This Thursday evening (Sep 11th, 2008) I’ll be moderating a panel for Catalyst Magazine over at The Vinings Club. The topic is a staple one for entrepreneurs at all levels: “Raising Capital”.

Catalyst has put together a great panel as well:

It’s the million-dollar question. Whether your company is encountering consistent annual revenue growth, or you’re just tired of bootstrapping your start-up, how does an entrepreneur find capital to grow a small business? On September 11th, Catalyst magazine is proud to present a featured panel of experts who will guide you on understanding how to find funds in this tough economic climate. Learn from local entrepreneurs who have raised millions of dollars in recent investment rounds. Find out from top local investors what they perceive as a bankable business. On the panel:

Braxton Jarrett, CEO & Co-Founder, Clearleap
In March 2008, Braxton’s tech startup, Clearleap, announced a first round of venture capital funding of $9 million from industry leaders Trinity Ventures of Menlo Park, California, and Noro-Moseley Partners.

Greg Foster, General Partner, Noro-Moseley Partners
Greg joined NMP in 2008 and has focused his investment activities in technology with an emphasis on digital media. Prior to joining NMP, Greg served as Vice-President of Corporate Development for Turner Broadcasting, where he was responsible for Turner New Media Investments, the company’s early stage strategic investment arm, as well as M&A activities.

Brian Patrick Cork, Managing Partner & Cultural Architect, brian cork Human Capital
Brian has helped a wide range of companies raise more than $500 million dollars in private placement capital and has recruited and counseled hundreds of executives and other decision-makers. He has actively participated in building dozens of successful organizations.

If you’d like to attend, you’d better hurry and sign up. From what I understand there aren’t many seats left. Hope to see you there!

Cheers.

A couple of years ago I came up with the concept of the “Gang of 5″ – a peer group approach to launching your venture.  I’ll soon be posting more information on this on the StartupLounge web site.

Matthew Sweezey (MechanixLoop) and his midtown Atlanta Gang of 5 are embarking on a project they call STARTAtlanta. It’s pretty cool to see one grassroots initiative being born out of another.  Way cool.

If you are interested, here are details on their next event:

Read more »

The day after I left PlayMotion, I decided that I was going to take a little time away and clear my head and figure out what my next “thing” was going to be.  About 2 days later, I was approached by a friend of mine (Michael McChesney) about taking over the operations of one of his companies. The short version is that my self-imposed sabbatical didn’t last terribly long.

I quietly took over the reigns at StarPound back in late May or so.  StarPound is playing in an incredibly compelling space – Enterprise 2.0 mashups, a topic that I plan on writing a bit about moving forward. The company has been in heavy R&D mode for the past four years, funded by investments from Michael, Tripp Rackley, and Noro-Moseley Partners.

So for the past four or five months, we’ve been busy cranking out code, getting traction from some early customers, refining the business model, and preparing for the launchpad. We’ve nearly completed the shift from R&D to market mode, and that’s always simultaneously draining and exhilarating.

We’ll be rolling out a new web site in the next few weeks which will get into a lot more specifics. But for now, think a cloud-based, open-source J2EE application server that drives voice/data/web services (via SOAP/REST/SIP/etc), with a visual business process modeling tool sitting on top of it. Think Visio, but with little boxes that actually “do something”.

We’ve also built a number of open-source add-on modules, including a free cloud-based PBX, and an entire suite of applications for contact centers.  Think telephony (Avaya) + BPM (Pega), but for free.

More soon …

Cheers.