Georgia Cleantech 2007 is fast approaching (June 12th)! I’ve briefly mentioned this event before (here and here), but as the date approaches I am getting even more excited about it. Attendees will have an opportunity to:

• Discover the many exciting Georgia Innovations that are happening in the cleantech space
• Listen to venture capitalists, cleantech entrepreneurs, and other subject matter experts share their insights
• Enjoy fast venture pitches by hot, up-and-coming Georgia cleantech companies
• Explore our “cleantech showcase”, which will feature many emerging Georgia clean technologies

We’ve lined up a very strong set of speakers and panelists as well:

• David Bell, Resource Policy & Planning, Georgia Power
• Rolando Sanz-Guerrero, Vice President, CoalTek
• Murrary Campbell, Chairman, First United Ethanol LLC (FUEL)
• David Kirkpatrick, Managing Director, SJF Ventures
• Michael DeRosa, Managing Director, DFJ Element Ventures
• Bruce Wobeck, Partner, Morris Manning & Martin

I am particularly excited about hearing from CoalTek - they’re one of the most highly capitalized (via Draper Fisher Jurvetson) cleantech deals in the past few years, and have been largely running in stealth mode until now. In many ways, this is a bit of a coming out party for them. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say. Same for FUEL, which raised some cash, and broke ground on their ethanol plant this year.

A special thanks to my friends at SJF Ventures (David Kirkpatrick ) and DFJ Element Ventures (Mike DeRosa) for helping us out. They’ll be bringing the venture capital perspective to the table. I’m at a bit of an advantage as I’ve seen David’s presentation already, but it is chock full of good stuff.

Of course, being a startup geek, I’m thrilled that we’ve been able to work some of the younger companies into the mix. We’ll have three Georgia cleantech startups doing their fast pitch (C2Biofuels, Edge BioEnergy, and OMT Energy.) Plus, we’ll have an “Alternative Energy Showcase” area where start-up or established cleantech companies can set up a table with posters, demonstrations and materials to share their innovative ideas for alternative energy.

We have a number of angel investors and venture capitalists that will be in attendance as well - many of them have expressed to me their desire to learn more about the space, and to see what sort of innovations are coming out of Georgia.

Space is limited, so if you have an interest in attending, you’ll want to sign up sooner rather than later (click here). I say sooner, rather than later, because cleantech is a very hot space right now, and there are a lot of folks out there wanting to learn more about the industry.

Also, if you are a Georgia-based early-stage cleantech company (or technology) and you are interested in participating in the free showcase area, contact me.

Thanks to all of my fellow board members of the TAG Business & Technology Alliance for helping to pull this together. It should be a great event!

Cheers.

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Calling all Atlanta entrepreneurs (again!) David Ratajczak’s much anticipated YnR gathering is happening again.

As David explained in our recent podcast down at the ATDC, YnR stands for “Young ‘n Restless” or “Youthful ‘n Retired”, depending upon your age group.

This monthly (or so) event is a great place to meet and network with fellow entrepreneurs. Fellow entrepreneurs are great doorways to investors, ideas, and partnerships. So you won’t want to miss this. The cost is free, and the event is industry-agnostic, so what’s not to love?

In keeping with the theme of keeping out the service provider crowd, the location is confidential, so if you are interested in attending, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with David.

Cheers.

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I’ve gotten into this same conversation with 3 or 4 people this week, and it is one that comes up quite often during my discussions with early-stage technology CEOs here in Atlanta. How do I find seed or angel angel capital in Atlanta so that I can fund my high-tech widget or software company?

Raising money is rarely easy. It is even harder in Atlanta. The good news is that software/IT is a sector in which Atlanta is very strong. There are a lot of people in this city that get information technology.

Whenever the “panels” and “luminaries” are asked this question, they usually throw out the two stock answers: the 3F’s and Sig Mosley. The 3F’s being friends, family, and fools, and Sig Mosley being the unwitting godfather of early-stage technology investing in Atlanta.

What they fail to tell you, however, is how you should actually go about approaching these angels, and in what order.

For the purposes of this discussion, I’m using the phrase “seed” capital to generally refer to the cash it takes to get a prototype together, and “angel” capital to refer to the cash it takes to get the sales process going and begin building the business. There is obviously some crossover, and nothing is ever black and white in venture.

Your Own Backyard

If you are personally sitting on a pile of cash, the answer here is obvious. However, that isn’t a luxury for most young entrepreneurs. I do see this quite a bit, though, with older first-time entrepreneurs (i.e. the person who took the package from the corporate exit.) In any event, if you don’t have tons of cash lying around, don’t despair. Hopefully, the reason you are an entrepreneur to begin with is because you are resourceful, innovative, and can think out of the box.

Do you have equity in your home? If you hve a home equity line of credit with a checkbook, this gets even easier - no need to even go to the bank and get a home equity loan, just start writing checks off your house. If you are contemplating buying a new home, make sure you work with your lender to establish a home equity line of credit up front - I hear they can be more difficult to establish once you’ve already bought the house.

Do you have stuff you can (and are willing to) sell? Seriously. I know one guy who sold his collection of baseball cards to finance his business. That 1969 Nolan Ryan rookie card looks great up on the wall in the shadow box, but if it can put $2K into your business, it may start to look better on someone else’s wall.

Can you find a soul mate? If you are a young technology type, it may make sense to find your better half in an experienced CEO who can also fund your deal. There are plenty of these types of folks wandering around Atlanta right now. And many of them are looking for young bucks with bright ideas.

Can you bootstrap the business with initial sales? I see this a lot when the entrepreneur is a hands-on technical person. They pay $0 for software development, and can build the prototype on their own, and just start bootstrapping the business with those first sales.

I have some other bootstrapping tips here.

Friends, Family, & Fools

Everyone likes to think that they have lots and lots of friends. You really see who your friends are when you are trying to shake them down for cash. In the end, most of them will let you down. But that’s ok.

The next stop should definitely be your friends and family. Don’t get discouraged if they (a) don’t have the capital to invest in your venture, (b) refuse to do it because they don’t believe in your abilities or your idea, or (c) are simply scared of venturing forth into the unknown. This is the low-hanging fruit - if you can scrape up a few seed dollars from your friends and family, do it - and move on to the next group (the fools.)

My advice here? Don’t just show up on their door step and be completely half-assed prepared. Put together a presentation, demo, one-pager, etc. and walk them through it. Show them that you’re serious. At this stage, don’t waste time with a business plan, though. You’ll spend more time on that than you will in building the actual product or business. Just do a 1-3 page executive summary and a 10-15 slide presentation and go with it.

High-Net Worth Individuals

These people aren’t “literally” fools - they didn’t get to become high-net worth individuals by making silly decisions. Rather, they are fools in the figurative sense (”anyone investing money in Jimmy’s new venture is surely a fool.”)

How do you find these individuals? For most young entrepreneurs, it isn’t easy, as they have not yet amassed a large professional network against which to tap. In any event, the only way to really get to these individuals is through good old fashioned networking. Get out to every local professional event you can find. Throw out your pitch to anyone who will listen, and start following up. Soon, you’ll have built a pretty sizable list of contacts that you can leverage to try and raise the cash you need.

If you are here in Atlanta, there are networking events almost every night (MIT Enterprise Forum, Technology Association of Georgia, TechLINKS, etc.) But be aware that most of these events are rife with service providers, many of whom are not angel candidates (although there is the occasional exception.) For many reasons I prefer our Capital Connections event (via StartupLounge.com), which is free of service providers (by design.)

I should also point out that if you are just randomly trying to pitch to people, you are probably not going to secure funding (unless you’ve managed to cobble up the cure for cancer in your basement.) Target your search! For example, if your idea involves a software product that solves a big problem for insurance agents, go hang out with insurance agents. Find out where they have their events and go. Don’t waste your time at the big free-for-all networking events. This is perhaps one of the biggest reasons that people fail to meet angel investors, despite trying their best to network.

Oh, and don’t bother trying to find an angel at events that cater solely to entrepreneurs. They likely aren’t there.

You should also befriend the CEOs of other startup companies. Find out who their angels were, and establish a relationship with them. One angel can often lead to introductions to 5 or 10 others … always ask for a referral!

I would recommend pitching to at least 5 or 10 qualified, individual angels before moving to the next step. Ideally, you will begin to get some traction/interest from some of them.

Atlanta Technology Angels

The ATA is a membership organization comprised of high-net worth individuals. They meet once a month, and have a few companies come in and pitch to the group. That’s the good news. The bad news is that since they only allow a couple of companies to pitch each month, coupled with the fact that a good bit of their deal flow comes from the ATDC and/or Georgia Tech (simply due to proximity), your chances of getting selected to participate are probably mathematically lower.

Also, they are an “angel group” - a bunch of angels that pool their funds together - this buying power can lead lead to a skewing towards where a traditional venture firm would invest (the ATA doesn’t invest in great ideas alone, although they do look at pre-or-early revenue prototype companies.) This is a macro venture trend that has been documented by plenty of other folks.

Also of note is the fact that according to their portfolio page, they only make a few investments per year - so keep that in mind. Of course, this doesn’t mean that a single individual member couldn’t invest on his/her own.

I recently attended one of their meetings, and shared some of my thoughts here.

The Communications Group

Attorney Martin Tilson runs a group called the Communications Group. Martin used to be with Kilpatrick Stockton, but is now with Burr & Forman. The group meets monthly and they have 2-3 entrepreneurs come in to pitch. This group has been around a long time, and as a result, the members skew to the “wizened” end of the age spectrum (fancy way of saying “populated by a bunch of grey-haired guys”.) Nothing wrong with that, just keep it in mind. They will likely get more excited about traditional types of companies such as telecom, enterprise software, and hardware.

Unlike the ATA, this group doesn’t invest as a group - but rather each member is free to follow up with the entrepreneur on their own. Note: the audience will range from high-net worth individuals to traditional venture-capitalists, and everything in between. Keep that in mind - many of those investors may not necessarily be looking for a true angel-level opportunity, but rather, something later stage.

My advice? Don’t pitch this group with cleantech, online communities, Web 2.0, social networks, and plays in other emerging industries, but if you have a more conventional play, give them a look.

Sig Mosley/Imlay Investments

Sig is a nice, unassuming type of guy. I don’t know him all that well, but I’ve met him several times. I’ve pitched to him before as well. Sig has a very strong reputation here in Atlanta. He’s made some good picks over the years and as a result, many others here often use Sig as an investment “compass.”

Many angels, VCs, attorneys, and accountants here in Atlanta, when approached by an entrepreneur seeking to raise outside capital, will simply ask “have you pitched to Sig yet?” If you have indeed pitched to Sig, and he passed on your deal (or didn’t get all excited about it,) the effort required to convince those other investors to take you seriously just went way up.

My advice? Pitch Sig last - not first. Maybe I’ve just coined a new buzzword here: “Sig’d: the tainting of the pool of local investors that occurs when you prematurely pitch your deal to the biggest angel in town only to have him pass on it.”

I would provide a link to the Imlay Investments web site, but they don’t have one (even though they own “imlay.net”, which they use for email.) Yes - the biggest early-stage technology investor in Atlanta doesn’t even have a web site. I’ll leave you to ponder the meaning and impact of that on your own. Sig/Imlay has had a ton of successes over the years. A web site promoting those successes would go a long way towards putting a spotlight on the good deals that have gotten done here. My two cents.

Note: You may run into Sig at either the ATA or Communications Group meetings. So you may end up pitching to him without realizing it. FWiW. I would still recommend pitching to these groups as a whole first.

Capital Brokers

I define a “capital broker” as simply “a person who charges you a fee to find capital.” There are a ton of these folks out there. I am not a fan of this model, for reasons I’ve written about in the past (and ranted on in our podcast.) Entrepreneurs shouldn’t have to pay to find capital. Period. This is a sign of an unhealthy market for early-stage capital.

And how much do these brokers charge? They vary, but I know some that want a piece of your company (5-8%), a finder’s fee (5-8%), and a monthly retainer fee ($3-5K.) Nonsense.

This type of service is typically used by uninitiated entrepreneurs or those who have explored every other option and have come up empty. My advice? Use these groups as a last resort, or hopefully, never at all. If you are struggling to find capital, perhaps your idea really does stink. Or, perhaps you just need a tune-up or makeover on your presentation. Ask someone for help, but please don’t perpetuate the problem by paying through the nose for it.

Pay-to-Pitch Groups

Another model I don’t particularly care for are the models where someone charges an entrepreneur to put them in a room full of alleged angels. See above. An entrepreneur should not have to pay to pitch their deal. Period. Again, last resort, or never at all. In a healthy market, these types of entities are out of business. Sadly, in Atlanta, they’ve been able to carvee out a place for themselves.

Note: I was having a conversation recently with a non-Georgia VC who actually laughed when I told him about the proliferation of capital brokers and pay-to-pitch outfits here. He thought I was joking. Then he realized I was serious, and just shook his head in disbelief.

Traditional Venture Capital Firms

Noro-Mosely, H.I.G., Kinetic Ventures, EGL, etc. Don’t bother - they aren’t interested in making seed or angel investments, nor should they be. However, I would encourage you to make these connections and begin building those relationships for later use. You may occasionally find a venture capitalist that is an individual angel, or perhaps one that will become emotionally attached to you or your deal, and refer you to an angel. But by and large, it isn’t going to be worth your time (or theirs) to try and sell them on your seed/angel-level deal.

The “Optimum” Order

YOU!, friends, family, high-net worth individuals, ATA, Sig Mosley. Communications Group, capital brokers, pay-to-pitch. If all else fails, you could also consider debt financing. If after all of this, you still don’t have any interest, it could very well be that your idea stinks. Been known to happen. It could also be that your idea is tracking a few years ahead of the innovation curve here in the Southeast. Been known to happen as well.

Hope this helps those of you seeking to raise seed or angel capital for your new venture. If you have a question, I’m happy to try and answer it (or find someone who can answer it for you.) Or, you can post it in the forums over at StartupLounge.com. Good luck!

Cheers.

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Knox Massey was kind enough to invite me down to last night’s meeting of the Atlanta Technology Angels. While I know many of the members individually, this was the first time I had actually attended one of their monthly meetings.

In keeping with the confidential setting of the meeting, I don’t want to reveal anything about the actual companies, but I can make some generalizations.

The format was very interesting. They had two companies do their pitch. One company was an ATDC company, the other was commercialized technology coming out of Georgia Tech. There were a few questions asked of each entrepreneur. Afterwards, the entrepreneurs left the room and the 20-25 angels in the room had an open discussion about what they thought of the deal. There were some really interesting exchanges of information, and I really like the format they used.

The diversity of backgrounds in the room made it so that there were “logical subject matter experts” on hand. The rest of the group relied on these individuals to give legitimacy to (or shoot holes in) the deal. Very nice.

For those interested, they were discussing 500K-$1M deals. After the discussion, someone was appointed to lead a “due diligence group,” I would assume to go off and meet with the company, and put together a more formal assessment of the company, market, technology, team, etc.

I also learned that Knox will soon be joining the blogosphere. I think this is a very welcome addition to the landscape here. I wish we could get more of the Atlanta venture folks blogging and exchanging ideas.

Afterwards, I had a great chat over dinner with Jeff Haynie. Bright guy - I wish I had met him years ago, but certainly glad we’re connected now. I love people that are brimming with ideas. It’s great to feed off that energy.

Cheers.

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Sorry this post is a day late - I’ve been deluged with emails and other stuff.  We just published a nice wrapup and photo gallery of the recent Capital Connections event.

Enjoy!

If you weren’t able to attend, we hope you can make the next one. We certainly had a blast putting it together, and even more fun sharing ideas and connections.
Cheers.

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Well, the big day is tomorrow (or technically today, since it’s after midnight.) The first ever StartupLounge.com Capital Connections event will be in full swing tomorrow night.

We sent out 30 emails to our friends, and quite honestly, we thought we’d have 30 or 40 fast-growth entrepreneurs and a handful of angels hanging out in a bar somewhere. Now we’re pushing 200 people. There are over 35 investors slated to attend, ranging from individual angels to a $1B fund and everything in between. We moved the venue due to demand, then filled up the second venue. We finally stopped accepting applications - we had no choice. This thing has morphed into something that far exceeds our wildest expectations. Our next event (in the fall) could very easily have 300 people in attendance.

Am I nervous? I suppose a little. I’m no event planner, that’s for damn sure. But I’m of the belief that if you put ideas and capital in the same room, lock the door, and let nature take its course, only good things can come out of that. Of course, the hors d’oeuvres and fully stocked bar will help … Hopefully it won’t be a complete goat rodeo.

Today we made 200 phone calls. We called every single person that had RSVP’d in order to make sure they received the email on the change of venue (we wanted to make absolutely certain that everyone was aware of it.) The comments we received during those calls were amazing. People are not only excited about the event, but they are very gracious for it, and that makes us feel very good indeed. And I’m not just talking about the lowly entrepreneur here - the investor comments ran along the same lines (especially so among the angel community.)

There is some serious pent-up demand out there.

I want to serve up some props.

The “Atlanta venture community” (an oxymoron to many here, including some local investors) really responded to this event. Most of the local players will be there (Noro-Moseley, Imlay/Sig Mosley, Kinetic, EGL, Croft-Bender, Atlanta Technology Angels, Smith-Hoffman Capital, the UPS Strategic Venture Fund, VentureLab, etc.) and I’m very pleased about that. I don’t expect them to start dramatically swinging back to the early stage come Thursday morning, but the pulse is there. I give them props for realizing that there is a new movement happening around them. They know they need to become more immersed in the community, and I hope our quarterly event can be a catalyst to help with that moving forward.

I also have to give mad props to North Carolina. First off, they are totally kicking Georgia’s ass in venture investments. Second, at one point there were more NC funds slated to attend our event than GA funds (although it is more balanced now.) There are some lean, mean, hungry funds coming out of NC, folks.

I should also thank the many folks that pitched in to help pull this event together.

• Mike Blake
• Stacy Williams
• Jeff Haynie
• Jerry Recht
• Sam Bailey
• David Ratajczak
• Sanjay Parekh
• Paul Freet
• Lance Weatherby

Some gave cash, some their time, and some just helped to spread the word, but everyone is chasing the same dream here, and that is to bring Atlanta back. We’re going to do it, hell or high water.

See everyone tonight!

Cheers.

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The big date approaches for our first Capital Connections event here in Atlanta. The response has been so tremendous that we’ve had to change the venue - we went WAY over the capacity of our original venue. We currently have over 150 entrepreneurs and investors that will be in attendance. Given that we’ve gone to some pretty good lengths to keep the service provider crowd out, that number sounds even bigger. My guess is that we’ll hit 200 before the actual event, which would be awesome!

Over the past two months, I have evangelized this event to hundreds of people. I’ve worked the phones, email, the blogosphere, message boards, and even went door-to-door in some cases. It is pretty easy to see why people get excited about the event - I mean - what’s not to like?

But I keep getting asked this one little annoying question.

How are you getting paid?

Perhaps people ask me that question because they assume that because I’m an entrepreneur, we must be monetizing this effort in some way. However, I don’t think so. I think this question is symptomatic of one of the things that I dislike about the culture here in Atlanta. Before you chastize me, I was born and raised here - so yes, I have a license to vent - I’m not a carpetbagger.

As I’ve blogged about before (and talked about on the StartupLounge.com podcast), one of the things that is wrong with this community is that everyone is walking around with their hand out looking to get paid. It seems to bug people to no end that we aren’t charging a door fee, charging for people to pitch their deal, or instituting some sort of membership fee. I’ve even been told that we should “scale this out nationwide and charge for it.” Blah.

We are trying to tear down the artificial walls in the early-stage community here, not add new ones.

We will get paid in the end the same way every attendee will: a rising tide lifts all boats. By creating a more vibrant early-stage community here in Atlanta, there will be more fun things to invest in, more great people to meet, more jobs created, and more problems to solve. And that, my friends, is what it is all about.

This event is not the answer to everything that ills us in Atlanta - but it does represent a start. It is an artificial process that will hopefully jumpstart a few deals (especially since we’re doing it every quarter.) The real startup ecosystem or process will evolve on its own - it cannot be artificially created. But hopefully, this event can be a catalyst to help ignite the fire.

Cheers.

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For the past few months, people have been pestering the hell out of me about Twitter. “What do you mean you aren’t using Twitter?! Oh man, you’re realling missing out!” Well, I finally had some time today to join Twitter and take a look at it. I was underwhelmed, to say the least. Aside from aesthetically looking like something a 12 year old cobbled up, the entire tool seems utterly pointless to me.

Am I getting old? Of course! But according to Pew Internet’s latest survey, I am considered an omnivore, or in the top 8% of digitally connected people in the country. You can try your luck here.

Do I really need to know what all of my friends and colleagues are doing at any given moment of the day? No.

Do I really need to know that 15 minutes ago, Jimmy heated up a bowl of Mac ‘n Cheese in the microwave? Or on a professional side, do I really give a **** if Sally is taking a break in the breakroom, or reading her emails, or “frustrated at the world?” Save for my young daughter, I have no desire to know what anyone is doing 24 hours a day.

Later in the day, I happened to be exchanging emails with a young entrepreneur who reached out to me for help (poor bastard.) His play was to create a “better Twitter.” I asked him what his revenue model was, what pain he was solving for customers, how he was going to differentiate himself from Twitter, and what his barriers to entry would be (both before and after.) His responses were hollow at best.

Here’s a novel idea. Unless your business idea solves a painpoint for someone, or otherwise introduces an efficiency into their lives or business, it is most likely a novelty. And while they may be easily bootstrapped, novelties are rarely venture-backable. Can Twitter turn into some huge ridiculous cash cow? Of course. Anything is possible. But possible does not equal probable. And while the original novelty may attain some degree of success, knock-offs of novelties have a much harder road.

My advice? If you really want to be a successful entrepreneur, stop worrying about creating mindless tools to keep track of everything your friends are doing, and start solving real problems. If you aren’t aware of any problems in the world that need solving, go work in any arbitrary industry for a year or two and take copious notes.

Cheers.

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We were very thrilled to have Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora on the StartupLounge.com podcast this week. In addition to discussing how Pandora was really on the verge of extinction during the dot com flameout, we had a pretty good chat about the current RIAA ruling, the new royalty rates for Internet broadcasting, and what lies ahead for Internet broadcasters (including Pandora.)

There are some great lessons in this episode about sacrifice, and what it really takes to raise capital and weather tough storms.

We also throw capital brokers and people who charge to make connections “Under the Bus.” Always fun.

A special thanks for Tim for taking time out of his schedule to hang out with for a bit.

Cheers.

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Atlanta is a tough market for early-stage companies, and I (along with many others) spend a great deal of time trying to figure out ways to make it better. No doubt. But one of the things that we don’t do enough of is tout our successes - I am guilty of that as well.

On Thursday, May 10th, the ATDC will be holding their yearly showcase event. They’ll be graduating a handful of companies and there will be some good networking and product demos all around. From what I understand, there are nearly 300 people signed up to go, so it should be a pretty big affair.
The graduating companies this year are Cambia, Jacket Micro Devices, FTrans, Qcept, Racemi, and ScanTech.

For more info on the event, click here.

Sidenote: Some of these companies will be at our Capital Connections event coming up in two weeks, so if you are an investor or entrepreneur, and want to get closer to them, check it out.

Graduation from the ATDC effectively means that the company is finally sustainable (or they have overstayed their welcome of 3 years - whichever comes first, I believe.) In either case, these companies have all worked very hard to reach this point, and I encourage all of you to head down and congratulate them on this achievement (and to learn more about some of the newer companies.)

I do want to make a few observations, however.

The ATDC is calling this year’s event the Billion Dollar Celebration. According to their promotional material:

Join us to celebrate the Billion Dollars that ATDC companies have raised since 1999!

This number is a little bit misleading though, IMHO.

In my view, they shouldn’t count the 1999-2000 timeframe in the calculation at all. That was the height of the dot com bubble (and some could make an argument that 2001 shouldn’t be counted either, but …). That timeframe easily represents half (if not more) of the billion dollars, and lets be honest, since the vast majority of those companies imploded (or were acquired at ridiculous valuations, and then imploded), I don’t think we should go there.

I believe that the $1B figure also includes acquisitions, exits, and IPOs - essentially, any capital activity that occured against an ATDC company. Unless the activity occured while the company was physically in the ATDC, I don’t think it should count either. Anything that happened to a company after it leaves a business incubator is largely a reflection of their leadership, not who incubated them. Caveat: It may not actually be counted - I’ve no idea, as I haven’t seen the detailed numbers behind the actual calculation. Subtract all that out from the $1B and divide by the five or six remaining years and a slightly different story might emerge. Not a bad story, mind you, just one grounded in a little more reality.

However, I want to offer a slightly different perspective on things. The mission of the ATDC is to incubate companies that will provide economic/job growth for the state of Georgia (as opposed to wealth creation for individual entrepreneurs or investors.) To me, a better metric would be telling us how many jobs have been created (and are currently active) that stemmed from ATDC companies. I would venture to say that there aren’t many jobs still around from the dot com flameout. So how many companies graduated post-2001 from the ATDC and went on to (and continue to) have a substantial impact on the high-tech job market in Georgia?

The answer is: it is too early to tell. Food for thought.

So lets not get hung up on the $1B number. Instead, focus the celebration on the graduating companies and their hard work, along with the new class of ATDC entrants.

In any event, I do like where the ATDC is going. They are beginning to expand their operations and reach, and I like what Lance Weatherby is doing in putting a more transparent face on things there (via his blogging and open outreach to entrepreneurs.) If anything, I’d like to see them get even more funding from the state, so that they can have more of an impact in other parts of Atlanta and Georgia.

Cheers.

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