David Cummings on Startups

Category: Community

  • Thinking About the Intersection of Content Management and Marketing Automation

    Tomorrow I’m honored to speak at Drupalcamp Atlanta about the Pardot story. Drupal, best known as an open source content management system, is now used as a full blown platform for building dynamic websites. Before I co-founded Pardot, I founded Hannon Hill, a content management company and spent many years in the industry. So, then, where does the Pardot story and marketing automation fit in with content management?

    Here are a few thoughts on the intersection of content management and marketing automation:

    • More and more sites, especially sites that are brochureware, incorporate marketing functions like anonymous visitor tracking, contact us forms, trackable site search, and more
    • As sites collect additional data on visitors through custom or turn key modules (e.g. social sign-on systems), more information is available to do targeted lead nurturing
    • For a non-transactional site, it’s difficult to prove return on investment, but by adding marketing automation, it’s easy to show value

    In the near future, the majority of sites will have some form of marketing automation and it’ll be commonplace for content management systems and marketing automation systems to have a much tighter integration.

    What else? What are some other thoughts on the intersection of content management and marketing automation?

  • Getting Involved in the Atlanta Startup Community

    On a regular basis I talk to someone that wants to be an entrepreneur or wants to help entrepreneurs. I like to ask what steps they’ve taken to make that happen and there usually isn’t as much concrete progress as I would hope. My response is always the same: get involved with the startup community and begin participating. There are so many good resources, places, and programs now that it’s super easy to get involved.

    Here are a few ways to get involved with the Atlanta startup community:

    With so many events, it actually becomes easy to attend too many events and not make enough progress on your startup. Find the right balance with respect to getting involved but most importantly just start.

    What else? What are some other ways to get involved with the Atlanta startup community?

  • Highlights from the $130 Million Vocalocity Exit

    Earlier today Vocalocity announced their $130 million exit to Vonage. This is another big win for Atlanta and shows the strength of the Atlanta startup community. Vocalocity is an interesting story as it was founded as a different company, the assets were sold to another startup that took over, and finally it set off on the path it’s still on today — providing Internet-based phone services to small businesses.

    Here are some of the current Vocalocity details courtesy of Urvaksh’s piece on the acquisition as well as other sources:

    Overall, it’s another success story for Atlanta and a big congratulations are in order for all parties involved.

    What else? What are your thoughts on the Vocalocity exit to Vonage?

  • The Nine C’s of the Atlanta Tech Village

    Johnson Cook put together a great presentation about the Atlanta Tech Village for the AIM Speak Easies: Rapid Talks From Brilliant Minds series in Omaha. I’m borrowing the nine C’s from his presentation and presenting my own thoughts on them here:

    • Core Values – Everything starts with the core values. For us, they are the following: be nice, dream big, pay it forward, and work hard / play hard. We can’t pick winning ideas but we can set the foundation with strong core values.
    • Curated – We have an application process for membership that starts with a tour of the Village. As part of our focus on building the best place possible for startups, it’s critical we curate membership.
    • Collaboration – Creating an environment that promotes serendipitous interactions increases formal and informal collaboration. Startups helping startups increases the likelihood of success.
    • Chaos – Having so many different entrepreneurs under one roof, combined with the desire to push the limits, results in chaos on a regular basis. We roll with the chaos and are constantly improving.
    • Concentrated – Assembling 100+ startups under the same roof makes for great density, which increases the efficiency and economies of scale for everything.
    • Colossal – Our goal is nothing less than creating 10,000 new jobs in Atlanta over the next 10 years. Go big or go home.
    • Community – The core of the Village is the people and we have an amazing community. Community is the main differentiator from a standard office building.
    • Control – Owning the physical real estate, making investments with a 20 year horizon, and not having external investors allows us to control the entire experience. We’re not perfect but we strive to be great.
    • Celebrity – Spotting several Tesla Model S electric cars in the parking deck and bringing by CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are two ways we incorporate a little celebrity excitement in the Village.

    So, there you have it — the nine C’s of the Atlanta Tech Village. What else would you add?

  • Thinking About Atlanta’s and London’s Startup Community

    The Economist has a new article up titled London’s Tech City: Start me up. It’s a good piece that has a variety of talking points about the strong cluster of tech startups in east London. From an local perspective, if you take all the talking points and substitute Atlanta, it’s nearly identical.

    Here are some of those talking points:

    • Need for a big exit or IPO to put the community on the map with King, makers of Candy Crush Saga, as the likely first billion dollar IPO, similar to AirWatch holding the billion dollar crown in Atlanta
    • Many new coworking spaces like Google’s Campus, similar to Atlanta Tech Village
    • Several accelerators including Passion Capital and Seedcamp, similar to Flashpoint and the Atlanta Ventures Accelerator
    • Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme to promote investments in startups, similar to the Georgia Angel Investor Tax Credit
    • Lack of technical talent, which is common everywhere
    • Dearth of venture capital, which is typical in most places

    Now, these talking points aren’t unique to Atlanta and London as I bet most major metro areas with at least a small-to-medium sized startup community as making similar progress. It’s great to startup communities growing around the world.

    What else? What are your thoughts on these talking points from Atlanta’s and London’s startup communities?

  • Review of Twitter’s Revenue Streams

    Following up on yesterday’s post titled Notes from the Twitter S-1 IPO Filing, it’s important to drill into how Twitter makes money. Twitter is still experimenting with different advertising, licensing, and partnership opportunities, and it’s clear there are many other options, so let’s look at their current initiatives:

    • Data Licensing – Companies like Gnip and DataSift pay large amounts of money to Twitter to have access to the raw “firehose” of tweets, which they then process and make available to other companies for a fee. This is a good revenue stream but limited overall as the number of companies that will buy the data is small compared to the revenue opportunities with advertising.
    • Partnerships – Companies partner with Twitter to run specialized programs and campaigns that are outside the standard offerings. For example, the NFL and Twitter just announced a partnership to provide exclusive content only available via Twitter that has a revenue sharing component to it.
    • Promoted Tweets – Companies can advertise their own tweets right in the timeline of Twitter users based on context, geographic location, and several other factors making these super valuable and timely. Companies are only charged for these tweets when someone clicks a link in the tweet (thus, a form of performance-based advertising).
    • Promoted Accounts – Companies can advertise their own Twitter account as an account for someone to follow and only pay when that action takes place (more performance-based advertising).
    • Promoted Trends – Twitter has a popular feature that shows trending topics (e.g. hashtags that are currently popular) such that advertisers can put their own topics in the trending topics area to garner clicks (more performance-based advertising as advertisers only pay for actions).
    • Advertising Network – Twitter recently acquired MoPub for up to $350 million to have a leading mobile advertising network. Advertisers place ads and publishers display the ads with Twitter taking a cut of the transactions.

    I believe the MoPub advertising network and Promoted Tweets will turn out to be the most successful revenue streams and prove to be unbelievably valuable. The most important thing Twitter can do is to continue building the value and size of the community so that these revenue streams increase in value.

    What else? What are your thoughts on Twitter’s revenue streams?

  • Breakout Startups Grow the Ecosystem of Talent

    When talking to local software engineers, sales people, and entrepreneurs that come through the Atlanta Tech Village, I find a common pattern where the individual starts their career at a non-startup company and then eventually gets recruited by a startup. After a taste of the startup experience, the individual never wants to go back to a regular business. Now, once the individual is in the startup ecosystem, every 2-4 years they move to a different startup and bring their experience and expertise to a new opportunity.

    This is all good and well but it doesn’t significantly grow the startup community since most startups fail and the talent gets recycled into the community (which is fine and healthy). What does grow the startup community is breakout startups. Startups that create 100+ jobs locally bring a ton of talent into the startup community. Software engineers get recruited from all kinds of backgrounds, especially right out of school. Sales reps get recruited from insurance jobs, telcom positions, and other traditional sales roles. And, of course, entrepreneurs that started ventures that didn’t work out join the breakout startup, provide great leadership for a few years, and then go on to start their next thing.

    Having more startups helps grow the entrepreneurial ecosystem, but a greater impact comes from breakout startups that bring in tons of talent and introduces them to a better way of life.

    What else? What are your thoughts on breakout startups growing the ecosystem of talent?

  • Syndicating Angel Deals in Atlanta with AngelList

    AngelList just launched their Syndicates offering and it’s a big deal. Angel investing is notoriously inefficient due to corralling hobbyist investors, extensive paperwork, and generally small dollar amounts. Syndicates works to change that and deliver some of the benefits of a venture fund with a larger amount of investments dollars, fewer investors to wrangle, and the speed and leadership of a lead investor.

    Here are a few details on AngelList Syndicates:

    • Lead angels get a carry (part of the profits, if any, from doing the deals) and AngelList gets a carry (that’s how they make money as a company)
    • Money invested from lead angels in a deal often represents a much higher percent of the deal, and personal wealth, compared with venture capitalists investing from their own fund (e.g. the lead angels have much more skin in the game compared to VCs)
    • No management fees (management fees are money taken out of the fund to pay salaries, office space, etc. regardless of making a profit)
    • Open to accredited investors and qualified purchasers (it isn’t crowdfunding)

    Overall, this has the potential to make lead angel investors much more meaningful and impactful with their time and effort.

    From an Atlanta perspective, this is awesome. This provides the opportunity to bring together startup investors that don’t want to commit capital to a fund, and the requisite long term illiquidity, but still want the guidance, deal flow, and help that a lead investor provides. It’s win-win.

    I’m looking forward to using it and seeing how it changes the market for angel and venture funding.

    What else? What are your thoughts on syndicating angel deals with AngelList?

  • Serial Entrepreneurs at the Village

    When originally thinking about the Atlanta Tech Village, I viewed it as community and office space for first-time entrepreneurs. After a month, it became readily apparent that serial entrepreneurs and venture-backed startups wanted to be in the community just as much as first-time entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, whether on their first try or fifth try, want to be around each other.

    Here are a few ideas about serial entrepreneurs at the Village:

    • Entrepreneurs, even ones that have been so successful so as to never have to work again, enjoy the energy and camaraderie that comes with a strong community
    • Markets and technologies are changing so fast that even if you were successful before, the same tactics applied again aren’t guaranteed to succeed
    • Talent is always at a premium, so being in an awesome environment for recruiting new talent into the startup world is always beneficial
    • Leadership skills and the importance of great people are the same, regardless of first-time or serial entrepreneurs

    So, the Village isn’t a home for first-time entrepreneurs; it’s a home for all entrepreneurs.

    What else? What are your thoughts on serial entrepreneurs at the Village?

  • Announcing the Atlanta Student Fund

    Urvaksh broke the news this morning about the new $1 million fund for Georgia Tech student startups called the Atlanta Student Fund (site coming soon) as part of Atlanta Ventures. Georgia Tech is an amazing university with a top-flight engineering school and a tremendous asset to the City of Atlanta.

    Here are a few notes on the Atlanta Student Fund:

    • $5,000 – $10,000 investments in startups with a current GA Tech student on the founding team
    • Convertible note (a loan that turns into equity upon a qualified financing event)
    • Memberships and desks at the Atlanta Tech Village
    • Target of 10 investments per year (opportunistic)
    • $1 million fund to invest over three years, inclusive of follow-on investments

    Overall, the goal is to increase the number of successful, seed stage startups in Atlanta that then grow into larger, meaningful companies. Georgia Tech has tremendous talent and there’s a real opportunity to increase the amount of entrepreneurial activity on campus.

    What else? What are your thoughts on the opportunity for more startups at Georgia Tech?