A long time ago I stated that I don't do new year's resolutions. 2012 is different. Maybe it's the leap year thing. Here are four resolutions.
I will be more decisive.
I will be more patient.
I will take more pictures. I want to take and share a picture every day. Become a little less technical of a photog lugging around big equipment. Just look for the shot all the time. Open my eyes a bit. With open eyes comes an open mind. Looking for a rockin high end point and shoot.
I will be more technical. I have signed up for Code Year.
So one of my coworkers walked up to me the other day, evidently after perusing my social stream.
He: "Man you need a handler."
Me: "I think I can handle myself pretty well."
Which lead to a nice long discussion about the role of social and my role at Half Off Depot. The reality is, at the moment I am very much the voice of Half Off Depot. If I could only get DeShong to write something it would change things a little bit. Get the team to tweet and book more. We actually have some plans to extend our social activities and executive exposure beyond me to Patrick Best one of our cofounders and Brian Conley our CEO.
But somebody to handle me? I don't think so. I know enough about this stuff to stay between the guardrails.
So I was interviewing someone the other day. They had read FoG as part of their prep. They told me it was random, which kinda seemed that way in and of itself.
Perhaps it is. I don't know. Often times I appear that way myself. But I am really not. There is a reason for this perception.
Deep dark secret. One of my biggest improvement areas is communications. Two reasons for this.
One. I think fast and just assume others do as well. I don't communicate ABCDEFG. I communicate ACEG. I expect people to fill in the blanks. Those that do get along with me really well. People even talk back to me that way. It's friggin awesome when that happens.
Two. I tack. Like a captain in a sailboat against a headwind, I know where I am going but my thoughts go a little in different directions to get there. And that really does seem random.
It's been 17 days since I have written a blog post. It's hard to blog right now.
It's not because there are not interesting things going on. There are. Tons of interesting things. But they are a little bit hard to write about. They are a little bit hard to write about for two reasons.
One is that much of what I am working on is very strategic in nature. It's interesting and it's fun but I can't really tell the world about it.
Two is that much of what I am working on involves people. It's interesting and challenging but my objective with this blog is not to talk about specific people challenges that I face.
Half Off Depot is an Atlanta based social commerce company. We enable merchants to harness the power of social media and the appeal of deal driven commerce to attract and retain customers. Half Off Depot currently operates in two markets. Atlanta and Knoxville. Our revenue run rate is more than $10 million annually. We just closed a $7 million Series A round led by Noro-Moseley Partners. I wrote the biggest check I have ever written as part of the deal.
I am running business development and sales. Employee 21. The short story is I am in charge of meeting some pretty aggressive revenue growth goals. We will get to the longer story later.
During my time at ATDC I have looked at thousands of startups. Since last Fall I have had conversations with a number of interesting Atlanta startups. Half Off Depot is one of the most promising. It's certainly the most promising that I can make go faster right now. Brian the CEO is a stand up guy. It is going to be great to work with Alan Taetle again.
I couldn't be more excited to be back in the game.
If you have been following along you probably understand that it has been my intent for some time to leave ATDC and get back into a startup. That time has come. After four plus years of a totally awesome time I have decided to step away from my role as a startup catalyst and resign from ATDC. I've had the privilege of being involved with some amazing things during my time at ATDC, working with great startup teams, being on a few teams myself, and playing a small part in making Atlanta a better place for technology startups.
I have had the chance to be a part of a number of companies that have graduated from ATDC. They are BLiNQ Media, Clearleap, Endgame Systems, Izenda, Neurotic Media, PlayOn Sports, Purewire, and WorthPoint. Most of what these companies have already achieved is due to the passion of the founding entrepreneurs and the teams they built. Regardless, one of most rewarding aspects of my time at ATDC is working with these folks to help them build their companies. And there are more on the way.
BrightWhistle, LiquidText, Preparis, Regator, RentWiki, and ScoutMob all show great promise. And these are just a few of the thousands of startups that I have interacted with over the years. Hopefully those interactions created some small gems that helped an entrepreneur in some fashion.
During the past four years I have also been a co-founder of three startups. Skribit, Twitpay, and Socialytics. One of them is in the process of being shut down and the other two are struggling with traction. I have learned that going from zero to something is really hard. And once you have something getting to six figures in revenue is equally challenging.
Skribit and Twitpay came out of Atlanta Startup Weekend, something that I brought to life because I felt the strong need to get a bunch of aspring entrepreneurs together and try to do great things. While we may not have created any lasting companies of value just yet, Startup Weekend played a important role in invigorating the Internet startup sector. Atlanta Startup Weekend lives on as Start Atlanta and continues to build momentum. I dare say it will be around for some time.
I have been involved in more entrepreneurial programs than I can count but BarCamp, CapVenture, Entrepreneurs' Night, GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition, Junior Achievement Fellows Shark Tank, Tech Marketing Awards, Social Media Atlanta, Startup Council, and Venture Atlanta come to mind pretty quick. I created @secretsig. And SeedSpace.
In my first two years at ATDC I gave them a clue and got on the train of inclusion which resulted in us going from about 30 member companies to 50. Over the past two years Stephen Fleming double downed on that inclusiveness and we are now helping over 440 startups.
And we could not have done any of this without the amazing talent of of MBA graduate assistants. Smart driven people that love startups. They really do make the place go.
And there are some amazing things that are about to happen at Georiga Tech that make it hard to walk away. I love Flashpoint and have been working to get it off the ground. If the timing were different I would do that full-time. But it has been too long. I am confident that under Nina Sawczuk's leadership ATDC will continue to increase its impact on technology entrepreneurship in Georgia. My face will be seen in Tech Square supporting what ATDC is doing from time to time.
But at my core I love to grow Internet companies. To be in one. I found one that needs growing. That is what I am going to do.
Back in February when I reported stats for FoG at the age of five I noted the large drop in comments. I received a few responses, two of which are shown below.
Pretty interesting to note that they came via Twitter, somewhat proving the point Andrew, and Wayt were making. It also confirmed that FoG needed a commenting and social facelift.
So I facelift she got. Using Fred Wilson's A VC as a model FoG now is using Disqus as its commenting system and has some nifty new bottom page naviagation that I believe will increase page views. The sidebar has also been cleaned up a bit. Most of the heavy lifting of this project was done by Matt Smith a rising young star in this community.
If anyone has any other thoughts for improvements or specific requests please let me know. In the comments.
The other day I posted the below at my more personal online home. Abby, my wife, said it fitted within the scope of FoG and needed to be here. So here it is.
On Sunday night I ventured out to the Fox to see John Mellencamp. It was a birthday present for Abby. Mellencamp has a special place in the Weatherby musical heart. Abby and I met at Indiana University, the heart of Mellencamp land, when he was at the height of his commercial career.
I had not seen John since his Uh-Huh tour back in 1984 (and boy do I regret turning down the invite to head out to the Bluebird for a drink while in grad school where unannounced he jumped up on the stage for a few songs). He is better today than he was then, something that you don't often say about an aging rocker. John refuses to rest on his past hits. At one point during the concert he stated "the past is nothing." His writing is stronger than ever. One of the best examples of this is Save Some Time to Dream off his latest album, No Better Than This. The song was inspired by advice John's father gave to him.
Listen to the music, but more important listen to the words. Nice prescription for now to live.
FoG turned five this week. As been the habit here are the stats over the course of the life of the blog.
OneTwo Three Four Five Visitors 2,525 12,792 43,166 46,445 40,745 Posts 135 204 178 152 158 Comments 52 253 685 655 402 Conversational Index .38 1.24 3.85 4.31 2.54 Technorati Rank 788,400 189,138 180,054 46,798 41,981 Blog Grader Rank 10,442 56,879
Interesting. Posts are basically flat while visitors and comments are down. I still attribute this to a conscious decision to not write to build traffic. I have moved away from articles that get things all stirred up while not being impactful.
The most concerning thing to me is the drop in comments. At its core FoG is a an Atlanta startup community blog. One of the few that has remained active over the past five years. If the community is not talking it is concerning. Part of that may be the type of content I am presenting. Part of it may be that FoG needs a bit of a commenting/social facelift (a goal for 2011) as reflected in the Blog Grader rank drop. Part of it may be something that I do not quite grasp just yet. If you have any thoughts on that I am eager to hear them.
Lastly the Technorati rank is interesting. Yes, I am aware that this is a bit of an old metric but perhaps also meaningful. If you take the drop in traffic coupled with the increase in ranking it would lead to a conclusion that less people are reading blogs these days. Not a big surprise to an online ADD world that is being trained to think in 140.
So FoG is five. Happy birthday. And thanks to all of you that make it what it is.
Force of Good is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You are free to share, remix, and share alike with attribution.
DISCLAIMER
The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone (with the exception of comments by others of course). They do not represent the opinion or position of any other person or entity. All postings adhere to my personal values.
. The song was inspired by advice John's father gave to him.
