So I became a Startup Riot ambassador. Mainly because I believe that it is one of the most important events on the South technology scene. Startup Riot is growing and branching out. They have started MAKE which is essentially a startup weekend like experience and it is good to see someone picking up the ball there. But the big gathering is Startup Riot SHOW.
SHOW is an all-day pitch event that highlights 25 startups giving three minute pitches. If you want to see the latest early stage stuff this is the place to be. The prices are low, ranging from $30 to $70 for the day and it is free to present.
This year SHOW takes place on February 22. Registration closes on February 8. The registration to pitch has passed but if you have it going on you still might be able to make the stage. Drop me a line.
So Half Off Depot is looking for a social media/community manager. I am the hiring manager for the position and have been having a bit of a struggle in finding the right person to fill the role.
Last night I took the matter into my own hands. I went into my Twitter account and started going through the list of people that I follow. There are about 300 or so of these folks. I follow folks that I think are interesting, fun, and smart. In some way we have a shared interest.
I started looking for people that I follow that have a shared interest in social media and fit the profile of what Half Off needs. I found five that I thought would be good candidates. I sent them direct messages.
The result. Two meetings setup for this weekend (I like people that are willing to meet on the weekend and set up such meetings via social messaging) and two more in the planning stage.
Twitter can be a pretty effective recruiting method.
It's back. For the sixth year The Georgia Research Alliance and the Technology Association of Georgia are teaming up to present the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition.
The competition takes place over the period of four months, and qualified applicants receive publicity, mentors and the opportunity to present their business plans on several occasions to groups of judges comprised of influencers and investors in the community. If you want to get hooked into the Atlanta technology startup scene this is a great way to do it.
I participated back in 2006 as an entrepreneur. It was a great experience that forced me to meet some milestones in the business. For the past three years I have been heavily involved with the competition as a member of the task force and leading the screening team. This is a great program.
The competition culminates with a final competition where the three or four companies will present their business to a panel of seasoned entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and angel investors from around the country. The winner walks away with $50,000 in cash and $150,000 in a personalized suite of services.
You can read more about how to apply here. Preliminary applications are due February 17.
So Atlanta Startup Weekend morphed into StartAtlanta.
On Friday night about 110 people in a geek dominated crowd walked through the doors of ATDC. About 50 entrepreneurs stood up and pitched their concepts in 60 seconds. This was whittled down to about 25 for a second round from which 12 projects emerged. Teams were formed and after a weekend of coding, food, beverages, and more geek humor than one can stand, the team leaders got up to talk about their applications and what they accomplished. Here is a quick run down in the order they took the podium.
C4 Atlanta. A rogue project that did not pitch on Friday night. C4 is building an arts service platform to empower artists and arts organizations. They built an app store for artists over the weekend. You can take a peek at a special version with some of the applications of the Start Atlanta companies here.
Minglle. An opt-in sms-based meeting utility to make new connections based on common interests. Stealing from Stephen Fleming, it's FourSquare meets LinkedIn. Presentation started out great until the demo blew up.
Ask One Question. Simple one question email/sms surveys with instant feedback. Great design. Nice demo. Reasonable business model.
Reach Me Later. A sms-based mobile application auto-responder to prevent driving distractions, with analytic capabilities. Concept was the brain child of Georgia Tech third year senior (which means it only took her two year to become a senior) Joy Buolamwini. This is not a make in a weekend app but they did a nice demo.
ConnectMe. A Facebook dating application that connects people based on their rich profile preferences. Liked this one when it was pitched on Friday night. I sat with them a bit as they were building this thing. The info that an app can pull out of your Facebook profile is astonishing.
Swipemotion. Painless gesture based publishing for enterprises. Nice concept.
JayTalker. Netflix behavior pushed to Facebook and Twitter. App is live. And yes there is a business model.
TripLingo. Mobile/web application that generates custom linguistics platform for specific destinations. Entrepreneur Jesse Maddox is going full-time on the project.
Cineminder. Application to remind you when movies that you want to see hits the theaters, DVD/Bluray distribution, Netflix and the like. Application is live. Concept from Tim Dorr who sold A Small Orange for a big chunk of change.
FindTime. Serverless iOS app that integrates with calendar apps to automatically assign time to complete tasks. Got the app to live demo.
Mark It Eight Dude. A Smartphone app to capture bowling statistics with numerous external variables including alcohol consumption.
Repulicious. Another rogue project. A searchable listing of reputable designers, developers, and marketers for your startup projects.
The projects did darn well. Five have a live product of some sorts and there were four demos. Good stuff. Atlanta knows how to do a weekend startup hackathon. TripLingo won the vote for best startup. Cineminder earned my vote.
The quality of the people walking in the door to participate in these weekend marathons increases every year. More people that can contribute are making the scene. That is not too surprising. What was surprising was the effect a tweak the StartAtlanta team made to the weekend.
They invited mentors. I am going to tell you something right now, it is really difficult to get a bunch of people driving toward a launch to sit down with a mentor.But it happened. And the mentors, which in some circles is code for angels and those that are connected to angels, hung around or came back for the Sunday night presentations (something that has not happened much in the past).
And guess what? The angely mentors liked it. They liked it alot. Requests for StartAtlanta to happen more than once a year. Interest in follow up advising roles. Talk of investing. Good stuff. We are building bridges and mixing the types. Kudos to the StartAtlanta team. They succeeded in their quest of "building something even better." Passing the torch was the right thing to do.
What started back in 2007 as an effort to build Atlanta's technology startup community is evolving. After four years it seems to not only be taking hold but building momentum. With that momentum things will continue to change. Perhaps change into something that is much more than a weekend community building experience.
Now that Hothlanta is firmly behind us and our climate is returning to its more Kashyyyk like norm it is time to get out and network.
A good place to start is at ATDC's Entrepreneur's Night. Entrepreneur's Night is a new monthly event that will take place the third Thursday of every month from 6 PM to 7:30PM. The format is a half an hour of networking with beverages and food followed by an informal presentation by an ATDC entrepreneur. This month Chris Rouland of Endgame Systems is the featured presenter.
I think Entrepreneur's Night is sure to become one of the best networking events for Atlanta startup entrepreneurs. The event is free to ATDC entrepreneurs but you are requested to register to attend.
Over on Quora Geoff Graham has a very thoughtful response to the question "What is the startup and talent pool like in Atlanta?" How Geoff got connected to the Atlanta startup community is a roadmap for many wanting to do so. And I just love the analogy at the end comparing Atlanta to California and New York:
The event is on December 6 from 11:30am– 1:30pm. The format is a simple five minute pitch using 10 slides or less. Eligible startups are must be based in Georgia with a product release under their belt and actively engaging with enterprise customers. To be considered you must submit a one to two page executive summary over at StartupLounge.
Not quite as interesting as the LinkedIn graph of yesterday. My Facebook network is purposely more limted than that of LinkedIn. On the lower left are my high school friends and my family is right above them. The little cluster at the top is the Kelly School. The big cluster in the middle is MindSpring with the rest of my Atlanta connections clumped off to the right. Notable are the relative lack of connections between clusters and the number of folks within the network that are only connected to me.
So my friend Russell Jurney, who is an analytics architect at LinkedIn, sent me my LinkedIn social graph. It's pretty cool.
According to Russell the colors represent clusters of well-connected people. Moving from lower left to upper right the clusters go something like this:
Dark blue: Established Atlanta technology community
Bondi blue: CipherTrust
Green: Up and coming social/startup crowd
Light orange: Kelley School of Business
Baby blue: Indiana University
Orange: EarthLink/MindSpring
It is interesting that there is no clear ATDC/Georgia Tech cluster.
The people between two of the various colors are the bridges between clusters. The up and coming startup gang is much more tightly networked with the established techies than one might expect. For the most part the MindSpring team is less connected and those closer to the other clusters seem to be more entrepreneurial.
If you double click you will get a full size image with all 800 or so of my LinkedIn connections named. The size of a person's circle reflects many people they are are connected to within my network. It's fun to play with. Would love to hear thoughts on your graph location as well as those you are connected with on LinkedIn.
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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.
