| Aug 23, 2010 in Presentations, Venture Capital |  0 |
Entrepreneurs' Eye Chart
Please (125 Point Type)
Give Me Money (80 Point Type)
Because I Really (40 PointType)
Really (30 Point Type)
Need It. (24 Point Type)
My Venture Can Make Both of Us Lots of Money (18 Point Type)
If Only You Could Read My Wonderfully Compelling Presentation (14 Point Type)
Courtesy of the wonderful folks with lots of money (and eye-strain) at Blue Rock Capital.
| Aug 12, 2010 in Angels, Venture Capital | 0 |
Sometime toward the end of the first quarter the deal dam broke. Lots of activity. Lots of term sheets. It seemed like these deals had something in common. There seemed to be a trend. So I did a little math. While I am by no means the MoneyTree I counted up 15 deals that had been funded in the past six months that I some knowledge of closing in Atlanta. All of them in the infotech space. Total of $24 million raised. Average deal size $1.6 million.
It is interesting to break out the angel and venture deals. Seven angel deals closed at an average round size off $508k. The smallest deal was $300, the largest $750. The VC deals averaged out to $2.6 million.
The $2.5 venture round has made its way to the South.
| Aug 09, 2010 in Angels, Presentations, Venture Capital | 1 |
Venture Atlanta is Georgia's largest technology investor conference. It connects emerging Georgia technology companies with top-tier angels, bankers, and venture capitalists. This year the conference is taking place at the Georgia Aquarium on October 12th and 13th.
Venture Atlanta is currently seeking technology businesses in all stages of growth that are currently raising or looking to raise capital within the next year. There is no cost to apply or present. Simply go complete the brief application and submit a two page executive summary. Applications close on Friday, August 20.
| Aug 04, 2010 in Entrepreneurship, Startups, Venture Capital | 1 |
ReadWriteStart had a nice article the other on the downside to bootstrapping. But better than the article was a comment by Micah Wedemeyer, the founder of DoLeaf and a part of the dev team over at BLiNQ Media.
The money quote:
Gotta love a good analogy.So...the downside to bootstrapping is that it makes it hard to get VC money? Next you're going to tell us that the downside to being gay is that it's hard to pick up chicks.
| Jun 23, 2010 in Angels, ATDC, Venture Capital | 0 |
CapVenture is a training program that is put on by ATDC and TAG that is in its third year. The purpose of the program is to prepare companies seeking their first round of institutional funding to go out and get it. The programming takes place for six Tuesday evenings beginning on August 17. The final night, September 21, is pitch night. The top company that emerges from CapVenture, as voted on by the audience (a crowd of about 100 investors and tech leaders) during the final presentations, will be offered a slot to present at Venture Atlanta.
The cost to participate, yes it costs money, starts at $174. Here are the details. Early registration closes on July 9 so if you are interested in participating it is time to get your application rolling. Final registrations are due August 6, if you wait until then it will cost you a bit more to play.
| Jun 10, 2010 in Entrepreneurship, Networking, Presentations, Startups, Venture Capital | 0 |
TiE Atlanta, along with the the Florida and Carolina TiE chapters, are hosting the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit (TES) 2010, July 16 - 17 at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel.
The focus of TES 2010 is to educate and inspire entrepreneurs on the opportunities to build and sustain innovative companies. Toward this end TES will bring together nationally recognized entrepreneurs, business thought leaders, and investors to discuss and explore what makes a successful company. Panel programming includes The Entrepreneurial Lifecycle, Social Entrepreneurship, Social Media, Mobile Technology and more. If you are a startup an Innovative Startup Showcase provides an opportunity to demo your products and services to over 50 influential VCs, 500+ attendees, and potential future customers.
Register for the conference or sign up for the showcase before June 15 to get the best deal. Promo code TES716CEO will help out the friends of FoG a bit.
| Jun 08, 2010 in ATDC, Games, Internet, Mobile, Startups, Venture Capital | 0 |
Here in the heart of the New South folks don't talk about Pepsi much. When I first moved to Atlanta from the NYC area I walked into Stone Soup and much to my surprise they did not even stock the stuff. Over on North Ave our KO friends will not mention the company by name. But the good folks from Purchase have put together a program called PepsiCo10 that is worth talking about.
PepsiCo10 is an opportunity for startups to share ideas and gain access to PepsiCo brand experts, media specialists, and venture capital mentors. The program is focused on businesses in one of four subject categories: social media & marketing; mobile marketing; place-based and retail experiential marketing and digital video and gaming. The PepsiCo10 is open to
small media and technology companies with product in market.
Startups may have already publicly launched a solution or may
have a
beta ready for launch, but the product has to have been in market for less than two years. Applicants must have minimum
annual revenue of $250,000 or total funding ranging from $250,000 to $10
million. They will make exceptions companies that have participated in accelerator or
incubator programs (like ATDC).
Out of the field of applicants up to 40 companies will
be invited to present a formal RFP and five minute introduction
video to
PepsiCo and its partners. From there, up
to 20 companies will be selected to present at a two day PepsiCo10
| May 04, 2010 in Angels, Startups, Venture Capital | 8 |
Last week Shotput Ventures announced they had decided to "blow up" their summer program and turn it into more of an ongoing application process. This week David Cummings provided a little more insight into the why of the change.
Both Sanjay Parekh and David cited an underlying cause for the change that did not surprise me. There is a small supply of investable seed stages companies and little demand for a capital light web accelerator program in the southeast. When Shotput, and its never funded predecessor BoostPhase, where in their formative stages I estimated the supply of investable companies in the southeast to be four. Shotput invested in eight in 2009, three from the southeast (and intend to do three to five deals annually going forward).
The five from the 2009 class not from Atlanta left when the summer program was over. The saddening fact is they saw no follow on funding. Not enough VCs and angel investors interested in the deals. To the best of my knowledge, two four Shotput companies (Eventhive, Khush, Looxii, and OpenHatch) received follow on funding. Solve that problem, like the TechStars results show, by getting investors from around the country at investor day, and the class structure could work.
| Apr 13, 2010 in Mobile, Venture Capital | 0 |
Nokia's Calling All Innovators competition is trying to find the best big ideas for mobile applications. And this year they are taking the contest to a new level by offering up a $1 million venture investment to the winning proposal that could change the way people use Nokia devices.
The winning proposal will meet the following criteria:
In addition to the Venture Challenge Nokia is offering over $350,000 in cash prizes across a host of categories. The Nokia competition is open to all mobile and web application developers worldwide. Submissions are due 12:00 am EDT on June 10, 2010.
| Feb 09, 2010 in Startups, Venture Capital | 4 |
I can't tell you how ironic it was when someone create secretcabal on Twitter. Ironic because there was one. Some time ago the good folks at Noro-Moseley Partners had invited me to a dinner meeting at White Space Gallery. The purpose of the dinner was an open discussion of what's happening in the Atlanta startup community. There was a request not to mention it online, which I respected. As did everyone else. Intriguing.
So last night the entire Noro team assembled along with about 16 people from the tech community. We broke out via dinner tables and Mike Elliott and Alan Taetle opened the proceedings with an overview of Noro. Essentially the firm focuses in a geographic area from Virginia to Texas. They talked a bit about their investing criteria. Noro plans to make about 20 investments across the region from Fund VI. Since that fund closed in 2007 they have made 13 investments. Not a bad pace.
Mike also spoke about the contraction of venture firms both locally and nationally. There is tremendous pressure on the entire venture industry to deliver returns to limited partners. Funding devoted to venture could shrink by another 40% in the future. VCs, including Noro, are fighting for survival.
On to the meat of the matter. All those assembled had two menus. One with food and wine pairings. And a second topic menu.
There was some great discussion. I was fortunate to sit at Mike's table. I did not know him well before. He is smart and engaging. The table and the assembled group reached some interesting conclusions. Personally my biggest conclusion is this. It's great to see the Noro team creating conversation and showing community leadership.
Nothing sinister about that.
TINC.
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