Well LaDiDa

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Khush, a company founded by music technology enthusiasts from Georgia Tech's Music Intelligence Lab recently closed a seed round from 500 Startups. 500 Startups is Dave McClure's Mountain View based seed stage venture capital fund. Very interesting. Perhaps the disparity between the level of competition for deals in the South versus Silicon Valley will result in seed stage money flowing into the region.

Congrats to Prerna and Parag for pushing Khush along. They have a nice product roadmap of music applications as they go forward. I saw Prena sing a portion of her investor presentation once upon a time. It was pretty creative and an impressive demonstration of their first product LaDiDa.  

Since the season is upon us here's a nice Christmas song demo of the product. 

December 13, 2010  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Angels, Startups, Venture Capital

The Atlanta Marketing Technology Cluster

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This article was derived from my opening comments at the Tech Marketing Awards.

I’ve been involved in Georgia’s marketing and technology communities for about 15 years now. When I was asked to take part in the Tech Marketing Awards I was honored. I was also a little confused. My initial thought was this is all about the marketing of technology products. Well it turns out it was not that at all. It was about the use of technology to effectively market.

I am a big believer in using marketing technologies. And I am not alone. Interactive marketing spend is currently at $26 billion dollars annually and projected to grow to $55 billion in the next four years. It’s a torrid growth rate and interactive marketing will soon exceed 20% of all marketing spend. Why is all this money being spent?  Because marketers find that technology tools are less expensive, more measurable, and better for direct response than other methods.

Back in September Ad Age declared, “We have entered a Golden Age of marketing technology.” We have indeed reached a point where marketing has become deeply entwined with technology. So entwined that Ad Age advocated the case for companies to create the role of Chief Marketing Technologist to translate strategy into technology, manage data and technology across the marketing organization, and put tech into the DNA of marketing departments. This call for a Chief Marketing Technologist quickly became an Internet meme. Ad Age was on to something a lot of marketers are thinking about.

The Tech Marketing Awards are a testament to the growing importance of using innovative technology to reach customers in a world where the way information is consumed is rapidly changing. As I was thinking about what to say in my opening comments something dawned on me.  Atlanta is home to a thriving community of marketing technology companies. This community has its roots in well-established firms such as BKV, ChoicePoint, Equifax, and PGI as well as first generation interactive companies such as 360i, iXL, Macquarium, and Spunlogic. 

In addition to this heritage Georgia is home to many great marketing companies.  AFLAC, Chick-fil-A, Coca-Cola, Delta, Home Depot, Newell Rubbermaid, Popeye's, Porsche, Turner, UPS, and Wendy's/Arby's immediately come to mind. These companies and their Atlanta based Fortune 1000 brethren generate a staggering $250 billion in revenue every year. A portion of this revenue is plowed back into marketing and marketing technology. There are lots of potential customers for marketing technology products in Atlanta.

I started writing down the marketing technology companies in Atlanta and with the help of a few others quickly came up with a list that exceeded 30 firms(1). Ad serving applications, analytics, content management systems, interactive advertising, ecommerce, email marketing, lead generation, marketing automation, mobile marketing, sales force automation, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social media monitoring, and transaction marketing are marketing technologies offered by Atlanta companies.

Many of the finalists and award winners at the Tech Marketing Awards have helped to further Atlanta’s presence and reputation as a hub of marketing technology innovation. It was a pleasure to honor their efforts. But more important is to recognize that a cluster of marketing technology companies exists in Atlanta and to strive to help it grow and mature.

Note
(1) 5×5, BLiNQ Media, BrightWhistle, Cardlytics, Carttini, Click Fox, ClipZone, DataClip, EasyLink, eCommHub, Hannon Hill, ListK, Local Flavor, LocalPrice, Loopfuse, Looxi, MailChimp, MessageGears, Mobile CDN, MyFavEats, Pardot, PlacePunch, Quantisense, RentWiki, ScoutMob, SearchIgnite, ServAnalytics, ShopVisible, Silverpop, Socket, Soverse, Tangelo, ThePort, Tickle.Me, Vitrue, and Vuelogic.

Thanks to Greg Foster, Paul Freet, Leslie Thomas, Sean McCormick for helping with drafts of this article and brainstroming the list of Atlanta marketing technology companies.

Update

Adding CoreMotives, LeadLife, Mansell Group, Mobilization Labs, Nimbus, SalesFusion, and Whoop from David Cummings article on the subject.

December 1, 2010  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Marketing, Startups

Thanks

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It's Thanksgiving and I have a lot of reasons to be grateful.  

A loving wife. Great kids. Good friends. My health. An industry that I am passionate about. The ability to help others move their careers along and their companies forwards. A great professional network. The community at FoG.  

I am thankful for all of you that read FoG and participate in this community.  When I wrote my first blog post I never imagined that it would be what it is today. Thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families.

November 25, 2010  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Personal

SXSW Accelerator

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So ATDC can be quite the interesting place. I was walking down the hall yesterday when I noticed a lady that looked somewhat familiar standing in the reception area. I said hello and introduced myself. Turns out to be Jennifer 8. Lee. That is really her name.  

We struck up a conversation. She was in town to speak at the inaugural meetup for Atlanta Hacks/Hackers about the Knight News Challenge, a grant competition for open-source news and information projects that gives away up to $5 million a year. Jenny 8 also told me about the SXSW accelerator program presented by long-time ATDC partner MicroSoft Bizspark.

The third annual SXSW Accelerator will take place March 14-16 at the 2011 SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin. They are looking for business entries in Innovative Web Technologies, Social Media and Social Networking Technologies, Entertainment Technologies, Health Technologies and News Related Technologies. Finalists will receive up to two minutes to present their idea to a jury panel of venture capitalist or technology industry experts. The real benefit is exposure.

So if you need some of that mosey on over to the application process page or pass go and apply here by December 10. If you are self-funded and the $150 entry fee seems a bit much drop Chris Valentine a note.

Cross posted to atdc.org

 

 

November 23, 2010  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in atdc, Presentations, Startups

Georgia’s Innovation Connection

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One of the things entrepreneurs are always looking for are intros to larger companies.  During my day job I have been working on two such programs to hook up early stage companies with Bank of America and Cox.  ATDC has also been working with the Georgia Department for Economic Development, the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, the Technology Association of Georgia, and StartupLounge on an event to put those the big guys in a room with the little guys.

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.

 

November 22, 2010  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Networking, Presentations, Too Many Events

Tech Marketing Award Winners

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Over 170 of the city's best best marketers and marketing technology companies came out last night for a glorious evening at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Roof Top Pavilion. With the sparkling city of Atlanta serving as a backdrop I had the honor of serving as the master of ceremonies at the first ever Tech Marketing Awards. I will have a bit more to say about the growing Atlanta marketing technology cluster in the future but for the moment want to recognize the winners.

Small Company Corporate Marketer of the Year: Rod Witmond, Cardlytics 

Big Company Corporate Marketer of the Year: Lincoln Barrett, Intercontinental Hotels Group.

Email Marketer of the Year: Simms Jenkins, Brightwave Marketing.

Mobile Marketer of the Year: Michael Tavani, ScoutMob.

Search Engine Marketer of the Year: Rick Batchelor, Qiigo.

Social Media Marketer of the Year: Jamie Turner, BKV.

Small Company CMO of the Year: Michael Trader, M2SYS.

Large Company CMO of the Year: Chris Thornton, Definition 6.

Up and Coming Marketer of the Year: Mariya Babaskina, MealpayPlus.

The Life Time Achievement Award: Dave Williams, BLiNQ Media.

Great group. Fun time.

November 19, 2010  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Food and Drink, Fun, Marketing

Georgia Non-Compete Vote Impact

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Given the wording of Georgia amendment one there was never any question in my mind that it would pass. But some of the statements made in the Jobs of Tomorrow funded robo-call sent me a little over the top and set VoteNoOn1 in motion. When I do something I like to measure. It's interesting to see exactly what impact the effort had.

Let's start here at FoG. As the below graph shows, traffic skyrocketed.  Up 480% week over week. New visitors were up over 21% to 81% of site traffic.  That equates to over 3,200 people that had never been to FoG visiting the site and reading vote no content.

VoteNoOn1FoG

What was driving this traffic? Google. FoG was (and remains) a top search engine result page (SERP) on at least 30 terms. Here are the top ten that drove the most traffic:

  1. georgia amendment 1
  2. georgia amendment one
  3. amendment 1 georgia
  4. amendment one georgia
  5. georgia amendments 2010
  6. vote no amendment one georgia
  7. 2010 georgia amendments comparison
  8. who should i vote for in georgia 2010
  9. amendment 1 georgia
  10. how to vote on georgia amendments

The activity quickly moved from FoG to social networks. An avatar and Facebook page were put together in short order. The Facebook page garnered nearly 1,300 active users in less than a week.

VoteNoOn1Facebook

On Twitter hashtag VoteNoOn1 became a bit of a rallying cry.  A nice Twibbon was made. The Friday morning after my initial article the term starting trending in Atlanta. According to Socialytics before all was said and done vote no had been tweeted 983 times by 303 distinct people. And while at times it sounded a bit like an echo chamber the VoteNoOn1 effort made over 225,000 impressions and reached over 160,000 unique individuals.

All this is great stuff but the creme de la creme emerged from one of the team on Sunday before the election, "Biggest impact we could have now would be to get someone to call in to Neil Boortz's show tomorrow and get access to his audience." The game was on. A bunch of people made it their business to achieve this goal.

At about 9:15 on the Monday before the election they did so. Neal Boortz said on-air ""The wording on the ballot in Georgia is designed to intentionally mislead you. Vote No." Boortz the 13th most important radio talk show hosts in America, said "Vote No." Boortz whose weekly cume, a measure of the total number of unique listeners over a period, exceeds 6 million people, said "Vote No."

The day before the election I estimated that amendment one would pass with 73% yes votes. The tally ended up being 68% yes. I'll take that 5% difference and further estimate that VoteNoOn1 swung 120,000 voters to the no side. Not bad for a unstructured group of less than 20 people working for four days. This small quick effort has been referred to as "a large Vote No campaign."

Large? I don't think so. Not yet.

November 18, 2010  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Politics

Sig Cares

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Last night I was invited out to Villa Christina for The Technology Executives Roundtable to attend the John Imlay Leadership Award Ceremony in honor of Sig Mosley, president of Imlay Investments. Sig has been involved with over 125 deals over the years. This summer, before he shut down actively investing in new deals, he did five in a closing frenzy.

The arrival of the crowd literally overwhelmed the valets. The place was packed with true tech luminaries. 

After being presented the first ever John Imlay Leadership Award to a rousing ovation Sig sat down for a chat with the award namesake, John Imlay. It was the highlight of the evening.  John is quite the character and a fun fellow. But at one point he got pretty serious and said "Sig cares". And Sig does. Sig cares about every entrepreneur he meets, every company he invests in, and making the Atlanta tech scene a little bit of a better place than when he started.

While famous for "Sig said no" he is not saying that much these days. But he still cares. Sig cares. A fitting epitaph for a living legend bestowed by none other than the man that got out his big checkbook to make a difference.

November 17, 2010  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Angels

Georgia Non Compete Act Faces First Constitutional Challenge

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Not too long ago John Yates and Morris, Manning & Martin launched MMM Tech Law. It's nice and they have a quickly growing MMM Tech Law LinkedIn group with over 1,200 members to go along with it. The group is a who's who of the Atlanta tech scene.

Yesterday MMM Tech Law issued an alert concerning HB173 and Georgia Amendment One. It's title "Do Not Implement New Restrictive Covenant Agreements: Georgia’s New Restrictive Covenants Act Faces First Constitutional Challenge."

It seems that there is an issue with amendment one not including an effective date. While MMM makes it clear that the alert is not legal advice it is also clear they feel companies need to wait before creating new more restrictive non-compete agreements.

November 13, 2010  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Politics