Incubation in Georgia

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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. 

Georgia Incubators

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. 

Pretty impressive.

November 18, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Accelerators, atdc, Entrepreneurship, Startups

Atlanta Startup Weekend 3 Projects

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There are 10 active projects currently at Atlanta Startup Weekend 3. Presentations start in less then an hour. Eager to see who can launch.  We may see four alphas or better.

EventTank
EventTank
aggregates event data from various social networking and event listing
web sites to create a searchable database that allows third parties to
recieve a comprehensive listing of events that is categorized by
interest, date, time, and geographic area, etc.

FakeWhale
For all the things you wish they’d said.

FanTrendz
Real-time news trends for your fantasy sports team.

FlexSeats
FlexSeats is time sharing for season ticket holders.  It allows groups of friends and businesses to get together and share the cost of season tickets without the hassle of dividing up tickets, handling money, and handling conflicts.

Gomodo
Helps you quickly find events near you.

Moody Tweets
Moody Tweets is a Twitter application offering users the ability to express their personality and mood in an easy, fun and customized manner.

Socialytix
Socialytix analyzes your social networks to help you determine which relationships are the strongest, which need attention, and which should be abandoned altogether. From there, you can build an action plan to strengthen your most important relationships and build on forgotten ones.

Today’s Bracket
Difinitive answers to questions that don’t matter.

Touchdown Nation
Touchdown Nation – the hottest football game on Facebook! Build your team. Train your players. Win games. Who will dominate the field?

Voicify
A quick and simple way to find out what people think. Voicify calls your customers, friend, or team members with the questions you want answered. It then displays the results in easy to read graphs to help you make better decisions about your business or personal life.

Xpense Track
Everyone hates expense reports. All those receipts. So many forms. XpenseTrack provides your company with a simple, paperless online receipt management system. Free yourself from the hassle of receipts. Go Receipt Free!

November 15, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Entrepreneurship, Startups

Increased Retweet Influence

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This morning I woke up to find Ev’s avatar in my personal tweet stream.

Ev retweet

I was a bit taken aback.  I don’t follow @ev.  Did not understand why he showed up.  So I followed the link and sure enough he does a fine job explaining this.

Seems like Twitter has a bit of an retweet attribution problem.  Here is how they decided to solve it.

“In order to get rid of the attribution confusion, in your timeline we show the avatar and username of the original author of the tweet—with the person who retweeted it (whom you
actually follow) in the metadata underneath.”

So Fred Wilson, whom I follow, is merely mentioned in small text at the base of the retweet.  Ev, who I do not follow, is noted prominently with his avatar and user name.

End result is increased exposure, reach, and influence for users that get retweeted.  It will be interesting to see how this effects user behavior.

November 11, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Internet, Social

Top Books

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This is the second in a series pulling content off my first web presence. A personal list from 1999. Can not believe The Lord of the Rings did not make the cut. It bumps nine or ten off the list today. Will have to gave that some thought.


BOOKS



A top ten list.

  1. The Grapes Of Wrath
  2. To Kill A Mockingbird
  3. The Dancing Wu Li Masters
  4. A Confederacy Of Dunces
  5. The Fountainhead
  6. Skinny Legs & All
  7. In Cold Blood
  8. The Hobbit
  9. Bright Lights, Big City
  10. The Bonfire Of The Vanities

November 10, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Personal

Starting Startup Weekend

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Atlanta Startup Weekend is less than a week away from starting.  Over 75 people have signed up.  The total registrants may reach 100 (registration closes on Wednesday).  And we have some great local sponsors in MailChimp, JungleDisk, and A Small Orange that are going to be offering some resources to Startup Weekend participants.

With that said, there is a dirty little secret about Startup Weekend.  Actually it’s
not confined to Startup Weekend.  It applies to lots of well known
startup related programs.  Startup Weekend, TechStars, YC, the GRA/TAG
Business Launch competition.  The further along you are when the
programming actually starts, the better your chance of success when the
program ends.  So what does that mean for Atlanta Startup Weekend?

If you have an idea start developing the idea into something that you can easily share on opening night.

If you have an idea it also would not be too bad an idea to start
recruiting your team before the event starts.  As an example, the
idea for Twitpay was well socialized last year before the weekend began
and several key team members knew that was what they were going to work
on before they walked in the door on Friday night.  So recruit people
that you know and want to work with to sign up for the weekend so they
can work on your project.

If you don’t have an idea go to the idea wiki and chime on the ideas that others are submitting.

It’s time to get started.  If you have any other insights or questions bring them on.

November 7, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Marketing, Presentations

Startups Create Jobs

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In a nice opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, by Schramm et al.  They essentially say that the age of the business not the size is the more precise characteristic of companies creating jobs.

The more precise factor is not the size of businesses, but rather their
age. According to the Census Bureau, nearly all net job creation in the
U.S. since 1980 occurred in firms less than five years old. A Kauffman
Foundation report released yesterday shows that as recently as 2007,
two-thirds of the jobs created were in such firms. Put more starkly,
without new businesses, job creation in the American economy would have
been negative for many years.

The authors go on to cite economic and regulatory barriers that are in the way of young companies and propose a four pronged solution.

  1. Welcome immigrants seeking scientific training to our universities by granting permanent residency and work status.
  2. Unbridle academic entrepreneurs by opening up licensing to non-university entities.
  3. Provide easier assess to capital.
  4. Fix the cost burden of SOX compliance for small companies.

Seems like a reasonable course of action to me.  How about you?

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Hat tip to John Cottingham and Mike Eckert for pointing the way.

November 6, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Business, Entrepreneurship, Startups

Two Social Media Metrics

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There is this big debate about if you should or should not try and determine ROI on social media efforts.  I am clearly in the former camp.

Evan LaPointe, whom I had the pleasure to interact with a bit recently is not really a social media guy.  He is a web analytics guy.  Dare I say an expert.  He was a nice article on Search Engine Land pondering the question if Web analytics is easy or difficult to do. The answer is both.

Money quote:

"But the most important—and hardest—thing to do is tie it all back to
the two very simple metrics that drive all business value: revenue and
profitability."

Yep. And I think that is why some people don't want to measure social media ROI.  It's hard. 

It's also important.  To quote someone a bit more famous than Evan, "what's measured gets managed."  If you want to improve how social media drives business value you have to measure it's impact on revenue and profitability. 

October 30, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Social

Social Media ROI

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Christina Warren has an excellent article over on Mashable entitled "HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI."  It's a great roundup of the tools available today and chock full of content.  Including Oliver Blanchard's Social Media ROI presentation.

It's simply astounding how many social media marketing practitioners take the stance that you can not measure the ROI of social media.  It's even more astounding that 84% of social media programs are not measured.  I honestly do not think that I have ever undertaken a marketing program that did not have ROI metrics attached.  Never, ever.  It's appalling.

Why are so many social media consultants/companies/experts so averse to measuring the impact that social media has on business results?  Perhaps they don't know how.  Perhaps they don't like the results.  I really don't know.  A notable exception is Chris Brogan.  He says something to the effect of "sure I measure ROI, that's why they give me money."  Good for him.

The position of most social media types reminds of the time when I did an agency review and the astonishment displayed upon learning that customer revenue generated was the end game measurement of any marketing effort.  The agency folks were aghast.  Measure sales.  As a results of marketing efforts.  Good god man what is wrong with you!

Folks if it is marketing, and that's the general classification of many social media programs, you can measure it.  Measure it all the way to ROI.

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October 28, 2009  |  Comments  |  Tweet  |  Posted in Marketing, Social