“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
~ Dr. Seuss

Time is a funny thing.  When you are young, you have seemingly boundless amounts of it. You wake up very day, full of zeal, and passionately chase your whim du jour.    Then, one day you wake up, and you realize that time has become a commodity, with a value all its own, and the opportunities to continuously expand your horizons have narrowed considerably.  The energy once dedicated to challenging the status quo and pushing boundaries ultimately succumbs to other forces … gives way to other things.   Eventually, every pursuit gives way to something else.

I guess this is as formal an “announcement” as I’m going to give on this, but after a lengthy period of soul searching, I have made the very difficult decision to largely step away from StartupLounge.com.

Five years ago or so, when Mike Blake and I came up with the concept of StartupLounge, neither one of us had any idea of what we were getting ourselves into.  Truth be told, I think if we had known how much work we’d need to put into something like this, we may very well not have started it at all.  Some folks have called StartupLounge “influential” or “important”, and I suppose to some extent it is.  But really, at the core, it is/was really about helping people help themselves, then to help others – and about 2 guys having fun yapping on a mic every now and then. And I will tell you – I most certainly learned more about our collective craft than others probably learned from me.

My reasons for stepping back from heavy involvement in StartupLounge is complex, and somewhat difficult to explain.  A big part of it is the time commitment required to record and produce podcasts (40 hours a pop), organizing events, PitchCamp, evangelizing, etc.   I simply do not have the time anymore to contribute at a high level in order to continue making a difference.  And when you’ve poured your heart and soul into something for as long as we have with StartupLounge, it makes the decision a very emotional one, to say the least.

Another huge factor in my decision is simply the level of energy required to perform my duties at my day job (StarPound).  Although we have a great deal of work ahead of us, the team is really doing some great things there. We’ve recently raised another round of capital, and are heads down on a ton of different things right now.

Finally, and perhaps the most important reason, is my family.  As it stands now, I am rarely home in time for dinner (thanks in part to Atlanta traffic).  I have a wife and two young daughters at home that I hardly ever see these days.  And this needs to change.  So, something has to give.

I should also add that there has been some speculation that my health is suspect, and that this somehow is contributing to my decision.  This is patently not true.  Sure, I’m battling a kidney stone right now (ouch!), but this too shall pass (literally and figuratively). Trust me. I’m as fit as a horse.  Then again, they shoot horses when they actually do get ill, so maybe that’s a bad analogy to go with.

Through StartupLounge, I have met some incredibly wonderful people over the past several years.  Entrepreneurs, most of which want to do something great.  Investors who actually want to engage with them.  And a wealth of community leaders and stakeholders who want to make a difference. I place an extremely high value on these relationships, and hope to continue nurturing them for years to come.

One person in particular, though, has meant the world to me throughout this journey.  Mike Blake.  I have come to rely on his wisdom and sensibilities for so, so many things.  Not just professionally, but personally as well.  I can only hope to one day even begin to repay him for the friendship, comaraderie, and contributions he has made to my life. Mike and I remain the best of friends, and I appreciate his understanding and patience throughout my rather circuitous decision making process.

With all of that being said, I should add that StartupLounge will continue on.  The inimitable  Josh Watts has agreed to replace me as the co-host of our podcast.  If you don’t know Josh, you should.  I can’t think of a better person to step into that role.  He has a solid understanding of early-stage entrepreneurship, technology, and carries with him a wicked sense of humor that will help keep the StartupLounge podcast as entertaining as ever.  So for you die-hard listeners of our podcasts, rest assured, it will continue to be worth tuning into. Who knows?  I might even make a cameo appearance every now and then

All of the free StartupLounge events will continue, including PitchCamp, Startup Seminars, and of course, the thrice yearly StartupLounge gathering in Atlanta.  Expansions are already underway to carry the philosophy and beliefs behind StartupLounge to other areas, including Savannah and Raleigh/Durham.  Mike is 100% committed to doing this, and his continued leadership will turn this into a reality.

As for me, well, it isn’t like I’m completely falling off the face of the earth.  I’ll still be around, helping as many people as I can, where I can.  I just may not be as visible. I will continue to attend StartupLounge events when I can, as well as others.  I continue to take enormous satisfaction in helping others achieve success, be it through mentoring, speaking, coaching, etc.  Oh, and continuing to learn new things myself.  I can’t imagine my life without those things, quite frankly.

Enough rambling from me.  I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.  Peace out.

Cheers.

Several weeks ago, Unblakeable and I spoke at the monthly gathering of the Atlanta Web Entrepreneurs group.  We provided a pretty thorough treatment of where we thought the Atlanta startup community was in terms of its maturity, and then presented a concept that we thought was pretty compelling at the time – the Atlanta Startup Cloud.  We put the call out to the community, and had a ton of people volunteer to help us build it.

We were pretty excited about the reception we received both at the event, and afterwards via email and other conversations.  Nevertheless, up to now, we haven’t had much time to get the ball rolling on some progress. Such is the joy of having day jobs

Fast forward a few weeks to now.  The ATDC announced a big revamp under the leadership of Stephen Fleming (of VentureLab fame).  As part of the revamp, the ATDC is proposing a number of new initiatives and policy changes.  Many of these initiatives either mirror or complement some of the things we were proposing as part of the Atlanta Startup Cloud concept.  As such, we don’t think it makes much sense for us to duplicate the effort.  Instead, we want to do our part to help ensure that the ATDC’s efforts are as successful as possible – and we ask that you get involved as well!

Note: I do think the first part of the Startup Cloud video is still worth watching, especially if you want some background on the Atlanta startup scene.

If you weren’t able to attend their open forum meeting, check out the video here.  It’s definitely worth the time.  Also be sure to read Stephen’s post (Why Are We Doing This?), and our most recent StartupLounge.com podcast featuring Stephen and David Sung (who manages the ATDC Seed Fund).

Mike and I both think that this new ATDC is going to have a profound impact on Georgia.  Stephen is the perfect man for the job, he has a good team in place, and we think his plan is pretty solid.  There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur in Georgia, and we hope to see everyone at the upcoming CapitalLounge event in a few weeks!

Cheers.

We get a TON of applications every time we put together a CapitalLounge event. While most of the applications have some degree of merit, and eventually get accepted, there are many that don’t.  Historically, we have a non-invitation rate of anywhere from 20-30%.   Despite the enormous level of detail that we’ve published as to our selection criteria and process, invariably, we get a flood of emails the week or so leading up to the event with people appealing and arguing with us (or trying to) about why their deal was rejected.

Here is a tongue-in-cheek look at some reasons why the event applications for some entrepreneurs and investors get rejected.  If you don’t find any of this at all funny, then you most likely fall into one of these categories.

Read more »

June is going to be a busy time in Atlanta for startups.   Here is a quick roundup of a few events that are worth taking a look at:

CapitalLounge

Being a co-founder of StartupLounge, I’m naturally biased.  But hey, at least I’m being honest about it.   Our next CapitalLounge gathering is coming up next week, Wednesday, June 10th.  Should be another awesome party for entrepreneurs and investors in Atlanta.  Our old friends J-Cap and DJ from Southern Capitol Ventures (yes, an “o”, not an “a”) are making the trek down from Raleigh, NC, as will the folks from Intersouth (also in NC).  Local investors will be out in full force as well, including Noro-Moseley, Fulcrum Ventures, Kinetic Ventures, Croft & Bender Capital, Arcapita, Grey Ghost Ventures, CEO Ventures, TechOperators, and even the Weather Channel’s venture arm.  And of course, a nice smattering of local angel investors.

If you are interested, you can check it out here.   Cost is free, but there is a vetting process.

Calling All Entrepreneurs: Atlanta!

Speaking of J-Cap and DJ from SCV … they will be in town on the 10th and the 11th.  In addition to hanging out at CapitalLounge on the night of the 10th, they are holding their “Calling All Entrepreneurs” sessions here in Atlanta.  Awesome.  I wish more VCs would do this.  No pressures, no pitching.  Just getting a chance to pick the brain of an investor over coffee.  Very cool.    From Jason:

David and I will be down in Atlanta next week on June 10 and 11. We were an original sponsor of CapitalLounge and will be at that the night of June 10th.

On June 11, we will have Calling All Entrepreneurs in Atlanta from 7-10am. We will find a place close to the ATDC. Again, any entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur is welcome to set up a time to come meet with us for 10 minutes. We will try and pack in as many meetings as possible and the coffee is on us! Read my prior post on this so you understand the structure and background. We did  this down in Atlanta a while back and filled it up quickly.

Just email me jason AT southerncapitolventures.com to schedule a time.

CapVenture

Also, don’t forget that the ATDC’s deadline for applications for their annual CapVenture program is on June 16th (the actual sessions are later in the year).  If you aren’t familiar with CapVenture, you should be.  It is an awesome program that aims to educate and equip early-stage entrepreneurs (primarily those seeking their first round of funding).  I have personally talked to several startup CEOs that have gone through the program and they rave about it.  Definitely check it out.

Of course, there are a ton of other events going on, some formal, some informal.   Feel free to drop a note here if you know of another great startup event happening here in Atlanta in June, or tune into the Twitterverse to get plugged in.

Cheers.

We made the announcement the other night at our quarterly CapitalLounge event, but here it is again for those that missed it.

AngelLounge is the angel investor community component of Startuplounge.  It is currently comprised of 80+ vetted angel investors in Georgia. The member list reads like a who’s who.

The good news is that not only have we not even scratched the surface of Atlanta, but we are also reaching out to other parts of the state as well, including Savannah, Columbus, Douglasville, Rome, etc.

The group meets each month in an almost “unconference” like setting.  The goals are to have an open forum for the discussion of topics relating to angel investing, to encourage cross-pollination among investors as it pertains to deal flow, to create new angel investors by bringing in high net worth individuals seeking to explore early stage investing as a vehicle, and to create a logical funnel for these investors into the early-stage scene in Georgia.

One of the key pain points that has been constantly brought up at the meetings is the lack of exposure to investment opportunities (“deal flow”).  As evidenced by the over 160 companies that attended our CapitalLounge event the other night (over half of which were new to the event), there is clearly “stuff going on”.  So, putting our entrepreneurial hat on – we listened to the customer, and came up with a solution.  Actually, two solutions – a short term and a long term solution.

The short term solution is available today (the better, long-term solution is in development).

We have rolled out an automated deal referral and distribution system.  To distribute information on your deal, simply head to StartupLounge.com. If you haven’t done so, you’ll need to create a free community account in order to participate.

This is different from investment matching sites such as GoBig Network etc. because this isn’t just matching business plans with a blind database.

The AngelLounge members have organized themselves into vertical markets ranging from IT to consumer products to alternative energy to biotech. Each industry vertical has an angel investor volunteering to serve as an IAC (Industry Angel Coordinator). Any entrepreneur within the StartupLounge community can go online, upload their one pager or executive summary, and select the industries that fit the deal. The deal will be distributed on their behalf to the appropriate IACs. 

Every deal will get seen by the network, period – no bottlenecks – no middleman – no gatekeepers.

The role of the IAC is simply to ensure that the information received is actually a fit for the industry (or industries) that the entrepreneur selected. If it isn’t a fit for that IAC (e.g. the entrepreneur selected the wrong industry by mistake), the IAC simply forwards the deal to the appropriate IAC. Assuming an industry match, the deal is then distributed to the angel members who have expressed an interest in seeing deals in that particular market.

Devlishly simple.

Each angel is free to follow-up with the entrepreneur on their own – this is not a pledge fund, or a fund of any sort, for that matter. This is merely a mechanism to get deal flow going among local angels.

The angels have committed to delivering an initial response to the entrepreneur within within one (1) week. This takes us out of the role of gatekeeper and lets you deliver your opportunity directly multiple investors that actively want to see your deal.

This makes StartupLounge/AngelLounge the largest organized angel network in Georgia, and quite possibly in the Southeast.  This group is growing like mad, and there is little doubt in my mind that we’ll reach 100 members by Q1, and quite possibly double in size in 2009.

A special thanks to Jeff McConnell, Chris Demetree, and the others who logged a lot of time brainstorming the system.  Also thanks to Charlie Paparelli (Paparelli Ventures) who puts a boatload of effort into driving the overall effort with AngelLounge.

BTW, if you are interested in joining AngelLounge as an investor member, contact me. There is no fee to join (why should there be?), but there is an interview process.

Cheers.

As I mentioned in my last post, our next Capital Lounge event is this Wednesday, 8/27. This is going to be far and away the best event we’ve done, on so many levels. More quality deals, more investors (4 to 1 company to investor ratio), and a couple of pretty big announcements, including one in particular that, to quote Mike Blake, that will “change the face of of the Atlanta early stage capital ecosystem.”

If you’ve ever planned a big event before, you obviously know all of the logistics and planning that go into it. CapitalLounge is no different. It’s a ton of work, for sure. But one thing that we do that many other groups don’t do is vet the attendees. This adds an order of magnitude to the effort required to pull off this event.

A key reason for the success of the CapitalLounge event is our vigilant effort to restrict attendance to direct capital providers and entrepreneurs with fast-growth potential. Investors and entrepreneurs are able to get maximum value from the event when they can spend their time establishing relationships with one another, rather than be distracted by other entities (hordes of service providers, job seekers, low quality deals, investor-wannabe types, etc.)

For the upcoming event, roughly one (1) out of every 4.5 applications was rejected for one reason or another. That’s a lot of filtering – and that equates to a lot of work. We have to do it this way – otherwise, we end up becoming the thing that we are trying change. There can be no sacrifice of the vision.

We get a lot of questions (especially from those whose applications are rejected) about the criteria we use, how we review applications, etc. Even though a lot of this information is automatically emailed to the applicant if their application is denied, I thought it might be instructional to provide a little more insight into how we select entrepreneurs, investors, and observers for this event.

Read more »

Our next Capital Lounge event is next Wednesday, 8/27, and man is it shaping up to be a good one.

As it stands right now, this will be the best investor turn out to date (due I think in large part to the success we’ve had with our Angel Lounge initiative). Right now we have over 40 investors signed up, and that number will probably drive closer to 50 in the next few days. There is a slight edge in the number of angel investors, but it is pretty evenly split between angels and traditional venture capital firms.

Over 150 entrepreneurs have signed up as well, and about half of them are new deals. Very cool to see that trend continue.

Of course, we try very diligently to weed out service providers, job seekers, etc. in order to create an environment conducive to having substantive discussions between innovators and capital providers.

if you want to meet the movers and shakers in the startup community (ATDC, VentureLab, regional VCs, local angels, and a veritable army of fellow entrepreneurs), you need to be there. And why not? It’s free.

We’re going to be making some cool announcements there as well.

As a reminder, we are capping attendance (for entrepreneurs, at least). So if you haven’t applied, and you want to attend, you should probably apply sooner rather than later.

Cheers.