The MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta is hosting a “Run It By The Pros” member only workshop. This event is typically attended by 50-55 students, entrepreneurs, services providers and investors. There is a panel of experts from the area of funding early stage companies. The panel will give constructive feedback to the presenters.

The main benefit of this event for the companies presenting is for them gain critical experience and impartial feedback so they are more effective in delivering their message when present to a full audience of investors. Members attend to learn more about the process of presenting effective investor presentations and to learn about new exciting companies.

There is no cost to participate as a presenter. If you know of an early stage company (technology preferred but not necessary) that needs experience in making investor presentations, then please have them send in their business plan and investor presentation to be reviewed and possibly selected to present.

The next workshop is scheduled for June 12, 2008 and will be held at the law offices of Miller & Martin located at 1170 Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta. Deadline for submission is Friday, May 30, 2008. Send your executive summary and/or business plan to Virginia@mitforumatlanta.org. You may also contact Virginia Martin at 404-422-0330.

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I know that I promised to keep the Georgia Tech stuff on the other blog, but since I have a number of readers here who may not have subscribed over there yet:

The annual ATDC/VentureLab showcase is next week, and it's going to be our best ever! Check it out, and RSVP soon!

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Now it's time for descent into geekery as a distraction from other things...

I have a lot of quotations collected, and I'm always harvesting more. I've collected them in various databases over time, from hand-rolled FileMaker to things like EagleFiler and Yojimbo.

The problem was that, if I wanted to share them with anyone, I had to somehow export them and reformat them as HTML, then post that on the Web somewhere, and then update that HTML whenever I found new quotes, and... ugh. I wanted a way to generate a single random quote, and to do it on this blog (which is hosted by Google Blogger/Blogspot).

For the attention-deficit crowd, here's the punchline:

In Blogger, go to "Customize > Layout > Page Elements" and click on "Add a Page Element". Select "HTML/ JavaScript" and paste in the following <iframe> code.

<iframe frameborder="0" height="175" src="http://www.stephen.fleming.name-a.googlepages.com/random_quote_id.html" id="SRF_quote" style="overflow:visible;" scrolling="yes" width="100%" name="SRF_quote"></iframe>

That's it; you should see a widget similar to the one on this page.

If you want to know how it works—perhaps you dislike my raving-libertarian streak and want to use your own selection of quotes—read on.

There are a lot of random-quote widgets out there on the Web, but the ones I found had a common architecture: they'd invisibly load all of the quotes in the background, then selectively turn on visibility for one random entry. That works for 12 quotes; it won't scale to 1000 without unacceptable impact on page-load times.

The first step was to get the quotes into the "cloud". I chose to use DabbleDB since they offer free service for data that will be released under a Creative Commons license.

So I set up a simple-stupid database with only two fields: "Quote" and "Author." I thought of getting fancy with dates and sources and stuff, but simplicity won out. Now I had to figure out a way to extract a single quote (and author) from that database.

DabbleDB has a JavaScript API documented here. Actually, their documentation is lousy, but their tech support is great. And if you inspect enough examples from their forum, you can see what's going on.

After a bit of trial-and-error, I wound up with the following code:


<!-- aggregated, debugged, and © 2008 by Stephen Fleming -->

<!-- http://www.stephen.fleming.name -->

<!-- quotes hosted by DabbleDB: http://stephenfleming.dabbledb.com -->

<script src="http://dabbledb.com/scripts/api.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script src="http://stephenfleming.dabbledb.com/schema/quotationdatabase/65730579" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script src="http://stephenfleming.dabbledb.com/publish/quotationdatabase/6d376a72-5e76-41b2-a175-637f75296336/allentries.json" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">

var entries = Dabble.view('All entries').entries;

var fields = Dabble.view('All entries').fields;

var i=Math.floor(Math.random()*(entries.length+1));

<!-- print the quotation -->

document.write("<p><span style='font-family:Georgia; font-size:11pt;'>");

entries[i].writeValue(0);

document.write("</span><br /><br />\n");

<!-- print the author if not blank-->

if(entries[i].values[1].length>0)

{

document.write("<span style='font-family:Georgia; font-size: 9pt; font-style:italic;text-align:right;'>--\n");

entries[i].writeValue(1);

document.write("</p></span>\n");

}

scroll(0,0)

</script>

<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:8pt;color:#333333;">

See my complete collection of quotes <a target="_blank" href="http://www.stephen.fleming.name/quotes.html">here</a>.

</span>

The DabbleDB bits are eye-watering but their site gives you a good walkthrough on how to configure them. After that, it's just simple JavaScript to pick a random entry, display the quotation and (if an author is identified) its author. Miscellaneous formatting and prettification, of course.

I saved this file as 'random_quote_id.html'; I used my Google Apps space, but any Web-accessible server should do. You're welcome to link to it.

Blogger/Blogspot is a bit particular about what it will accept in its widgets, so again, after some trial and error, I established that this will work (same as for the ADHD crowd a couple of screens above):

<iframe frameborder="0" height="175" src="http://www.stephen.fleming.name-a.googlepages.com/random_quote_id.html" id="SRF_quote" style="overflow:visible;" scrolling="yes" width="100%" name="SRF_quote"></iframe>

In Blogger, go to Customize > Layout > Page Elements and click on "Add a Page Element". Select "HTML/JavaScript" and paste in the <iframe> code.

You can see the results to the right of this page. I'm irritated that it's apparently difficult/impossible to create an iframe that dynamically resizes itself to its content. I spent a couple of hours following various threads on the Internet and trying code snippets, but I couldn't reproduce the desired behavior inside Blogger.

I settled for a medium-sized iframe (175 pixels) set to display a scrollbar if the random quote is too long to fit. That doesn't make me happy, and if anyone knows a better solution, please email me.

This isn't the cure for cancer, but it solves a problem that I haven't seen solved this way anywhere on the Web. If you use it, I wouldn't mind a link from your site back here. Let me know if you find bugs or make improvements!

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Since this blog is approaching its first anniversary and--if my mailbox is any indication!--is actually attracting an audience, I've decided to mess with a good thing.

Basically, I'm going to split it in two. Personal rants, opinions, and space-related stuff will stay here. Posts that are specifically related to Georgia Tech and/or technology commercialization will go to our new GT VentureLab blog.

The entire VentureLab staff has the ability to post over there, so you'll be hearing several different editorial voices. That's a feature, not a bug.

#include standard_disclaimer, etc.


You can subscribe to the new blog's RSS feed here. Comments, as always, are welcome, either via email or in the Skribit box to the right of this page.

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This is a continuation of a previous set of posts and is twelfth in a series. If I type fast enough, this will be the last installment!

---

Okay, you've written your business plan and made N pitches (where 'N' is a larger number than you originally expected). If you've done everything right, at some point, the VC will say "We like this deal; we're going to crank out a term sheet."

First off, a little celebration is in order. If you're dealing with ethical VCs, a term sheet is a commitment to invest, if you can agree on the terms (that's where the name comes from) and if they don't find out anything devastating in the "due diligence" process. (Yep, you knew those old felony convictions would come back to haunt you someday! :-)

So, congratulations. Now, don't screw up.

The basic terms are the ones you would expect: How much money are they paying, for how many shares of stock, and how many board seats. The first two (dollars and shares), together with your existing capital structure, define your company's valuation. The board arrangement defines your governance. Those are always negotiable, within certain limits, and it's not amateurish to push back on those. Ditto for liquidation preferences.

(Within certain limits: If they're suggesting that they have three seats on a five-person board, you can suggest that they have two, you and your management team have two, and you'll mutually agree on a fifth from outside. You probably can't suggest that they get one seat and you get four. See the difference?)

Beyond the basics, the right way to negotiate a term sheet is to practice full disclosure on both sides. If you hand them material surprises at this point, you might be able to survive; if you wait until after the documents are signed, you're going to sued for rescission.

Note that the VC needs to be reciprocal. The term sheet needs to lay out everything they think they're getting for their investment; this isn't the time to be saying "Oh, we'll work out those details later."

You may be surprised by the number of terms, with titles like "Right of Co-Sale" and "Liquidation Preferences" and "Key Person Insurance." There are a few leading law firms that prepare a significant fraction of the term sheets in circulation, and they all talk to each other. If a particular deal goes bad, there is a scramble to paper over that particular failure mechanism in the term sheet for the next deal. Such fixes are cumulative. (This is a process akin to fixing bugs in software, except that you are dealing with self-aware mutating bugs.)

Term sheets originally fit on a single sheet of paper. When I started in the VC business around 1995, term sheets had evolved to about six pages. Now, they run about twelve pages. Every paragraph on those twelve pages represents scar tissue from someone's bad deal somewhere.

One corollary of this situation is that a particular VC firm has evolved to using a particular term sheet template over time, and they're not going to tear it up and go back to a one-page set of terms just for you.

You might not like their "Right of First Refusal" on selling your shares. But if your VC (or another VC client sharing the same law firm) has ever had a founder sell out early because they didn't have this term (check out the history between CraigsList and eBay), you can bet this will be in their term sheet, and it's not going away.

Pick your battles. Get the valuation and governance right, then go focus on making your company a huge success. Most of those twelve pages are there to protect the VC for deals that go sideways, downwards, or bankrupt. It's amazing how many of the restrictions and negative covenants just disappear for a successful company.

Final note: Term sheets exist for a reason. I usually describe term sheets as "12-page documents written in a language remarkably similar to English." These lead to 300-page purchase agreeements written in language remarkably unlike English... but that 300-page document will be the legally-binding instrument. The right time to learn what all those paragraphs and clauses mean is while you're still looking at 12 pages.

For example, you may see a "Drag-Along Agreement" that reads something like this:

The holders of the Common Stock and Series A Preferred shall enter into a drag-along agreement whereby if a majority of the holders of Series A Preferred agree to a sale or liquidation of the Company, the holders of the remaining Series A Preferred and Common Stock shall consent to and raise no objections to such sale.

Now, if you want to argue over this (perhaps you want it to be a majority of all shareholders voting as-converted, or a 75% supermajority of the Series A, or a majority of the Series A plus a majority of the board, or whatever), you're within your rights to try and negotiate it. You may or may not win, but you can have a conversation directly with the VC about it.

If you wait to point out that you don't like that particular form of drag-along until after that single sentence has mutated into two pages of legalese... Now you spin up your $400/hour lawyer, and the VC spins up his or her $500/hour lawyer, and they will merrily go argue at a combined cost of $900/hour. Did I mention that the company (that's you!) pays legal costs?

Brad Feld has done a fabulous job of writing up individual terms here, and I am not sure if I can add any real value to his version. If there are particular questions, put 'em in comments or email and I'll see what I can do.

---

Entrepreneurs and VCs always disagree on valuation. You think you're worth $20 million, and the VC thinks you're worth $1 million. The right answer is, you're worth what the market will bear. And if the market is bringing the money, you need to listen to what they're saying. (Assuming, of course, that you need ther money. If you don't, why are you on Part 12 of this series?!??!)

If you've done everything else right (targeting the right VCs, selling your company instead of the product, etc.), then you will have definitively established a market price, because you're in discussions with the right purchasers.

There really isn't a science to valuing a seed-stage company. This drives left-brain types absolutely batty. You try to orchestrate a valuation that leaves everyone with a reasonable piece of the pie... typically, after the Series A, it would be typical to see the VCs with 40% of the company, the founders with 40%, and the employee option pool at 20%. But don't game the system... don't try to raise $5M if you only need $1M, just to value your stake at a higher price. That will get noticed.

You will occasionally see discussions like this one from Michael Blake at Adams Capital:

If you want to get more technical, I would price a seed stage company using a call option pricing model - specifically, the binomial option pricing model. This is how pharmaceutical companies have been pricing R&D projects for years, and we use that model frequently to value intellectual property. And if you think about it, almost all the value in a seed stage company is the IP. And, the binomial option intuitively follows the "all or nothing" nature of venture investments (or you can use trinomial for all, nothing, and mediocre return trajectories if you prefer). For the inputs, take implied volatility of micro-cap public comps (available through Bloomberg) and convert to binomial volatility (there is a formula for this). For time to option expiration, choose a time to exit. For current price, take the expected (hoped) cash flows coming back to the investors, discounted back to today (probably at a rate of around 80%) For the exercise price, take the present value of expected future investments. Of course, you're still at the "problem" of the uncertainty of future cash flows, but the stock volatility and the high discount rates help price in that uncertainty. The result generated by this Cox-Rubenstein model is before discounts for lack of marketability/liquidity (for seed stage companies, at least 50% for seed stage) or lack of control (at least 20%).

And, at the end of the day, you'll still converge on a model where the VCs value you like livestock: $1 million per founder, to a maximum of $3 million.

Here's a hint: Lots of the most onerous terms (high liquidation preferences, etc.) are to protect the VC against downside risk. And, unlike most investments, the downside for VC-funded startups goes all the way down to zero value. That doesn't happen with IBM stock. Or Atlanta municipal bonds. Or REITs.

Putting zeroes in an IRR calculation does terrible things to the VC's reported return rate. They have an absolute necessity to salvage whatever value they can out of bad deals, or even deals that just go sideways for years. And the earlier the deal, the more likely it is that you will be one of the zeroes dragging down their IRR. That's nothing personal, it's just the nature of the business.

But—and it's a big but—once they reach a certain rate of return, they're able to be magnanimous. This is where you can get creative! For example, you could say: "Okay, I understand that you need to have a 1X liquidation preference. But what if we made it that the liquidation preference ramps down to 0.5X for any M&A proceeds over $50 million, and disappears entirely for anything we get over $100 million?"

They just might bite! And, since the Series B terms are often based on the Series A terms, and the Series C terms are often based on the Series B terms... you have a chance of keeping this particular provision (or modifications to it) throughout your entire venture capital fundraising. That could mean tens of millions of dollars more to the company... meaning the employees, the other founders, and you.

And an approach like that puts you in a position of strength. In essence, you're saying "We disagree on valuation. I want you as my investor, so let's accept your valuation... but if I prove that I was right all along, and we get bought for a price that reflects my higher valuation, I want some additional cash in my pocket for that."

Investors like confidence.

My last bit of advice to bring this twelve-part series to an end... Once you've gotten to this point with a Series A investor—and I'm assuming you would not have gotten to this point with an investor who isn't a good match for your company—

Take the money.

Yes, you probably can get a higher valuation from somebody else six months from now. But that's six months of your life on airplanes giving fundraising pitches. That's six months in which you're not back home recruiting a management team and refining a marketing strategy and building strong customer relationships and hammering on the developers to "ship something, dammit!" That's six months in which your invisible unknown competitor—with similar technology and with employees who are just as smart—will be doing all those things, because he or she took the money. And when you finally do take someone's money and launch into the marketplace... you'll find all the low-hanging fruit has been gobbled up by that competitor. Which means you need more money to reach higher, and... there's a never-ending spiral there, and it's not pretty.

There's not much value in holding a higher percentage of a company that is worthless.

Take the money.

And go off and start building a great company!

But remember... it's almost time for you to start thinking about Series B...

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This is a continuation of a previous set of posts and is eleventh in a series.

---

Yep, that's the same slide as my last post. We haven't finished with it yet.

I went through the first three bullets here. But the bottom half of the slide deserves a fresh post.

It's probably the most common mistake I see entrepreneurs make when raising money: They come armed with a sales pitch for their product. Maybe a good pitch, maybe a bad pitch, but clearly trying to sell their product.

I don't want to buy your product.

I might want to buy part of your company.

That's a different proposition, and requires a different approach. Different slides. Different flow. Different questions to be answered. Just like my saying that the technology can only occupy about 10% of your business plan, the product pitch can only occupy about 10% of your fundraising presentation. (Which means a single slide if you're following 10-20-30; more on that below.)

I know, you feel like you're neglecting your baby. Get over it. Because, as I've mentioned before, you need to tell me about your team, your company history, your customers, your revenue, your competitors, your channel strategy, your potential acquirors... you know, all that stuff that might actually make me want to invest in your company! If you spend all your time on your technology, you won't have time to tell me about the rest.

Sell your company—not your product.

Sell your company—not your product.

Sell your company—not your product.


What I tell you three times is true.

---

Okay, it's time to prepare your presentation. Lord, I can't understand why so many people screw this up.

I've had you read Kawasaki's book once already. Read it again. Take it with salt, since he's primarily an entertainer, but there's good information in there.

If you're not a very experienced presenter—or, heck, even if you are!—go to http://www.presentationzen.com and spend an afternoon following the links and watching the examples. Buy their book. If you are a poor presenter, you can become adequate. If you already a good presenter, you can become very good. If you are Steve Jobs... well, I seriously doubt that you're reading my blog!

Kawasaki maintains his 10-20-30 rule:

• 10 slides maximum
• 20 minutes maximum (allow time for Q&A)
• 30 point typeface minimum

You may not like these rules. You may find these rules silly. You almost certainly will find these rules very difficult to follow. Do it anyhow.

If you stuff everything into your business plan into your presentation, you will look like an idiot. (See how often that thread sneaks its way into this discussion? Don't look like an idiot.) Heck, if you simply stuff everything in your executive summary into your presentation, you're still just average.

In your fundraising presentation, you are selling. You're selling the company, not the product (see above), but it's a sales pitch nonetheless. Treat it that way.

(Refusal to see the presentation as a sales pitch, incidentally, leads to thinking you have to create a presentation that stands on its own. This is the prime cause for the "kitchen sink" syndrome of throwing everything into the PowerPoint/Keynote file. FAIL. If you don't remember why "your PowerPoint deck shouldn't function without you standing in front of it talking," then go re-read Part 08.)

Now, this is where I shout at students.

When I say 30-point type, I mean 30-point type. Or bigger.

I used to say "Your text should be legible if you have 35mm slides and you're reviewing them on a light table. Without a loupe." But the young whippersnappers are beginning to stop laughing at me and start looking at me with a puzzled look of non-comprehension. It's like I'm talking about cuneiform or something. Sigh.

So then I started saying "Your slides should be legible on a cellphone screen." But then everybody started getting iPhones with as many pixels as my original Mac, so that doesn't work anymore.

So now I'll stick with the 30-point rule. Or, if you're mathematically inclined, then let me modify Kawasaki's algorithm: "Find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by 1.5. That’s your optimal font size."

You think you have a good reason to break that rule. You have more information than you can convey in type that big. Or you have a data chart that really needs 12-point labels. Or you're pasting in a spreadsheet using OLE (data exchange of the devil) and it's really hard to reformat it. Or you're reusing old slides and don't have time to create new ones.

All of these are weak excuses that make you look lazy, or stupid, or both.

Get it in gear and create new slides (channelling both Tufte and Kawasaki, with a nice dollop of Presentation Zen) that provide a good backdrop for you to stand in front of while selling the company. Because the important part of that presentation is you. If you're shovelling too much information into the slides, you're embellishing the backdrop, while what you need to be focusing on is yourself and the message you convey.

Slides can't do that for you. The slideshow should be a set of reminders for you of what points to hit, in which order, as well as some pretty diagrams or photographs for concepts that deserve them. In fact, once you get good at this, you can reduce your entire presentation to diagrams and photographs, with no words at all.

And then you won't care about type size, because you won't be using any.

(Let me digress here: there is no reason whatsoever to use 90% of the animation options available in PowerPoint or Keynote. In particular, if you use "Laser Type" or "Typewriter" in front of me, I will do my best to accidentally knock your laptop to the floor.)

Presentation style: You should plan to speak at a measured pace of about 100 words per minute. Most people read at about 400 words per minute; I manage about 1200. (And, in the world of VCs where everyone scored 1600 on their SATs, I'm only about average.) So if you stand there and read what's on your slides to me, I'm going to finish reading the entire page while you're still on your first bullet. Boredom sets in...

In the best case, I'll pull out my Treo and start reading email. At least that's a visible signal that you need to do something to take control of the meeting. In the worst cases, I start thinking about other deals I'm involved in... or other deals I want to do... or why no one wants to buy my Panoz... or whatever. And you'll never know that I'm tuning out 11/12ths of what you say.

Again, the slides should be a backdrop. You should tell a compelling story in front of them that makes me pay attention to you, not the screen. In other words, don't be this guy.

One way to tell if you're focusing the attention on yourself is to videotape yourself giving your presentation. This is painful. You'll hate the way you hum and haw, the way your mannerisms are magnified, the way you lean on the presentation as a crutch. Okay. Then do it again. And again. You will get better.

Finally, here's a gedankenexperiment for you: If you walk into the VCs conference room for your scheduled meeting and there is a complete power failure, what are you going to do? (For the smart-asses among you: Assume the conference room is well-lit by windows, and that your laptop battery is dead.) Miss the opportunity? Or pitch without your PowerPoint crutch?

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Okay, I'm going to talk about local politics for a bit. Those of you reading this outside of the state of Georgia can skip this post.

Georgia is a fabulous place to call home, but trying to grow high-tech businesses in the Deep South has a few challenges that you just don't encounter elsewhere in the country. One is the lack of local venture capital, which has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere on the Web (and which I'm going to do again soon as part of my Raising Capital series on this blog).

What did Deep Throat say? "Follow the money." Why don't we have a lot of venture investors locally? Several reasons, but one is that we don't have a lot of institutions locally who invest in venture funds. (See here for a discussion of how that works.)

Why don't local institutions invest in venture capital funds? Well, for some of the very biggest, it's illegal. Not "against their policy." Not
"doesn't meet their current investment objectives." Not "something they've tried and didn't like." Illegal. Requiring a change to state law.

Specifically, I'm talking about the state Teacher's Retirement System and Employee's Retirement Systems, which together have tens of billions of dollars of assets under management. All of it in stocks, bonds, and money-market funds. None of it is currently invested in what's popularly known as "alternative assets"—a broad family that includes a wide variety of investments that are "alternatives" to traditional stocks, bonds, and money funds. Notably for our purposes, alt-assets include venture capital funds.

Forty-nine states in the Union permit state pension funds to be invested in these "alternative assets" to allow portfolio diversity and to provide fund managers with opportunities to generate increased returns for retirees. Georgia is the only one which forbids it.

Personal anecdote:

When I was raising venture capital funds in my previous life, I'd travel to other states to meet with their pension fund managers. New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Minnesota, I forget where all I went. All of these states have long-standing commitments to investing in venture capital. After checking off all the diligence items about our fund—track record, partners, investment focus, deal flow, you name it—someone would inevitably ask "So, tell me how much has your local investment community committed to invest in your new fund?" I'd always reply "The absolute maximum allowed by law! Which is, unfortunately, zero."

At that point, the meeting was over. Oh, we might sit and make polite conversation for another half hour, but the clear understanding was—if you can't convince your local pension funds to invest in you, why should we even consider it?

Obviously, with 49 role models out there, we can learn what has worked well and what has led to problems. The amount invested in alt-assets should be a small fraction of the overall fund, probably a single-digit percentage of the total. There should be oversight requirements, and disclosure rules, and ethics rules, and conflict-of-interest rules. And since we're new to this, we might not want Georgia to be the first institutional investor in a new fund—we should probably follow more experienced investors.

Unfortunately, there is a well-organized group of teachers, retired teachers, and others who oppose any expansion of the state's pension investment profile. You can visit their home page here and see what you think of their arguments. Basically, they seem to be allergic to the word "risk." Since these are the same teachers who routinely lead Georgia's elementary and high school students to the Bottom Five ranking in national mathematics scores, you can make your own decisions about their statistical skills.

The local investment and technology communities have crafted a bill that provides all of the safeguards above—it's called Senate Bill 80. It explicitly excludes the Teachers Retirement System from any reform, so nothing would change for the teachers. (Which makes you wonder why they're making so many phone calls in opposition.) It would not require the state to invest a single dollar in any alternative asset fund, but would simply make it legal if the fund managers choose to do so. And it would cap any alt-asset investments to a total of 1% a year and 5% overall.

SB 80 passed the Georgia Senate in 2007, which means it needs to get past the Georgia House in this year's session, or we have to start over from zero in 2009. It made it out of the House Retirement Committee last week on a 7-6 vote. Now it's in the House Rules Committee, and it probably needs to pass that tomorrow or Tuesday if the bill is to make it to the floor of the House before the session ends on Friday.

Late last week, Shirley Franklin sent a staffer to the Capitol to request that, with caveats, city of Atlanta pension funds should be included in the language of SB 80. This request is huge, since it supports our contention that alt-asset investing will be good for all retirees, and it's not just a tool to shovel money into the pockets of Republican fat cats. (Thanks, Shirley!)

So now it's up to the House Rules Committee and to individual House representatives.

The membership of the House Rules Committee is online here. Do you know any of these people?

In any case, you have a local representative in the Georgia House. I'm embarrassed to admit that, since we moved since the last election, I had to go online to look up my own representative. It's easy to do here. Then I called her and left a brief voicemail explaining that I was supporting SB 80 and hoped she'd take that into consideration when the bill came up for a vote. (I made it clear I was wearing my constituent hat, not my Georgia Tech hat.)

I was shocked when she called me back, and spent fifteen minutes talking about the bill. Maybe this idea of local representative government has something to be said for it!

She said:

1. her office was getting flooded with messages against the bill,
2. none of them were actually from her constituents,
3. the campaign was pretty clearly orchestrated by the teachers' union, and
4. Shirley Franklin's support was making her wonder what was going on.

The fact that I was the first of her actual constituents to contact her and that I was in favor of the bill carried a lot of weight with her.

The Republican leadership in both houses supports SB 80. If Shirley has actually put the Atlanta Democrat representatives in play, we can pass this bill next week!

You can read the full text of Senate Bill 80 here. Read the talking points that TAG has prepared about the bill here. Then, if you agree that Georgia should join the other 49 states in permitting investment flexibility, pick up the phone and call your House representative on Monday!

Constituent service is going to play a major role in whether this bill lives or dies in this year's session... and, if my experience is any guide, most legislators are hearing from pressure groups opposed to SB 80, but aren't hearing from individual constituents who support it. Let's change that. Tomorrow.

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