I just ordered my personal copy of Faded Glory, a documentary produced by my friend and Atlanta-based filmmaker, Rick Cohen.  If you are actively involved in the Atlanta startup scene, you may have run into Rick before.  Besides being a great guy, and an awesome filmmaker, the story behind the story is one for the ages.

Faded Glory is a true story of a group of aging athletes, good friends for over 18 years, who never gave up the dream of playing baseball at a competitive level. Through the eyes of their manager Rick Cohen, Faded Glory follows the National Network team, 18 men over the age of thirty-five who have overcome life’s adversities, including injury, divorce, bankruptcy, infidelity, drug addiction, incarceration, and one life-threatening disease. It all takes place as National tries to win a National Amateur Baseball World Series title. Faded Glory is a captivating document of friendship, courage, humor, and the indomitability of the human spirit.

Through his hard work and passionate evangelism of his film project, Rick raised some angel capital for this film (partially through connections he made at one of our StartupLounge events).  I haven’t sought permission to mention the name of the investor in question, but he is one of the most successful technology entrepreneurs in the past decade here – and a good guy to boot.  Just goes to show you, no matter what industry sector your venture is in, you never know where a possible angel investor is lurking, and what motivates them to make an investment.

And interestingly enough, this investor shared this with me:

“I did invest some money in his movie as a result of meeting him at your StartupLounge event.  Not so much because I think movies are a good investment, but because I admire his passion and the way he has bootstrapped it thus far.”

There ya go.

The film has gone on to win a lot of critical acclaim:

• Delray Beach Film Festival Audience Award
• LA United Film Festival Audience Award
• ALL SPORTS LA Film Festival Audience Award
• Atlanta Film Festival Runner-Up Audience Award
• Real to Reel International Film Festival Runner-up Audience Award
• Newport Beach Film Festival – Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment names the film – audience favorite.

And hey, you can’t get better endorsements than these:

ANGELO PIZZO -
Writer of both “Hoosiers” and “Rudy.”

“A compelling documentary with authentic, well-earned emotions.”

ROGER TOWNE -
Writer of “The Natural.”

“Roy Hobbs and the New York Knights live in Rick Cohen. I’ve not seen so much blood and guts, self-less honesty, despair, pathos, passion, honor, and above all, — so much bravery in filmmaking.  Rick’s poignantly invested and dramatized love for his friends and the game of baseball shows clearly in this documentary.”

LEIGH STEINBERG -
Legendary Sports Agent who inspired the character of “Jerry McGuire.”

“This is THE documentary that resonates and connects with the deepest hopes and fears of males throughout the country and is a landmark event–Rick is a truly gifted talent! Faded Glory offers an unique opportunity for women to experience the locker room environment and psyche of men in an alternative habitat. It should not to be missed!”

In fact, Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh (writer and director of Rudy!, respectively), are now on board to turn this amazing story into a feature film.

Hey Rick, can I get a cameo role for promoting this?

Sooooo ….. support a local Atlanta entrepreneur and pre-order this awesome film on DVD.  Get the original indie film before Hollywood turns it into a blockbuster that may or may not capture the true spirit of Rick’s original vision. You can visit the online store here.

Rick will be attending our upcoming StartupLounge event on March 6th, and we’ll be giving away some signed copies of the DVD there as well …

Cheers.

Warning to readers: This is not my typical blog post about venture capital, entrepreneurship, startups, etc.  This is a very personal, unfiltered stream of thoughts.  If you have a problem with profanity – stop now.

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I can still remember the grainy television images of the smoke billowing into the sky, people screaming, sirens blaring.   The images of hundreds of body bags stacked neatly beside the rubble, juxtaposed against a noisy backdrop of frenetic movement.  It was October 23rd, 1983, just 8 short years after the end of the Vietnam War.  I was young, impressionable, and now, full of rage.  It was that day that I first contemplated military service, though it would be a couple of years later until I would be old enough to actually join.

Music and fashion weren’t the only things torn asunder in the 1980s.  We were locked into the Cold War with the Soviets.  The Soviets had missiles in Syria, capable of reaching Israel, and the Soviets/Cubans were monkeying around on the island of Grenada, not far from our own shores.  Two days after the barracks bombing in Beirut, the United States invaded Grenada.  President Reagan, who later became my first Commander-in-Chief,  delivered a powerful speech to the nation about both events a few days later. It was a crazy time.

Those of you who know me personally have a public view of me:  a tech geek, father of two little girls, wacky sense of humor, and passionate about startups and entrepreneurship.  But there is another side of me that many of you don’t know.  One that is deeply patriotic, and incredibly respectful of the traditions and sacrifices Americans have made throughout our history.

This past Saturday was Independence Day, and like so many of you, I enjoyed the fireworks with my family. Our 3 1/2 year old daughter cackled with glee at each explosion and burst of color.  But as each stream of color and smoke faded into the night, I said a small prayer for those warriors that died on the morning of October 23rd, 1983.  I said a small silent thanks to Lang, Dreier, Combites, Rivers, Cortez, Woodberry, Bamford, Starling, Strieter, Sinke, Fuller, Mitchell, Evans, Sciortino, Teal, Rey, and all the rest of the guys I served with in Delta/HHC companies, 3rd Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, 3d Infantry Division, VII Corps.  Most of us couldn’t wait to get out of the Army, but as the years have rolled by, I think we all look back fondly on that shared experience.

Through Winter Warrior I and II, four Grafenwoehr gunnery densities, countless deployments to Hohenfels and Area Mud, REFORGER, Border Patrol, and all those 2:00am lariat advances and base lockdowns, we develop a shared history and bond that remains to this day.  To my fellow Marne Dogs of the 64th Armored Regiment, and the 3rd Infantry Division: “Rock of the Marne.  Rampage. We Pierce!”

My favorite song is, and since October 1983 has been, our national anthem.  I still choke up whenever I hear it. During a recent recording of the StartupLounge podcast, I was waiting for my cohort Mike Blake to finish munching a doughnut so we could get on with the recording (yes, I’m not kidding).  For no reason at all, I burst into singing my favorite song.  Of course, the mics were on, and the tape was rolling.  Doh!  Afterwards, I chuckled a bit, but Mike thought we should work it in the final edit of the show, as (at the time of taping that show) Memorial Day was approaching. So, we edited it in, complete with an added stadium effect.   I got a lot of emails about the song after we published the podcast, and I thought I would include an audio snippet here in this blog post.

Me attempting the National Anthem on the SL Podcast

Now with the musical portion of the post over with, I’d like to make a brief announcement.  I’ve teamed up with Jason Jones (CresaPartners), a fellow veteran (TOP-GUN!) who flew A-6 Intruder missions off the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise, to form VetLoop.com.

VetLoop is a unique (not-for-profit) community of veterans in the Atlanta community that aims to:

• Help service members transition from active military service to the civilian workforce, especially those coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan
• Build relationships among veterans in Atlanta to help each other in business
• Educate the veterans community with an emphasis on business topics, and applying the lessons learned in the military to the business world

Once we roll it out in Atlanta, we would like to see the concept spread to other cities as well.

I found this great definition of a veteran online somewhere:

A veteran is someone who, at one  point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The  United  States of America” for  an amount of  “up to and including my life.”

I look forward to building out this community with Jason, and getting more involved with fellow veterans here in Atlanta.  There are a lot of us here, and it should be exciting to see what kind of impact we can make together.

Cheers.

The following is my account of the Wifi Cat ruse we pulled off last week at Startup Riot 2009 in Atlanta.  This is from memory, so the timeline may be a bit off here or there – but it will give you the gist.

Birth of a Kitten

Several weeks ago, I was down at the ATDC doing something or another – can’t remember exactly what.  Whenever I’m down there, I try and stop by and say hi to some of my fellow entrepreneurs located in Tech Square who are working hard getting their ventures off the ground.  Of course, I usually end up making the trip down the hall to visit with the rowdy crew over at Georgia Tech’s VentureLab (Stephen Fleming, Paul Freet, and Keith Mcgreggor).  On my drive down I had exchanged some text messages with Paul and we committed to hooking up for a quick lunch to get caught up, as I hadn’t seen him in a while.

At any rate, I walked in and Paul was giggling like a two year old in his office. He said something to the effect of “man, you’ve gotta see this.”  The rest is history.  I think.

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Unfortunately, we just received word that our normal location for CapitalLounge (The Pavillion of Dunwoody) has had to close their doors due to a disagreement with their landlord.  So, for our upcoming event on Wednesday, Februrary 25th, we have had to change the venue.

If you’ve already applied and been accepted to attend, you should receive an email tonight with directions to the new location.   If for some reason you do not receive an email tonight, check your spam folder (doh!), or go to the StartupLounge.com web site and pull up the event details page – if you’re logged in, you’ll see the information on the new location there.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and look forward to seeing everyone on the 25th!

Cheers.

The down market seems to be working in our favor. This probably isn’t going to news to some of you, but I thought I’d share a few random thoughts on this.

As a FOSS (Free, Open Source Solution) company, that also offers a cloud-based software-as-a-service option, we’re sorting through more deal opportunities than we can handle right now. We’re hiring based upon real growth … which is the ultimate barometer of any startup’s progression.

CIOs and other tech decision makers still have the same problems to solve within their organizations, they just don’t have a blank check book to work with anymore.  No one ever got fired for bringing in a Microsoft, Avaya, SAP, or any other market leader to implement a solution.  But if they can’t afford to do that, they can either look to a startup or smaller company for a solution, or postpone the project until the market gets better. Tech decision makers like to be heroes, so cater to that.  Give them a solution that makes sense to them in a down market. A down market is a GREAT time for an emerging company to secure a beachhead against established players.

So how do you cater to them in a down market?  I suppose there isn’t one correct answer – it will vary depending upon your business, but … here are some thought starters based on what we’re seeing.

Startups can be more agile and creative with pricing and infrastructure. You don’t have 25,000 mouths to feed.  Yet … You have a handful.  Be aggressive with pricing – don’t try to get your whole nut on your first deal or two.  Get creative. Options are limitless – per seat, per transaction, per CPU hour, etc.  Are those up-front professional services fees getting in the way of closing the deal?  Waive them, and incorporate them into a transaction fee where the customer can pay for them over time.

Make your solution solve a real problem. In this market, the checks are being written to solution providers who can truly offer an efficiency or savings (of either time or money, or hopefully both).  If you aren’t doing this, you probably won’t last in the enterprise space. Don’t make your internal champion go back and explain why his or her boss needs to write a check to you.  Instead, arm them so they go back and show how much time and money they’ll save by bringing you in AND how painless it will be to get started. Everyone wants an on-demand solution these days – the days of NIH are shrinking.

If your solution doesn’t really solve a problem – make it solve one.

Get the deal DONE (especially if it involves a reference customer). If you can do this, others will dial down their perceived risk of entrusting a critical function to a startup provider.  It could even be worth losing money on a deal like that if you know it will open other doors for you – plus it slows your burn or at least helps you get to breakeven.

Put it in the cloud. Hardware is now a commodity.  It is a lot easier and cheaper to build a cloud solution these days.  Blade server prices are down to incredibly advantageous levels.  And if you can’t or don’t want to do it yourself, check out Scalr.net, which has a fantastic interface around Amazon’s EC2 service.

Enterprise services are the “ultimate mashup”. If you are an enterprise services startup, and you can effectively add value somewhere in a chain of web services, you have a decent shot at surviving this “Great Correction” as I’m calling the current market – but you are going to have to get deals done outside of the box.

Would love to hear some other thoughts …

Cheers.

My StartupLounge.com partner in crime Mike Blake is gonna hate me for this, but I can’t help myself.

Besides sharing a deep-rooted passion for helping entrepreneurs, we also share a fanatical love of video games – good ones, bad ones, doesn’t matter.  Lately, we’ve been playing Madden NFL 2009 a few nights a week on our XBOX 360s.  Good stuff.  Gotta love Internet play.

I always play the Falcons, because, well, I’m a real fan.  I’ve been a Falcons fan since the pre-Bartkowski days when Auburn QB standout Pat Sullivan warmed up the bench behind Bob Lee and Kim McQuilken.  Blake tends to rotate his teams from night to night – but lately, he’s been fond of trotting out the Raiders.

Madden 09 has a great post-game feature that lets you take any play from the game and turn it into a highlight reel.  You can choose the camera angle and what not, and then publish to EASportsWorld.com for sharing. 

Lately we’ve been having some pretty competitive games – many of them coming down to the wire. Big surprise – the risk taking entrepreneur (me) is usually going for it on anything less than 4th and 5 outside of my own 20. The conservative finance guy (Mike) won’t hesitate to trot out the punter. He usually wins in the end, mostly because I can’t control my urge to roll the dice.

But the other night, I got my revenge.

Here is my inaugural video recording – a single back formation, halfback draw to Michael “The Burner” Turner, who breaks no less than 4 tackles and victimizes the Mike Blake-led Raiders defense on his way to a 63 yard TD run. Booyah!

Sorry, Mike – couldn’t resist

Cheers.