Category: Community

Today I had the opportunity to spend time with Genna Keller of the PR firm Trevellino/Keller. Genna has been active in the Atlanta tech startup community since the late 1990s and has a wealth of experience. One of the great things her firm spearheads is the Start-Up Council which provides a feedback roundtable for free to startups once a quarter. From their site:

Start-Up Council meets quarterly, in a roundtable setting with entrepreneurs to hear their business case for the next great start-up. The group offers advice and insight on business development, funding, marketing, public relations, legal, accounting, outsourcing and branding.

I recommend Atlanta entrepreneurs take a look at the Start-Up Council website and take advantage of this free service.

In the past week I’ve met with two different entrepreneurs that said they were interested in getting involved with the Atlanta technology startup community. Of course, I had one or two ideas on things they can do. Instead of emailing a bunch of resources around I decided to enumerate them here. Let’s go:

• ATDC is the mothership. Get involved.
• TAG has tons of networking events related to technology (not necessarily startups)
• Shotput Ventures is the accelerator seed fund
• Mike Blake has the best post on joining the VC scene (most is applicable to tech entrepreneurs who don’t want to raise VC as well)
• TechDrawl is the Southeast specific technology startup blog (think localized TechCrunch)
• ATLSE.com (Atlanta Startup Entretpreneurs) has a bunch of random stuff (events, people on Twitter, organizations, etc)
• AtlanTech is the local business journal tech blog where Urvaksh fights hard for the scoop

Needless to say it is easy to get involved and to start meeting people. Do it.

Did I miss anything?

Tomorrow I’m giving my Iterate or Die talk at a Georgia State entrepreneurship class. I’ve given the talk several times now at Emory and once at a TAG/ATDC event, so it is pretty smooth. My main emphasis is that entrepreneurial success, defined as building a million dollar plus company, comes after most of the following are met:

• Tons of hard work
• Never giving up
• Belief in the vision
• Constant iterating and pivoting
• Luck (very important!)
• Market timing

Most of these sound like common sense, and they are, but it can’t be reiterated enough: it isn’t easy. Fortunately, the journey makes it worth it.

I’m excited to announce that Shotput Ventures and the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Georgia Tech have teamed up for the Shotput 2010 class of companies. Here are some aspects of the partnership:

• Shotput companies will be ATDC member companies
• The ATDC Seed Fund is investing in the Shotput fund
• The Shotput companies will have office space at the ATDC
• The weekly dinners will be held at the ATDC
• Shotput companies will be able to participate in CapVenture

Applications for Shotput 2010 are now open. Please apply.

In lieu of an open house like we did last year, we’re doing a Shotput Ventures Office Hours program at two popular coffee shops in town. The goal of the office hours is to make the Shotput partners available for potential applicants to ask questions and learn more about the 12 week program. Here are the office hours:

March 4, 2010
1pm – 3pm
Octane Coffee Westside (near GA Tech)

March 24, 2010
10am – noon
Octane Coffee Eastside (near Emory)

Please stop by and introduce yourself.

Through a tweet I came across Brad O’Neill’s blog post on Rajeev’s Rule:

“When any sincere individual or group of people asks for your assistance in the pursuit of their business dream, strive to help them in any way that you can, be it small or large.”

Rajeev Motwani was a Stanford professor and angel investor that was one of the most respected advisors in Silicon Valley and was always looking to help others. While I haven’t achieved his level of respect, I do aspire to give back and help other entrepreneurs in pursuit of their business dream.

Please shoot me an email or tweet if I can help.

Today I had the opportunity to help at the monthly StartupLounge PitchCamp program facilitated by Michael Blake and I must say that it is a great program for entrepreneurs and I highly recommend it. The program is designed to give entrepreneurs a brief overview of elevator pitches, time to refine the pitch with a couple mentors, and finally a chance to practice it in front of everyone. Generally, the thinking is that as an entrepreneur we suffer from expert’s syndrome where we know so much about our business that we can’t concisely say what we do in a 30 second elevator ride, and thus having an objective third party goes a long ways in helping.

Here are some of the guidelines from PitchCamp:

• There’s no perfect elevator pitch but there are ways to make a good one
• Answering questions such as who you are, what you do, what pain you solve, and what you want is a good formula
• An analog analogy can be useful to make the business more memorable by attaching the idea to an existing concept people are familiar with
• A hook, or opening comment like “I was frustrated trying to…” can also be memorable

Some other tips include recording yourself and practicing it on anyone who will listen. A choice quote: an amateur practices until they get it right while a professional practices it until they can’t get it wrong.

I’ve read a number of executive summaries over the years and most will include a section on fundraising, including the amount of funding desired, and for a smaller percentage, the desired valuation. Naturally, the expected valuations are all over the place, and don’t usually designate whether it is the pre or post-money valuation. Unfortunately, the vast majority of desired valuations are much higher than the going rate, especially in Atlanta. There aren’t any hard and fast rules but here’s what I’ve seen over the past few years:

• Angel deals for pre-revenue companies with a beta product are typically at a $500,000 post-money valuation (e.g. $100k would be invested and the angels would own 20%)
• If the entrepreneur or team has been successful before building a multi-million dollar company, expect a $1.5 – $2 million pre-money valuation
• Revenue generating startups should take their trailing twelve months revenue and multiple it by a comparable public market multiple (the going rate for a similar publicly traded company), less a discount of 25% – 50% for being private (no liquidity or market for shares)

I recommend that startups use this as a guide when thinking about valuations and raising money.