A recent article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle entitled "The new face of Atlanta tech" reminded me that a few weeks ago my old MindSpring associate Alan Taetle posted an article entitled "What is world-class in the Southeast?" in response to a challenge from Jeff Haynie. Now I have the utmost respect for Alan, despite his decision to bring me into the world of the Internet, he generally gets things right and I have learned a great deal from him.
Alan is a smart guy. He typically does not ask questions that he does not know the answer to (unless of course you are in the process of growing a company at a 1000% rate in an industry no one knows anything about, then, well then he wants input). So we had a brief email exchange that went something like this (I would tell you exactly how it went but Microsoft Exchange is quite possibly the worst software program ever written and I have no record of our emails for reasons that I will restrain from digressing into);
Lance: Alan, liked your post, never heard of the black swan theory before. I don’t know about the Southeast but I think that Atlanta has established fairly strong business clusters in Internet security, logistics, payment processing, consumer data, and telecommunications.
Alan: Exactly, but nobody outside of Atlanta knows that.
In other words, we have a marketing problem. And not a marketing problem that can be solved by entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, technology entrepreneurs, and with all due respect to John Yates of Morris, Manning & Martin, if Brand Atlanta is an indication, committees. It is an issue that only be successfully addressed through the commitment of the titans of the Atlanta technology community.
The Business Chronicle article identified Pete Kight of CheckFree (CKFR) as a person who needs to rise to this challenge according to a poll of the CEO Council. But there are many more that quickly come to mind:
Jim Geiger of Cbeyond (CBEY), Derek Smith of Choicepoint (CPS), Mike Lunsford of EarthLink (ELNK), Richard Smith (odd that a guy that leads an organization that wants to be known as a software company has no bio online) of Equifax (EFX), Paul Garcia of Global Payments (GPN), Tom Noonan of IBM Internet Security Systems (IBM), and Jay Chaudry of Secure Computing (SCUR).
So like Jeff’s challenge to the local VC community I have a little challenge of my own for these guys. Some who I know. All that I respect a great deal for doing a very, very difficult job. My challenge is for you to step up, take a leadership position, and start marketing the expertise that your company has helped to create in Atlanta. You and your large organizations are the only ones that truly can bring the resources to bear to make Atlanta a world-class city in their respective technology sectors.
Pete is right when he says that "Atlanta is well-positioned to be the third-largest technology hub in the United States." He is also right in stating that we need to improve our traffic situation, keep business friendly government, continue to support university commercialization efforts, and pay more attention to the startup community. Corporate leadership is curiously absent from Pete’s list. It won’t happen without corporate leadership. It’s time to be a force for good in the community.
