Last night Jeff Haynie announced BarCamp Atlanta. Out of a desire to make something happen I got involved. Along with Stephen Fleming at VentureLab, ATDC stepped up to host the event.
Which means I am going. Staying up most of the night (can’t seem to sleep much these days anyway). Sleeping on the floor. Geeking out (we planned it via IRC). This is going to be hard core. And fun!
Fun in and of itself is good. But to top it off I’ll get a t-shirt with that coolio logo designed by Fitz.
I am live blogging at the TAG/ATDC Entrepreneurs Society meeting. Lots of aspiring entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, and investors are in the room. Literally standing room only.
Knox Massey, executive director of Atlanta Technology Angels, and recently featured on WSJ.com, is the draw. His topic is “The (Not So) Puzzling Behavior of Angel Investors”.
I find it very interesting Knox says that lots of folks don’t understand that angels expect to get their money back and a return.
The ATA was founded in 1998 with four goals in mind:
1. create wealth;
2. mentor entrepreneurs;
3. create world-class companies;
4. bring outside Atlanta institutional capital to Atlanta .
ATA is a pledge group that typically invests $250k – $750k in each deal and invest $2 – $4 million annually. They have funded 36 companies since inception and have 16 companies in their current portfolio.
Knox has four simple suggestions for entrepreneurs.
Start early. Don’t come to an angel with a package wrapped in a bow. Angels want to have an impact.
Research. Know where the angel or angel group is before you approach them.
Be patient. 30 – 90 days at least to get a deal done.
Realize this is long term. Like any partnership good chemistry is very important
Communicate post investment. Every other month early on and once a quarter after that. If you don’t it is always taken as a bad sign.
A powerhouse panel including Clark Gilder, Jeff Leavitt, Allen Graber, and Mitch Free is taking its seats.
Mitch is telling the telling the story about how Jeff Bezos came to invest in MFG.com. Funny guy, Mitch, not Jeff.
Clark, with the voice of god, is talking about the investment in Invirtus and his quite speedy exit.
Jeff believes that ATA, like ATDC, gives a company cred. Also says that average time to exit is six to seven years. He also made a reference to F round stock, something to look into as an instrument for the early money.
Allen is the shyest entrepreneur/investor I have ever seen in the front of a room. He does not think of himself as an angel, he is a seed investor.
Big don’ts. Clark: Spending the money on sales and marketing. Allen: entrepreneurs that want to have the same salary that they are making at their corporate gig. Jeff: treating investors as adversaries.
End of session.
Publish now
Blake Purdue and Guy Tessler made a few comments on my Seeing Leadership post that deserve further discussion.
The New Media Exchange was one of the more energetic pitch events that I have recently been to with a good pace, plenty of breaks, and hordes of interested potential strategic investors. AOL, Cox, Microsoft, and Turner all had an obvious presence.
The emerging companies that presented generally fell into the category of web app or nextgen cotnent delivery network. The quality of the companies (complete list) was strong with Arootz, Asankya, Gumiyo, PLYmedia, and SimplyGen all standouts for me. I was a little disappointed that only two companies were from the Southeast. The vast majority were Israeli based.
But it is easy to understand why. Why Turner certainly deserves the props I gave them previously, the real driver behind this event is the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce. Like Turner, I commend them on their ongoing efforts.
And save the weather, the "Gala Reception" on the rooftop of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce was a good ol Internet party event with A lister Jeff Pulver attending and blogging about his experience.
I am looking forward to being part of future events.
Bob Cringely certainly thinks so.
Well Microsoft is a Pyramid of Giza compared to Google, whose success is dependent on us not changing our favorite search engine.
But what if it is changed for us? What if Verizon, and AT&T, and Comcast, and half a dozen other huge broadband ISPs suddenly cut deals with some search company other than Google and your ISP-supplied browser and homepage no longer give such prominence to Google? The G-folk have rabid competitors who would very much like to take over that top spot. Would we even notice? How different are the search results these days from one engine to another? Not very different.
Google’s position, while it does deliver better search results is not about technical superiority. Just like Coke, and AOL for that matter, it is about distribution.
Bob’s post today is a must read for anybody interested in the Internet space.
Damballa has joined ATDC. You can read more about them at PeachSeedz.
I am confident that with Steve Linowes, a partner in crime since his Monorail days, in charge you will be hearing more about this startup in the future. Steve is going to bring lots of value to the ATDC community.
Yesterday I spent a few hours with an entrepreneur discussing the best fundraising strategy for his company. Great conversation.
Generally there seems to be a lots of different thoughts on that this days. Marc Andreessen pretty much lands on taking as much as you can get. Stephen Fleming and Dick Costolo (both very worthy reads if you are contemplating raising funds) seem to think less might be more.
Personally, I think the right answer is taking as much as you need to reach your objectives, whatever they may be, is the right answer. And whatever you do, never ever take more then you what you need and force a strategy that you are not ready to commit to.
Not to long ago there was a little chatter about what Atlanta needs to do to become a world-class technology city. My $.02 on the subject was that we needed to see corporate leadership from the tech titans. And I am seeing a little leadership, in to many, an unlikely area.
Tomorrow and Thursday Turner, in partnership with Microsoft and The American Israel Chamber of Commerce, is hosting a New Media Business Exchange. The purpose of this is to bring together emerging technology companies with large companies in Atlanta involved with new media to provide:
* Exposure to a wide range of cutting-edge media technologies from Israel and Southeast US in a concise and productive setting.
* Pre-arranged one-on-one meetings in order to foster joint venture R&D, investment, marketing alliances, and other forms of cooperation.
* A forum for leading media technology, operational and investment executives to network.
But most important is that it is also attempting to establish Atlanta as a center for “new media”. And do not confuse new media as merely an electronic extension of previous media. Media is literally a method to communicate and the new media is the Internet.
And while I am very tired of having people stare at me in blank disbelief when I state this I gotta just say it. Atlanta is a center for consumer oriented Internet companies.
The proof points I provide when making this statement include Apartment Guide, AutoTrader, CNN, Cartoon Network, NASCAR, PGA, and Weather. All major web properties built and based in Atlanta. On top of that Cox and EarthLink are two of the largest ISPs in the country. I won’t even go into the Internet infrastructure and security plays that deliver new media. Some of the folks that I say this to change their minds and say “well ok, Atlanta is not a consumer Internet startup city”.
Well bull hockey! Remember WebMD, and the basis for EarthLink being in Atlanta? How about HowStuffWorks? There is a whole slew of consumer related Internet startup out there right now. Kaneva, Neurotic Media, ThePort and ViTrue immediately come to mind. And there are 24, yes 24 Internet startups alone at the Turner event.
The Internet is happening in Atlanta. I applaud Turner and Laurie Baird for showing some corporate leadership and taking a step to make Atlanta a world-class tech city.
My dear friend Joe Reger has had dNeero in public beta for about a month. This is my first attempt to use the service. Pretty smooth, though truth be told I have never seen Hell’s Kitchen, the show. I actually worked in that area during a brief stint with UPS in metro NYC.
I was walking through Hell’s Kitchen one day going to some meeting when I was approached by a young attractive lady (YAL) with a rather short and extremely tight dress.
YAL: Yous wanna go and have some fun.
Lance: No, I have some work to do.
YAL: Well ahhs girl gotta work too!…
as I continued across West 43rd Street.
True story.
The dNeero widget of the Hell’s Kitchen survey is posted below. You can take the survey yourself or see how others have responded.
PS: Joe do some American Inventor surveys.
As in Indiana University Kelley School of Business. I went there for graduate school. Graduated even. Back then the Kelley guy had not ponied up to put his name on the school.
Right now they are looking for someone to put their name on the undergrad building. I am pulling for Mark Cuban to do that (he went there too and graduated) and buy the Cubs.
This summer, I started serving on the board of the Kelley School of Business Alumni Association. I needed something to do after being on the board of The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center for six, really seven, years (I have a bunch of bizarre books (they gave me the entire collection for some work I did with Nexus Press) and a keener sense of contemporary art for that effort (the Kokomo Kid and I like Contemporary Realism)).
I digress.
At my first Kelley SOB board meeting I was placed on both the marketing and libations committees.
To my delight Professor of Marketing Tom Hustad is one of the leaders of the marketing committee. Tom is a guru in the area of new product development and a great prof on the subject. However, the most amazing thing to me was that he remembered me on sight by name and I am confident that he would do so with many of his former students.
Well Tom (I can call him that now), has put together this little thing called the Indiana University Brand Leadership Conference. They have some marketing rock stars coming in (all Kelley grads) to speak. So if you happen to be in the Midwest mid September this will be interesting.
And for the libations committee? Well for that I was reintroduced to Sink the Bismarck at Nick’s
Dharmesh Shah, who among other things has a nice online community for entrepreneurs called OnStartups, wrote in the forums there the other day “I rarely take this strong of a stand on anything, but I think trying to completely outsource the development for an early stage startup is a recipe for failure. You really need to find a technical co-founder that can help you with this side of it. In my experience, I’ve *never* seen a business person be able to successfully launch a software startup by outsourcing all of the initial development.”
I agree with Dharmesh 100%. If you are a non-technical entrepreneur outsourcing your product development will not work. Successful outsourced development requires locked down compartmentalized product requirements. At the early stages of creating a product it is not possible to either compartmentalize or lock them development tasks. What you end up with is a non fully functional product that the market does not want, a bill to the development company for creating it, and the prospect of paying them more money to fix it.
A non-technical entrepreneur has to be able to recruit a technical co-founder that believes in the vision, has an ownership position, and is willing and able to do what it takes to make a product that people want. You get this person you can contract some of the work out, but without the technical lead on the team a concept is doomed.