Georgia Leads In Entrepreneurial Activity

Posted on March 15, 2011

Last week the Kauffman Foundation released its annual Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. This study is a leading indicatior of new business creation across the United States. The headline was "jobless entrepreneurship" but underneath that were some interesting facts.

Perhaps the most interesting of these was that Georgia, along with Nevada, had the highest entrepreneurial rate in the country. In these states 510 out of every 100,000 people started a company each month in 2010. In Atlanta, 580 people per 100,000 launched a new business each month, second only to Los Angeles. Moreover, over the past decade Georiga led the nation with the largest increase in entrepreneurial activity. While the study is not technology centric these are encouraging stats for a state that has a bit of a startup inferiority complex.

Other interesting facts:

– No surprise but native born white males dominate the entrepreneurial landscape.

– Latino entrepreneurial rates have jumped from 11% in 1996 to 23% in 2010 and index the highest of any race.

– The 20 – 34 age group indexes the lowest on entrepreneurial activity while the 35 – 44 age group is the highest.

– There has been a sharp uptick in less than high school educated entrepreneurs reflecting the current state of unemployment for uneducated workers.

If you care to take a look at the stats yourself download the complete report.

March 15, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Entrepreneurship

Brutal Facts of Reality

Posted on March 9, 2011

As a pretty big football fan one of the highlights for me of SEVC was Thomas Dimitroff's luncheon keynote speech. The focus of his talk was on the importance of team, which I thought to be most a propos, as a good cohesive team is important to success on both the gridiron and in the startup world.

Well somewhere along the way Dimitroff put up this slide.

While he did not make the connection is his talk, it immediately dawned on me that these brutal facts of reality applied to technology startups as well. I have not been able to find any data to back this up but I think you can generally apply the above to technology startups by changing a few words. It goes something like this based on my experience.

About 10% of every startup concept gets to revenue and of those maybe 10% are reviewed by venture capitalists. Of those .3% get invited to give an partner presentation and about .03% get venture funded. A 10x return? .003%. So if you accept this hypothesis, the chance of your startup getting venture funded and a 10x return are about the same as a high school football player growing up to play in the National Football League until they are 30. And to think growing up I wanted nothing more in the world than to be Dick Butkus (truth).

One of the smartest things I heard during the conference came out of the mouth of David Cummings. He said most startups should not seek outside funding. These brutal facts of reality back him up.

A special thanks to Barbara and Melanie at Imlay Investments for getting me a copy of Dimitroff's slide.

March 9, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Entrepreneurship, Sports, Startups

Say What You Do

Posted on March 3, 2011

This morning I was invited to Morris, Manning & Martin's Atlanta Technology Breakfast. This little event was slipstreaming off of SEVC. The agenda was 20 companies giving three minute pitches to a room full of local and out of town VCs, one who happened to be sitting next to me.

While the presenting companies were generally quite good these exchanges took place for two different companies.

VC: "Is this real?"
Me: "I don't know."

VC: "What do they do?"
Me: "I can't tell you."
VC: "Companies should say what they do up front?"
Me: "Yes they should."

March 3, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Entrepreneurship, Presentations, Startups

Save Some Time To Dream

Posted on March 2, 2011

On Sunday night I ventured out to the Fox to see John Mellencamp. It was a birthday present for Abby. Mellencamp has a special place in the Weatherby musical heart. Abby and I met at Indiana University, the heart of Mellencamp land, when he was at the height of his commercial career.

I had not seen John since his Uh-Huh tour back in 1984 (and boy do I regret turning down the invite to head out to the Bluebird for a drink while in grad school where unannounced he jumped up on the stage for a few songs). He is better today than he was then, something that you don’t often say about an aging rocker. John refuses to rest on his past hits. At one point during the concert he stated “the past is nothing.” His writing is stronger than ever. One of the best examples of this is Save Some Time to Dream off his latest album, No Better Than This. The song was inspired by advice John’s father gave to him.

Listen to the music, but more important listen to the words. Nice prescription for now to live.

March 2, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Personal

Getting Them Into You

Posted on February 21, 2011

They’re just not that into you emerged online as an alternative title to the “They Aren’t Funding You” article.

Before Dave Wright dropped the bomb that he was heading to Boulder (a wise choice by the way) he was having a nice focused talk on how SolidFire raised $11 million with no product, customers, or revenue. One of the slides simply said “proven entrepreneur.” Dave is one of those.

But before he was one of those raise $11 million with no product type of proven entrepreneur type of guy you know what he did? He self-funded JungleDisk to a nice seven figure exit to a publicly traded technology company. Dave’s advice. If you are not a proven entrepreneur work on a startup that you can self fund and drive to a nice noticeable exit. Then build on that success reach for the stars with a bigger play.

Great advice from a guy that is making it happen.

February 21, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Entrepreneurship

Five

Posted on February 18, 2011 · 2 Comments

FoG turned five this week. As been the habit here are the stats over the course of the life of the blog.

                                           One         Two            Three            Four       Five
Visitors                                2,525    12,792        43,166       46,445       40,745
Posts                                    135    204            178             152           158
Comments                52       253          685             655       402
Conversational Index              .38       1.24          3.85          4.31           2.54
Technorati Rank 788,400   189,138    180,054 46,798 41,981
Blog Grader Rank 10,442         56,879

Interesting. Posts are basically flat while visitors and comments are down. I still attribute this to a conscious decision to not write to build traffic. I have moved away from articles that get things all stirred up while not being impactful.

The most concerning thing to me is the drop in comments. At its core FoG is a an Atlanta startup community blog. One of the few that has remained active over the past five years. If the community is not talking it is concerning. Part of that may be the type of content I am presenting. Part of it may be that FoG needs a bit of a commenting/social facelift (a goal for 2011) as reflected in the Blog Grader rank drop. Part of it may be something that I do not quite grasp just yet. If you have any thoughts on that I am eager to hear them.

Lastly the Technorati rank is interesting. Yes, I am aware that this is a bit of an old metric but perhaps also meaningful. If you take the drop in traffic coupled with the increase in ranking it would lead to a conclusion that less people are reading blogs these days. Not a big surprise to an online ADD world that is being trained to think in 140.

So FoG is five. Happy birthday. And thanks to all of you that make it what it is.

February 18, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Personal, Web/Tech

Startup Riot 2011 Live Blogging 3rd Session

Posted on February 16, 2011 · 1 Comment

After a great presentation by David Hauser we are launching into the third and final flight of startup presentations.

Layer
A Matt Smith pivot off of Rank 'Em. Layer helps teams make better decisions faster. National Science Foundation had this problem that somehow Matt came to solve. Rankings.

mediafeedia
Facebook tool for business. Manage more then 25 fan page, scheduling, and more. Have more than 4,000 Facebook fan pages under management. Have raised over $1 million.

Gabacus
Twitter pattern recognition. It takes these patternsand summarizes tweets down to a manageable number. This is a pivot off of some software that has been developing for years.

Zoompf
Zoompf scans websites for performance issues and creates a prioritized action plan for optimizing a site. Zoompf customers average load times decrease by three seconds. Focus on ecommerce and large content sites. Sas model.

Ucloser
Real estate app that helps with business management. Raising $500k with $200 already committed.

eRollover
The WebMD of retirement planning. CEO Tim Harrington is a quite successful serial entrepreneur. Love him. They raised $500k at a nice valuation last year. Will be looking for round two later in the year.

GoPresent
Another CEO Ventures project. Michael Price has been busy. GoToMeeting knock off that is a bit more simple to use.

Wynsum Arts
A social-entrepreneurship founded in 2007. Their aim is to help parents of children with Executive Function challenges.

Stormpulse
Golly Matt Wensing talks fast. Stormpulse has a very nice weather map. FedEx, Chevron, and Southern Company are customers. Matt and his team have been at this since 2004. Based in West Palm Beach. Somebody should fund them.

Minglle
These guys got a kickstart at StartAtlanta. Minglle's aim is to make networking at events more productive. A shame they could not get a test out for the Riot.

TimeDoctor
NetNanny for adults.

Telineage
Nice telecommunications security company being formed by some Georgia Tech graduate students. Telineage is a secure caller-ID alternative that prevents number spoofing.

Diner Connection
Mobile phone based app that utilizes text messaging to notify customers of ready tables and daily specials. They launched in September 2010. Self-funded thus far and have won a slew of awards. Looking to raise their first angel round. Like it.

SyncPad
Whiteboard app for all things that start with a little i. Focusing on the enterprise market at the moment. Looking for an unstated amount of capital.

Now we are voting for the top three presenting companies via a phone app.

Nexpense and Telineage tie for 2nd in crowd vote. TripLingo, born a few weeks ago at StartAtlanta wins best of show.

The only thing that stands between us and drinks is Kindle giveaways.

February 16, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Presentations, Startups

Startup Riot 2011 Live Blogging 2nd Session

Posted on February 16, 2011

Well after a yummy lunch at the Yumbii truck and a lot of good networking and Sanjay story telling we are back for the 2nd hour of pitches.

Dealy
Deal of the day software. Dealy lets you create and schedule deals across all the websites and social networks that a retailer wants from a single web app. Use group buying sites as distribution points. Out of Greensville and in private beta with 850 users.

Digify Media
Real-time mobile only news application for vertical markets. Think WSJ iPhone app for more niche media. It's an interesting app called TrendOY! that is currently available in the app store.

CubeVibe
Employee engagement software. In beta. Launching soon, looking for more beta customers with less than 1,000 employees. Well done.

CollectorDASH
CollectorDASH is Etsy for collectors. Bill Jones is former President of Air2Web. Product is live and they have a team of four that have been working on the company for over a year.

Coolleaf
iTunes for personal health care coupled with a rewards platform. Nice looking app. Pilot kicking off next month in Atlanta.

PlugMeIn
Browser tool bar app that exposes contact info for a particular website. Saw a demo of this yesterday. Very slick patented technology. Backed by CEO Ventures.

MusicSesh
Out of Boston. Drove down for 3 minutes on the stage. An online educational and social music community. Founder Jason Beaton has a lot of passion. Launching in three weeks and looking for a half mil. Might want to drive to Cali for that.

Tour Wrist
Nice name. Mobile marketing platform number three today. Street view for inside places. They are getting a lot of press and awards. Have over 17,000 places created today. Have deals with RE/MAX and Realtor.com.

Transloadit
File uploading and conversion as a service for web applications. They are out of Germany. The one in Europe. And Amsterdam. I need to go do some diligence on this one. Have 70 paying customers. Self-funded and intend to be profitable by the end of the year. Nice.

VisitorLeads
Track and identify the companies that visit websites. Integrated with Salesforce, Outlook, Oracle, and SugarCRM. In beta. Have $80k in revenue. CEO Ventures invested.

R3 Collaboratives
Record. Reflect, Repeat. Video collaboration software for classroom instruction. Passionate former teacher Adam Geller is running the show. I personally shy away from the education market. Backing from Kauffmann Foundation is a great reference.

LocalDipity
CB radio for the 21st century. I will quote Howard Page "we are a solution in search of a problem." They are also looking for a CEO type to join the team.

Pretty In My Pocket
A mobile coupon and product comparison tool for beauty products. It is focused on the mass retail makeup market. Have raised $50k and looking for $250k. Caroline Van Sickle has been moving this along nicely.

Renting Smart
From Randwick, Australia. Web app to help owners manage their investment properties. As such a person I am not sure if I see the need but what do I know.

Glancey
Instant visual product search. Great reviews from the likes of LifeHacker, Killer Startups, and Gizmodo. Have some revenue. Seeking $1 million in seed funding.

HomeCLUE
CarFax for pre-owned homes. Designed to help homebuyers discover hidden or undisclosed home defects and problems as part of the buying process. Out of Columbia, South Carolina. Seeking $500.

SwipeMotion
Sam Bowen's concept that was created at StartAtlanta. SwipeMotion is a knowledge on-demand service for IT departments that have to support tablet devices.

TeamEX
An online strategy execution system. Two paying customers. CEO Ventures company.

Hour two is a wrap. More networking until 3:15 third hour start.

| Comments | Tweet | Posted in Presentations, Startups

Startup Riot 2011 Live Blogging 1st Session

Posted on February 16, 2011 · 1 Comment

Today if the fourth version of Startup Riot. Startup Riot is the Southeast's version of Disrupt or Luanch. It's a pitch event where tech startups get three minutes to tell their story. This year the event has moved to the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle is a rockin kind of place, my favorite venue in all of Atlanta to see a show. The floor literally bounces when the place gets going. Today 50 startups are taking their moment in the spotlight.

Like last year I am going to live blog with quick updates on the presenting companies and my thoughts on their pitches and prospects.

Rocket Whale
Simple web-based policies and procedures software for small businesses. A visit to the site is worth a look at the logo.

Mogley
Customer loyalty, gift cards, payment, and promotion management mobile markeing platform targeted toward merchants. Nice looking app. Kinda cool play in the local marketing space. Busy space. Merchant and audiance acquisition could be tough. Nice presentation.

TripLingo
Came out of StartAtlanta and was voted best of show there. It's a nice customizable translation app. Slang slider is a nice feature. Has a team working full-time and have secured a little seed funding. Jesse Maddox the founder was getting ready to head West before TripLingo, now says "we love Atlanta." Asked the for the order. Set the bar for the day. triplingo.com/startupriot.

Nouvou
Enterprise data loss prevention system coming out of Georgia Tech. Company made it to the final 10 of the GTRIC Innovation Competition there recently.

PlacePunch
Another mobile marketing platform. Two in the first group, I told you the space was crowded. The cross location checkin compatibility is a smart move. They have paying customers and funding from Shotput Ventures. Looking for $500k more. They could get it.

I was knocked off the network at some point here and lost reviews of Merlin Mobilty, VoiceCloud, Pardot, ThundrLizard and kicked back and just enjoyed the presentations. If any of the companies that I missed want to reach out more than happy to give you your three lines of fame. With that said one that got my attention was DNSimple.

DNSimple
Really like this. So much that I am going to become a customer. Register domains and handle third party applications such as Google Apps and Heroku. No upsell hassle. Have customer traction and can self fund. May be willing to take $150k from someone that can make them grow faster.

Hopefully we will have a little bit better luck with Internet access later this afternoon.

| Comments | Tweet | Posted in Presentations, Startups