One of the key tenants of a healthy startup community is successful entrepreneurs investing some of their capital gains from an exit into more startups. The idea is that capital needs to be recycled in the community to help the community grow and prosper.
As for Atlanta, here are the exits I know of 2/3rds of the way through 2012:
- Servigistics ($220M exit)
- Vitrue ($300M exit)
- Blinq Media ($40M+ exit)
- Interactive Advisory Software (undisclosed exit)
At a rate of one tech startup exit every two months in Atlanta, there isn’t much volume. Without much exit volume, it’s tough to attract more outside capital and recycle more local capital. The long term solution is to devote more resources and community support to the early stage ($1M – $4M in revenue) and growth stage ($5M+ in revenue) startups in the area, which will result in more exits.
What else? What are some other startup exits this year in Atlanta? What are some other ideas to grow the community?
David Cummings on Startups 
the Series A investors got $0 back on the Servigistics sell. Amazing.
BLiNQ was an all employee owned company. I owned 35% and gave the rest of the equity to my employees and advisors. Also, I gave all top execs profit interest shares vs options so that they could get long term gains vs short term and they built equity ownership over time. There is nothing like helping to make millionaires and to deliver that taste to employees no matter how large or small the outcome. Plus, it creates a very employee ownership mentality and is phenomenal as a retention vehicle.