I foresaw it a year ago. Stephen Fleming eloquently described it today. Lance Weatherby posted a nice rundown, too. Ashish Mistry piled on as well. Former Earthlink PR exec now turned media blogger, Dan Greenfield, wrote a nice bit as well.

I was unable to attend Startup Riot as I came down with a nasty cold over the weekend, but from all I’ve heard, the event was another stepping stone for the Southeast. Kudos to Sanjay for stepping up and putting a lot of his time into the event. (StartupRiot Flickr stream here). Lance Weatherby posted a nice rundown of the companies that presented at StartupRiot as well - check ‘em out.

I think the smart kids leaving Atlanta to go ply their trades in Silicon Valley are going to eventually regret their move. Atlanta is back - and what we’re seeing now is merely the tip of the iceberg. As I was quoted saying in Dan Greenfield’s excellent piece - I think a year or two from now and Atlanta’s tech and startup scenes will be unrecognizable.

Now we have to sustain this momentum as a community. History is full of flashes in the proverbial pan. I, for one, don’t want to see it go down like that. And it won’t.
Our StartupLounge event tomorrow night will hopefully put a nice bow on what has been an incredible month for startups in Georgia. The event is full - unless you are a last minute investor who wants to attend - but you can read the details here. We’ve also posted new dates for CapitalLounge, AngelLounge, and PitchCamp …

BTW, congrats to SoloHealth - who just scored a new round of funding. They’ll be hanging out at our CapitalLounge event again tomorrow - so if you’re coming, be sure to congratulate Bart Foster and his team.

Yes, the storm is here. No, I mean really. As fitting as this sounds - as I write this draft, we are under a tornado warning. One just touched down a few miles from here.

See you on the bitstream …

Cheers.

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.

If you are an early-stage entrepreneur, and need help with your financial modeling, you can’t beat this deal.

Cheers.

Ok, I will confess that I am a process improvement fanatic. I suppose it has something to do with my experiences early in my career working in a TQM environment at TSYS, and working with a key customer (AT&T Universal Card Services) to win the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award. In reality, though, it probably has more to do with my desire to create “well-oiled machines” and tinker with numbers.

Read more »

Okay, I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’ve been listening (and watching) to Prince since the late 1970s - long before Purple Rain. Obviously, he has come a long way in his career since those early days. Sure, there was the wacky time where he changed his name to a symbol in a public protest against his record company, but his career as an artist speaks for itself. But Prince has now become a full-fledged marketing idiot.

He clearly doesn’t understand the importance of viral buzz and community around a brand - at one point, I thought he did. You may recall that Prince was originally one of the pioneers of online music distribution. Sure, he has a brand now, but the public relations backslash from his latest move will surely tarnish his brand considerably - it seems it already has. Several fan sites are now displaying a few “not so polite” symbols of their own.

Prince shouldn’t be suing his fans for using his images and lyrics on their personal fan sites. Instead, he should help them by providing them with images and content that they can mash up.

As an example of this in action, take a look at most any successful video game. Check the official web site for the game - more often than not, you’ll find a link to a pre-prepared “fan site kit”, which provides all the images and other branding materials necessary to kickstart your own fan site.

There are reasons why the video game industry is now bigger than Hollywood (in revenues). One of those reasons should be pretty obvious to you by now.

Advice to startups: embrace change, and embrace your customers. Extend your brand in every conceivable way possible, even if it means giving away some content to spread the love. Help them help you.

Cheers.

One of the things that we’ve implemented for the upcoming StartupLounge.com Capital Connections event is that we require all attendees to provide us their “one-line” elevator pitch as part of the application process. We limit them to 125 characters. How important is it? Extremely. You have 125 characters to convince our steering committee that your particular venture will be of interest to fast-growth investors.

It is a curse. Most entrepreneurs CANNOT construct a concise, effective pitch for their venture. However, turn them loose on a friend’s deal, and they can work magic.

Below you will find a sampling of a few good one-line pitches that we’ve seen, some bad ones, and some really ugly ones. We’ve anonymized them where appropriate. We also have some from investors, too - wheee!

Read more »

Sooner or later, every startup struggles with the issue of how best to offer healthcare benefits to their employees. In a recent StartupLounge.com podcast, we were joined by Angus Mcrae, a guy who does a ton of consulting and brokering for healthcare benefits for Atlanta-area high-tech startups (for companies like N2 Broadband/Tandberg, ViTrue, etc.)

As an added bonus we toss (under the bus) the knuckleheads holding up SB80 (the legislative bill that would allow the Georgia teacher’s pension fund to be invested in private equity). We also provide an update on our upcoming Capital Connections and PitchCamp events (as well as TAG & ATDC’s upcoming CapVenture program) here in Atlanta.

This was another solid show with some great nuts and bolts content for entrepreneurs. How do healthcare benefit brokers work? What are the warning signs of unethical brokers? What about PEOs? How expensive are healthcare benefits for startups? Can they afford to do it? Should they? How big does a company have to be to offer benefits to employees? What are the key considerations in selecting a benefits program for your company?

Enjoy!

Cheers.