Category: Community

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the Atlanta chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs annual gala at the Georgia Aquarium. It was a wonderful event centered around giving back. Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, was honored for his philanthropy and several entrepreneurs won awards.

The biggest takeaway from the evening for me is how lucky we are to have an organization like TiE. TiE’s mission is to promote entrepreneurship around the world and they are doing a great job. I would recommend you look into your local chapter of TiE and get involved.

One of the best pieces of advice I like to pass on to other entrepreneurs is to reach out and schedule at least one lunch per week, preferably more, with other entrepreneurs you would like to get to know better (or meet for the first time). Looking at my calendar for this week, I have two such meals already in place. My mind is already thinking of questions to ask, similarities or differences in our businesses, and any advice or referrals I might be able to earn.

Entrepreneurs love talking to other entrepreneurs.

Groups like the Entrepreneurs’ Organization are so successful because they provide a platform for entrepreneurs to interact and participate in peer-to-peer forums. The new ATDC is working on similar initiatives to foster community and enhance the likelihood of success for Georgia-based technology companies. This Wednesday, I’m attending the first, very informal Atlanta Startup Entrepreneurs (ATLSE.com) meetup lunch for entrepreneurs that want to help mentor or be mentored. Please join us if you can.

My advice for entrepreneurs: visit with other like-minded individuals in your community, and you’ll quickly appreciate the value of experience sharing.

This morning we had our last partner breakfast for Shotput Ventures to debrief on the year, discuss lessons learned, and talk about next year’s program. Each partner talked about things that worked well and things that needed improvement. Here are some of the takeaways:

• Try to better discern which teams are “all in” vs those that see it more as a hobby or summer job
• Mentor the teams to make the investment money last six months, instead of the just the three months during the program, so that they have more runway to be successful
• Ensure each team has at least two programmers (we only required one programmer per team)
• Don’t allow teams greater than three people, unless it is a special circumstance

Of course, we discussed several more lessons learned that can’t be discussed here. Overall, I’m very pleased with our first year and I really enjoyed working with the awesome Shotput partners.

Today I met with Peter from the Medici Center in Atlanta. I hadn’t heard of the non-profit until he reached out to me to gather feedback on entrepreneurship and incubators in Atlanta. First, some background on the Medici Center.

The Medici Center is a relatively new non-profit created to buy Atlanta’s City Hall East and turn it into a renaissance center with arts, businesses, eco/green awareness, and social entrepreneurship. City Hall East is over two million square feet of office space and is mostly unused. The Medici Center is scheduled to purchase the building from Atlanta on January 1, 2010 and then spend 12 months refurbishing 400,000 square feet for offices, class rooms, galleries, and more. I believe the facility and resources will be a great asset for the City of Atlanta.

Peter was interested in learning more about the entrepreneurship community in Atlanta. I told him that Atlanta could really use a space like his as a co-working facility, for networking and educational events, and for seed stage entrepreneurs because traditional office space is so rigid with terms. In addition, I pointed him to sites like TechDrawl.com, StartupRiot.com, StartupLounge.com, ATLSE.com, and others. He was amazed at how much entrepreneurial activity is going on in Atlanta and I explained that we’re only getting started. I also filled him in on the new direction of the ATDC and how it is really shaping up to be the center of the technology eco-system in Atlanta.

It’ll be interesting to watch the development of the Medici Center and I’m excited Atlanta has a such a forward thinking organization.

After posting my first round of lessons learned from Shotput Ventures, and successfully completing Demo Day yesterday, I wanted to capture some more thoughts related to our first class. Let’s jump right in:

• In the future, the Demo Day event should not be held on a Monday because most VC firms hold their partner meeting on that day
• Pairing one mentor with each team at the beginning of the program would be better than having several mentors that work with multiple teams
• Funding companies using the formula of $6,000 per co-founder is probably more aligned with each team’s actual financial needs for the three month program (as compared to the $5,000 per team and $5,000 per co-founder model we used)
• While the ATDC did an awesome job setting us up with the 100-person TSRB event facility, we could have easily filled up a room that accommodates 200 people
• Having a few graphic designers available for the teams would have saved them valuable time in designing their logos and web app user interfaces

Again, I’m very proud of our first class and think that everyone involved did a great job!