"Get to your wine, and your family and friends, before the raccoons do."
Kent Fortner
Proprietor/Truck-Owner/Road-Warrior
In a letter, a real letter written on paper, to the Road 31 "truckers." (Here's an online version.)
Enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday.
On Thanksgiving day FoG has it’s first guest post.
This is Kate Weatherby. I am writing my first blog post. Right now I am in Rosemary Beach with my family and my Nana is visting. Today we are going to do lots of fun things.
On T.V we will all watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. Then we will go to the beach and do the Weatherby Bowl. The Weatherby Bowl is our family football game. I always have a great time doing it.
At about twelve we will go home and start to prepare the turkey. I am going to help Dad cook the bird. While the turkey is cooking I will make a thankful tree. A thankful tree is two or more branches in a little pot. You put rocks or shells to hold up the branches in the pot. Then you get slits of paper with punched holes and write what you’re thankful for on them. After that you slide the paper on the branches.Viola! A thankful tree.
My family is doing many fun things today.
I month ago I wrote a fairly popular article about startup equity distribution among co-founders. It generated a nice little conversation. The short answer was there is no short answer. Dividing startup equity is a complex process. Doing it right takes a lot of time and effort.
Yesterday I stumbled upon a post by Frank Demmler where he talks about the Founders’ Pie Calculator that he "invented." While I don't think that the calculator provides an absolute answer (and neither does Frank). I do think it is a useful tool that could be used as you think through how you should divide up the stock equity in your startup.
Curt Merrill of CNN.com was on hand for a good part of Atlanta Startup Weekend.
He wrote up a nice article that is currently in the front door of the CNN.com technology section featuring Skribit and Twitpay. Companies that I cofounded at Startup Weekends and remain actively involved in.
Pretty exciting stuff for these companies and all the participants that make Atlanta's upstart startup community exciting.
I recently sat down and spoke with Rob Hassett of InternetLegal and Business to Business Magazine. If you have 15 minutes to spare and what a good overview of ATDC it is worth the listen.
"The entrepreneurs that are out there today, and until the recession ends, are the missionaries and not the mercenaries. This means the guys looking for funding are purposed to raise money and build out their idea. It is not about the money it is about changing the world."
Charlie Paparelli
As reported over on PeachSeedz, SoloHealth made it to the semi-final round of the Forbes Business Launch competition. I am exceited to tell you Solohealth has made it to the finals. Over 1,600 companies entered and SoloHealth is in now in the final five. Part of the reason they got there was the help of the FoG faithful voting for them in the contest.
A few weeks ago Forbes flew SoloHealth CEO Bart Foster up to NYC. After presenting to a panel of judges Bart tooled around the city on the Forbes yacht. You can see Bart’s presentation to the finalists panel here (video auto-roll warning).
Once agian Bart needs your help. Online voting counts for 50% of the formula Forbes will be using to pick the winner. He needs you to vote for SoloHealth so he can take home the $100,000 grand prize.
Here is what you can do:
1. Go to the Forbes Business Launch voting site.
2. Vote for SoloHealth and enter your first name and email address
3. Go to your inbox and click on the “validate your vote” link. Note: You may need to check your spam/junk folder.
Voting ends Saturday, November 29th and the winner will be announced in early
December.
“Everybody’s worth less. The ecosystem takes a hit as a whole.”
In a Bloomberg interview.
Monday and Tuesday I have provided links to posts written about Atlanta Startup Weekend 2.
Well this year we also received a little media attention. The Atlanta Business Chronicle, CNN.com and TechDrawl all visited. Never heard of TechDrawl? That’s because it is a startup itself. TechDrawl is a new video blog produced by Celia Dyer. Celia and the TecDrawl team were on hand to capture Atlanta Startup Weekend. Below is a highlight video.
Celia and her team did a great job. You can expect more videos of the pitches to surface here and across the Internet.
And stay tuned for the launch of TechDrawl in the next few weeks. TechDrawl is going to cover breaking technology
news and venture capital investment opportunities in the South between DC and Texas. It should be up and running by Thanksgiving.
Good stuff is happening down here y’all. And it’s good that TechDrawl is going to make sure the rest of the world knows about it.
Note: Celia is looking into get in contact with the 40 or so people that did a 60 second pitch at ASW2. You can track her down on twitter.
