct instruction,
and application tips for online and social media solutions to help
small businesses and entrepreneurs. Tessa Horehled will be leading the Atlanta events which are being held at ATDC. The sessions are free and open. You can sign up for one of the Atlanta sessions here.
Hands On Small Business was organized by the fine women of Kirtsy, that I love from afar. How can you not love a "social media platform of pure goodness."
What is a technology startup? Seems like a pretty straightforward question. But there is surprisingly little written to answer the question. If you Google the title of this post you will find no results. Google "technology startup" produces little to define it well though it is interesting to note that my associate Blake Perdue is the number two result, the ATDC blog comes in the eighth spot, and the ATDC web site is 13th. Paul Graham has a nice article on how to start a startup up but does not get into defining the term technology startup. Paul simply assumes most startups are technology startups.
<update>: Over on Hacker News Paul pointed me to the article entitled How to Make Wealth, where he does a most excellent job of defining a technology startup.</update>
This all become of great interest to me when it was decided that we were going to change the requirements of joining ATDC from a 200 word document to three words. Georgia technology startup. I conducted a twitter poll and received little response. Ben Dyer, who has launched a few companies in his day responded as well as afewothers. Surprised that the twitterverse had so little to say.
Given all this it seems defining the term is in order.
The startup part is easy. I recently created a series of articles that defined four stages of a startup, concept, seed, early, and growth. A startup is a business with limited operating history. Limited in that it could just be a girl with an idea. Business in that it is a purposeful commercial activity.
The technology part is a little more difficult. It seems that the Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it" standard is often times applied. We can do better.
There is an important distinction using technology and creating technology. In order to be a technology startup the creation of technology is required. Something is being made as a result of science or engineering. Typepad, which created a blogging platform is a technology company. ATDC, which uses Typepad to deliver some of its services, is not. Services companies, in general, can not be technology startups. Though often times technology startups begin as services companies and use the cash generated from services to create a technology.
More often then not technology companies manifest themselves in products. And yes products can be delivered as service. Delivering technology as a service is different then technology services. The latter usually requires an linear increase in the number of people required to deliver the service. Which brings me to the point that technology companies also possess some mechanism that enables them to scale. Scale that results in large gross profit margins when the startup turns into a company.
Lastly technology startups do something unique and innovative. Novel perhaps. Know now. Something that hasn't been done before to solve a problem. The bigger more complex the problem the better. Solving big problems has more value then solving little problems. But small problems have value too. As long as it is a problem somebody wants solved and they are willing to part with something to solve it.
Technology startups make unique products that people want.
Is there any more to it then that?
Disclaimer: The statement "technology startups make unique products that people want" is not the official stance of ATDC or Georgia Tech. Commmunity feedback is enouraged.
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 on entity. All postings adhere to my personal values.
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