Who’s Your Daddy?
Spotting The Unscrupulous Investors That Linger in the Shadows and What To Do When Dad’s A Deadbeat

By Stacy A. Williams

StartupLounge.com seeks to pair qualified investors with qualified companies. Our screening process is pretty rugged but it is not bullet proof. If you ever have a question about the integrity of an investor or entrepreneur that you have met at a StartupLounge event, we want to know about it. Please feel free to contact us if you ever have any questions or concerns about anyone that you have met at one of our events. We are here to be part of the solution – not another piece of the problem.

It is a sad comment on our times that we still have not eradicated the plague of the unscrupulous investor from the world of entrepreneurship. Amongst the many earnest and upright angel individuals, who are dedicated to fostering innovation and commerce in their communities, there often lurk the shady evil doers that are really looking to line their own pockets by directly funneling your money from your bank account into theirs. It’s not pretty but it is predictable.

Some of these “investors” are just self-serving and need the income. We call these small fish: job-seekers, consultants and fund-raisers. They are not really doing anything illegal, but they can waste your time and money because they don’t plan to invest their own money and may not work that hard to find someone else’s for you – no matter how much you pay them.

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For the past few years, Justin Rubner has been diligently covering the technology beat here in Atlanta. In particular, I found his coverage of the tech startup scene to be a positive thing for the community. Justin recently left the Chronicle and landed at The Content Factor. However, the Chronicle has yet to replace him, or to provide any sort of coverage of the tech scene at all.

A week or two ago, I emailed Ed at the Chronicle and asked a simple question: are you guys going to bring back the technology column? I’ve yet to receive a reply.

Edit/Update: I have heard through the grapevine that they do not have plans to bring the technology column back.

Atlanta is the most “wired” city in the world, according to Forbes Magazine (for the second year in a row). Money Magazine was quoted as saying that Atlanta has “a bustling community of Internet-related start-ups.” (thanks to Lance Weatherby for those 2 snippets). So why then does the Atlanta Business Chronicle forego technology coverage in order to continue to fill my driveway with piles of dead trees containing in-depth coverage of the real estate market (which we all know is tanking)? See Mike Blake’s recent presentation for some statistics on this …

Since TechLinks has evolved into a love fest for big company CIOs and sponsors, we have little-to-no traditional media coverage here (save for Tech Journal South, based out of RTP/Carolina, which tries to provide at least some coverage for us).

Come on guys … this is embarrassing. There is a whole new wave of technology players in Atlanta, and you are missing the boat. Then again, since most of us get our news online these days, maybe it doesn’t even really matter.

Cheers.