The cycle for the 2009 edition of the GRA/TAG (Georgia Research Alliance/Technology Association of Georgia) Business Launch Competition starts on January 8th.

Many of you may remember my post and the resulting comment storm about last year’s affair.  I caught a good bit of flak for over that post, but the good news is that it promoted an important dialog, and dialog is never a bad thing.  The good news is that the organizers of the event have apparently listened to the collective voice of the community, and key changes have been implemented.

According to Lance, the competition organizers have clearly set forth that entrants must have raised less than $500K in aggregate cash capital, regardless of source. The TAG/GRA event took a nasty blackeye over the aforementioned flap last year, but they seem to have corrected the problem for future events.

With all of this being said, at a time when fewer angel investors are writing smaller checks with less frequency, this competition is even more deserving of your attention.

The winner of this year's competition will receive $100,000 in cash, $200,000 in support services and lots of good publicity.

Each year, the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition organizers select a theme for businesses that they will consider for the award.  This year, the theme is Internet Technologies.

“This includes companies that are developing products, online services, or backend technologies that are using or extending the reach, flexibility and ease of the internet; with a particular interest in companies within the fields of digital media/technology, cleantech, mobility and securities.”

Formal applications are due by February 10th, 2009.

Lance is leading a panel discussion of prior winners on January 8th TAG Entrepreneurs Society monthly meeting at the ATDC (TSRB building) at 7:30 am.  The panelists will include IVOX, Acculynk, and REACH Call.

By the way, you can learn more about IVOX's experience with the competition by listening to our podcast (StartupLounge #17) with Greg Warren called “Inside the Winner's Circle: IVOX”, which we published on August 7, 2007.

Cheers.

If you are seeking early-stage capital in Georgia, and haven’t heard about this by now, you should check out what Sanjay Parekh, David Cummings, Allen Graber, Suleman Ali, Wayt King, and David Wright are doing with Shotput Ventures.

You can read more about it on their web site, but basically it is a clone (or close fascimile) of Y-Combinator.   They will invest $5K per team and $5K per founder into an idea, then provide you with additional resources and coaching to help bring your idea to fruition.

There has been some debate as to whether or not this investment model makes sense here in Georgia.  Personally, I think that it does, with some caveats.

Who it is good for: Young, aspiring technology entrepreneurs that can quickly prototype an idea into a tangible product or service.

Who Isn’t a Good Fit (IMHO): This list is a bit longer …

• Entrepreneurs that aren’t really entrepreneurs but are looking for a “job”, or individuals that think $250K (or even $100K) is a valid salary for a startup founder here.
• Entrepreneurs that are still trying to apply antiquated business school methods to startups (i.e. those who think pre-money valuations on pre-product, pre-revenue companies is anything over $250-500K)
• Entrepreneurs who still think that it takes $2-5M to get an idea off the ground (see above)
• Entrepreneurs in non-technology or capital intensive industries (manufacturing, nano-tech, bio-tech, and many/most consumer product plays)

Given that Atlanta has a nice cluster of (younger) idea-oriented technology/software-minded innovators, I think this model has a lot of applicability here.  The metrics make sense to me.  Short time-to-market, quick iterations, fail fast, and move on.  Time will tell, of course, but I’d bet on success.

There have been several successful exits from Y-Combinator companies.  They have proven the model that small investments can create large returns, especially in the web/software space.

I’m sure the founders might have some other thoughts, but these are mine.  Back to work now …

Cheers.

We’ve been going non-stop lately with StarPound, and it has severely cut into my extra-curricular activities (including posting here on my blog).  The good news is that Twitter is there to help me out when I just want to toss a random comment out from time-to-time.

At any rate, we’ve published a few video tutorials on using the StarPound platform.  If you have an interest in telephony-enabled Internet applications, check em out.

The first tutorial provides a nice introduction to StarPound Studio, and shows you how to build a very simplistic application from start-to-finish.  The second tutorial builds upon the first one, and shows how you can very quickly (and visually) integrate with external web services/SOA.  Good stuff.

We’ll be adding some more videos soon which will cover more advanced topics, including my two favorites: how to build Jajah-like functionality in 15 minutes or less, and how we recreated Google’s Grand Central in just a few days.

We’ll also be diving into some of our vertical market solutions, and show you how our call open source center suite can be used to build call center campaigns in the cloud in just a few minutes.

On a semi-related note, I am pleased to announce that our upcoming January release will offer support for Freeswitch … a very cool platform if you haven’t seen it … as well as the latest release of Asterisk.

Stay tuned …

Cheers.