The Local Nut

Posted on February 15, 2011 · 8 Comments

"We cracked that local ecommerce nut, and it’s a serious nut. There wasn’t even a good form of customer acuiqsition (sic) before the Internet, for local businesses. I mean, advertising on radio and in local newspapers was about spending money upfront, to buy exposure, and then cross your fingers."

That'a Andrew Mason the CEO of GroupON in a recent TechCrunch interview.

I believe Mr. Mason is partially right. First of all I am not so sure that GroupOn is actually a customer acquisition play. But putting that aside for the moment there is a little more to this than meets the eye. The reality of the situation is that the options to buy advertising on local mediums such as radio and newspapers are rapidly diminishing. If you are a local merchant and want to advertise your offline options are going away.

Neighborhood papers that used to end up on your drive or in your mailbox? Gone.

Yellow pages? Straight from the porch to the recycling bin.

Classified ads? Craigslist is free and has much broader reach.

City newspapers? An expensive medium to begin with that now has diminishing readership and page count due in big part to the profit hit from the demise of classified ads.

The point being that most forms of local advertising that used to be available via traditional media are going away. Print publishing is in sharp decline. Terrestrial radio audience is flat at best and efficiency is challenging on a small budget.

So if you are the girl that used to own the bar that advertised in the local entertainment print weekly you have a big problem. Much fewer people are reading these things. You have no choice. You have to take your offline marketing effort online.

And that is what is driving the local ecommerce nut. All that money, and it is a lot, that used to be spent on local print needs to find a new home. Classified. Coupons. Display. Yellow pages. Each category is a large market. Add them all together and things get real serious. Serious to create the mother of all Internet wars.

February 15, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Internet, Marketing

LiquidText Wins Innovation Competition

Posted on February 11, 2011

On Tuesday night at the Ferst Center for the Arts the awards ceremony for the Georgia Tech Reseach & Innovation Conference (GTRIC) was held. The winner of the 2011 Innovation Competition was Craig Tashman of LiquidText.

GTRIC brings together 400 Georiga Tech graduate students presenting their research to the Tech community. The event gives graduate students the opportunity to compete for monetary prizes for their research, in order to fund commericalization, continued research, or travel expenses for students to continue to make presentations across the country. This year the conference awarded a total of $85,000 in prizes, the largest being the Georgia Tech Edison Prize.

The Georgia Tech Edison Prize is a $15,000 award that goes to the winner of the event's Innovation Competition. The Georgia Tech Edison Prize was established in 2010 to foster the formation of startup companies from research conducted at the university. Graduate students work closely with Georgia Tech’s ATDC Venture Lab arm to tune their ideas and presentations prior to the event. Approximatley 100 graduate students entered the Innovation Competition.

February 11, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in atdc, Startups

Hiring

Posted on February 7, 2011 · 1 Comment

ATDC is looking to hire an up and coming marketing guru to manage and lead its marketing efforts.

ATDC currently employs an online content marketing strategy. If you are hired you will be heavily focused on planning, developing, and managing website content. You will manage ATDC's email and social media marketing programs, create print marketing material and support marketing for ATDC events. You will also have the opportunity to attend technology startup events to grow awareness of ATDC and increase its reputation among customers, prospects, and, sponsors. If you want to learn the world of technology startups there are not many better places to be.

The ideal candidate will have a business or communications degree with about three years of related online marketing experience. You will need excellent written communication skills including past experience in the creation of case studies, collateral, press releases, and website content. You need to be a little bit of a geek, but just a little, with knowledge and use of Windows/Mac, WordPress, social media platforms (Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube), and web analytics tools. Knowledge of HTML, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop are big pluses.

To be considered for the job you have to officially apply. You can do so here. Entering job number 0164162 will take you to the promised land.

February 7, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in atdc, Marketing

Startup America

Posted on February 3, 2011

On Monday the White House announced the Startup America Partnership. Startup America is a White House initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout America. Below is a nice video of Austan Goolsbee the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers explaining the program.

About the only criticism I have about the program is the expression "valley of death." I live in startup land. I have never ever heard anyone say "valley of death." Regardless the four main points Mr. Goolsbee makes are that Startup America will:

Expand access to capital for startups;
Identify and remove unnecessary regulations that are barriers to startups;
Expand entrepreneurial mentorship programs;
Provide tax relief.

Aneesh Chopra, United States CTO, also has a nice outline of the program summary on TechCrunch.

Startup America is the capstone of a sea change that has been taking place. For years and years governmental economic development efforts have mostly focused on big companies. Then last year, at least in Atlanta, something started to happen. It seemed like all of a sudden people realized that startups create jobs. Lots of groups starting turning their attention to startups. Why this happened I am not sure. But I am very encouraged that the White House understands the importance of entrepreneurship and startups in expanding the economy and creating jobs. I am also very encouraged that Startup America is getting the right people and organizations involved.

As part of the Start America kickoff 27 public and private commitments were announced. As far as I can tell there is no entity from Georgia involved. There should be. The state of Georgia needs to leverage the Startup America program with it's own economic development funding. It needs to get the right people and organizations involved. It needs to tap into existing startup support expertise (such as ATDC one of the world's top ten incubators). Doing so will help Georgia technology startups succeed, create jobs, and give Georgia an opportunity to reestablish itself as a technology leader.

February 3, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Accelerators, atdc, Current Affairs, Entrepreneurship, Politics, Startups

2011 GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition

Posted on February 2, 2011

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.

Cross posted to atdc.org.

February 2, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Angels, Networking, Startups, Venture Capital

They Aren’t Funding You

Posted on February 1, 2011 · 2 Comments

Jeff McConnell pointed me to a great article by Mark Suster entitled On Leadership, Teams, Success, & Happiness last night. Well down in it he writes this:

I meet entrepreneurs all the time who tell me one of the following things:

“I’ve had trouble raising money. Investors want to see more traction. This frustrates me. I thought you were supposed to be VCs? You know, ‘venture’ capitalists? How come you guys only invest when you have proof of success?” or;

“I don’t have enough money to hire my team yet. They’re waiting on the sidelines, ready to join as soon as I raise some money. We’re not moving fast enough. I can’t get traction with people and I can’t get people without money and I can’t get money without traction. It’s one big cluster fuck of a recursive loop!”

Ain't that the truth. I bet I hear both of these stories at least once a week, often times once a day. And here is the truth that Mark points out, Angels and VCs fund people all the time with no traction. They do. They just are not funding you.

If this is the case you really need to understand why. And you might not like the answer because oftentimes the answer is you. But if you understand the why you might be able to fix it if you are willing to do so.

February 1, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Entrepreneurship

StartAtlanta Builds Better

Posted on January 31, 2011 · 4 Comments

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.

January 31, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Angels, Entrepreneurship, Networking, Startups

The Mother Of All Internet Wars

Posted on January 26, 2011 · 5 Comments

There have been quite a few wars in the history of the commercial Internet. But I think that we are gearing up for the start of the biggest one yet in 2011. Before I get to that a brief review of some of the past battles is needed.

The 1st Browser War
Perhaps the most infamous war of all. Netscape versus Microsoft. In 1996 Netscape Navigator dominated the Web. Over 80% of the browser market. Mark Andreessen was the poster child of the Internet. Microsoft's launched Internet Explorer and offered it for free with marketing dollars available to companies that distributed it. They bundled IE with Windows. With the exception of a little anti-trust lawsuit the battle was over. Microsoft was the clear winner with over 90% market share by 2002.

The Retail War
About the time Andreessen was posing for magazine covers in his shorts, Jeff Bezos was founding Amazon. Not so much of a war as the execution of a Manifest Destiny. Amazon today is by far the largest online retailer.

The Access War
In the early days of the commercial Internet there was a land rush to get people online. America Online, now AOL, won this battle by spewing discs across America. At it's apex AOL had a 34% market share, over four times that of EarthLink, it's closest competitor.

The Search War
In 1998 while AOL, Excite, MSN, Yahoo! and a few others were battling the portal wars a company called Google was formed. While portals focused on content aggregation, communications (email and instant messaging), and search, Google just wanted to do one thing. Search. They win building to over 70% market share. AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! remain major traffic destinations.

The Social War.
Jonathan Abrams and Peter Chin of Friendster. Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn. Tom Anderson, Josh Berman, Chris Dewolfe, and Brad Greenspan of MySpace. Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams of Twitter. Have any of these guys been named Time Person of the Year? No. But Mark Zuckerberg has. He and Facebook have much more than our minimum amount of attention. And Facebook has over 60% market share.

The Mother Of All Internet Wars
Look at the companies that came out on top in these battles. Microsoft, Amazon, AOL, Google, and Facebook. These companies have a combined market capitalization of over $500 billion. And there is another little company out of Chicago called GroupOn with a $15 billion valuation that is in the scrap too. And they are all, along with every media company known to man, starting to turn their resources to one thing.

You can call it local. You can call it mobile. You can call it location. It does not really matter what you call it. All of these powerhouses are going there. Why? Because the the local daily deals market is projected to be over $10 billion in 2015 and the mobile advertising market is projected to be over $2.5 billion in 2014.

The Internet gorillas are marshaling their forces in preparation for this battle. Amazon invested $175 million in SocialLiving and did 1.3 million transaction in their first joint deal. AOL launched Wow. Google, who reportedly offered $6 billion for GroupOn and was told "no thank you", to my thinking is willing to invest at least twice that amount in the space, and is creating Google Offers which in some way has to integrate Google Places in the future. Facebook has created its own Places and Deals, offering up the latter to retailers at no cost. GroupOn (and a big BTW, if someone offers you $6 billion for your startup, take it) is keeping pace with GroupOn Stores and DealFeed. Microsoft, rarely first to enter but always a major combatant before the dust settles, has yet to show its hand (beyond a little $240 investment in Facebook that seemed a little wacky until they agreed to make search social.)

This is going to be fun. But I am not sure, unless you already have some well established position to defend (good for you) or a new and step function better technology that can focus on a specific vertical (bring it on) that I would want to enter the battle at this point. It's going to be a big one and a lot of startups are going to get killed.

January 26, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Internet

Not Smarter Than A 4th Grader

Posted on January 20, 2011 · 5 Comments

So according to Business Insider Apple just had a "staggering" quarter. Not really surprising. Here's why.

A long time ago in a place not too far away a bunch of geeks that I respect a great deal told me to make the switch to Mac as OS X was a Unix based operating system. I heeded their advice and have been generally pleased using Apple computers for about nine years running.

Flash forward. A few years ago over a bowl of oatmeal Jack announced that he wanted to go to Purdue and learn how to make video games. I think he was nine at the time. Did not seem like a bad career choice to me so I decided a little encouragement was appropriate.

Jack likes money. I offered to double his allowance if he would take over IT support for the Weatherby household. He agreed and I taught him the ropes on what was needed to troubleshoot the home network and keep the computers up to date and functioning properly. We made a little notebook on the steps involved and off he went. If there are home network issues he how troubleshoots them and every Saturday morning he runs software updates on the computers and once a month does heavy maintenance.

At the time we were a duel Mac/Windows household (and still are with the exception of Abby that needs a Windows laptop for accounting applications). So after about six months of this sysadmining I asked Jack, the nine year old, a simple question "what do you like better Mac or Windows?" His reply, "Mac." "Well why is that?" I inquired. His reply, "because it's easier."

And that, from the mouth of a nine year old, is why Apple's staggering quarter is really no surprise.

Disclaimer: I own shares in Apple stock.

January 20, 2011 | Comments | Tweet | Posted in Computing, Current Affairs