Stephen Fleming organized a roomful of 20 kindred spirits last night. The purpose? To discuss a new seed fund to be based here in Atlanta. We tossed around a lot of ideas on the structure of the fund, the investment model, the target markets, etc. The discussion was lively and I think we all walked away with a broader view of things.

A great deal of discussion focused around Y-Combinator, Techstars and other similar models. While the group served up varied opinions on the details, we all agreed to the need, and our collective desire to make this a reality here in the Southeast.

It will be interesting to see how this continues to evolve. Whatever form this thing takes, it will serve to fill a big gaping void in the regional venture market.

Kudos to Stephen for taking the lead and organizing this thing … someone had to do it!

More soon …

Cheers.

It is good to see more of Atlanta’s venture professionals getting involved within the online community. The latest entrant is Stephen Fleming, chief poobah over at Georgia Tech’s Venturelab. Check out his new blog here.

And speaking of Stephen Fleming, congratulations on securing new investors for XCOR! If you missed our recent StartupLounge.com podcast with Stephen, check it out, as we talked quite a bit about XCOR.

Cheers.

In continuing with our torrid pace of podcasting, Mike Blake and I sat down and had a great discussion with Stephen Fleming of VentureLab. Enjoy the latest installment of our StartupLounge.com podcast. We also picked Stephen’s brain on the current early-stage/venture landscape here in Atlanta. We also did a deep dive into XCOR Aerospace (one of his portfolio companies) and the emerging commercial space flight industry.

As a bonus, we threw the service provider community “Under the Bus” (because they had it coming.) Also, you won’t want to miss the announcement of the first StartupLounge.com Capital Connections event!

I say “torrid” because it feels that way. We’re doing 2-3 shows a month now, and we’re finding that it is an enormous undertaking to put each show together. We have several meetings prior to each show, where we go over questions for the guest, show format, flow, future show lineups, etc. There are also several hours of post-production editing and mixing. The actual recording of the show is the smallest activity, in terms of actual time spent. So after just 8 shows, we’re right at 1,700 listeners now. Seeing that number climb with each show and reading your emails and comments is nice motivation to keep pushing us along.

A special thanks to Stephen for coming on the show and rolling up his sleeves to help entrepreneurs everywhere.

Cheers.