David Cummings on Startups

Blog

  • Atlanta Startup Village at Atlanta Tech Village March 26th

    Tomorrow’s a big day: the Atlanta Tech Village is hosting the Atlanta Startup Village as its first 100+ person event. With 206 people already signed up, we expect ~150 to actually show up. Free parking, a MARTA station nearby, 400 megs of fiber WiFi, and a completely new venue makes for great infrastructure. The real magic is in the entrepreneurs and the community — no matter how great everything else is, it always comes down to people.

    Here are the five startups presenting:

    The villages are coming together tomorrow night and I’m looking forward to it.

  • 3 Books Every Atlanta Entrepreneur Needs to Read

    Atlanta has a much richer and extensive history with entrepreneurs than most people realize. Many people know about the big success stories with Ted Turner of CNN / Turner Networks, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank of Home Depot, and Asa Griggs Candler with John Pemberton creating The Coca-Cola Company. There are many other entrepreneurs in Atlanta that have had major successes including the founders of WebMD, Spanx, and even The Elf of the Shelf from CCA and B Publishing. To better prepare for one’s future it helps to understand one’s past.

    Here are three books every Atlanta entrepreneur needs to read:

    1. A Man in Full – Tom Wolfe’s best-selling novel is also a great way to learn about one of Atlanta’s most prized industries — commercial real estate — and insight into how certain types of people operate
    2. Call Me Ted – Ted Turner was one of the most successful cable entrepreneurs anywhere, let alone Atlanta, and his autobiography is full of interesting stories and anecdotes (fun fact: CNN’s headquarters was an opportunistic purchase of a failed real estate venture)
    3. Jungle Rules – John Imlay built the largest software company in the world right in Atlanta and is the benefactor of angel investing in the city, so it’s only fitting to read his autobiography (fun fact: Imlay’s company, MSA, invented the first maintenance contract to have recurring revenue)

    In 2011, Atlanta’s entrepreneurial activity ranked second in the country with 500 per 100,000 adults. Atlanta has a bright entrepreneurial past and future — study it, live it, and create it.

    What else? What are some other books Atlanta entrepreneurs should read?

  • 3 CRM Trends on the Horizon

    Continuing with yesterday’s post, Will the Next Major CRM Provider Please Stand Up, there are a number of trends on the horizon that will have a major impact on CRM. CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is such a large market that a number of trends, like social media, have already started changing the product landscape. I’d like to talk about three specific trends.

    Here are three trends in CRM that are on the horizon and will have a serious impact:

    1. Decline in Sales People — just like travel agents, as markets mature and web technologies get better, more and more products and services will be bought in a self-service manner online, reducing the number of sales people (sales people will never go away but technology is going to replace a number of them)
    2. Industry Specific CRMs — one size doesn’t fit all and as more people are exposed to modern, web-based CRMs, the opportunity also grows for a more specialized system that takes into account nuances relevant to that vertical and market (generic systems are already customized to be industry specific, but they aren’t as elegant as a custom built system that achieves a critical mass of customers)
    3. Ease of Integrating Cloud Apps — AppExchange, and the number of third-party apps that integrate into Salesforce.com, is often cited as one of the main reasons Salesforce.com is such a dominant force in the industry, only now there are a number of robust third-party APIs and cloud middleware applications that make it easier than ever to integrate apps, slowly removing one of the biggest barriers to adoption

    CRM serves as the core of many B2B businesses. Over the next 3 – 5 years, we’re going to see many changes and industry trends play out in the market.

    What else? What are some other trends on the horizon that will affect the CRM market?

  • Will the Next Major CRM Player Please Stand Up

    Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been around for decades. Over the past 10 years, Salesforce.com has risen to prominence as both the largest Software as a Service (SaaS) company in the world and the largest CRM company in the world. Salesforce.com has an incredibly powerful product that is now geared towards the enterprise and over time has moved away from the small and even low mid market segments. Also, at a price point of $65 – $125/user/month (retail), the pricing is more inline with what larger organizations can afford to spend. The product is the most robust and most well integrated with other applications.

    Market wise, there exists an opportunity for a lighter weight, more end-user friendly CRM that’s in the $5 – $15/user/month for the small to mid-sized business segment of the market. It doesn’t need to be as comprehensive as Salesforce.com, but it does need to be fairly customizable, and just as important, integrate with a large number of third-party apps (one of the most challenging things). SugarCRM, NetSuite, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM have strong products, but all target the enterprise with products that are north of $30/user/month.

    Here are some of the current contenders in the SMB market:

    So, the SMB market is clearly healthy with a number of competitors, but talking to other entrepreneurs, no system dominates. I believe over the next 2-3 years another CRM player will emerge as the leading SMB provider, and it’s only a matter of time before the winner becomes apparent.

    What else? Do you use any of these products and who do you think will be the next major CRM player?

  • Scholarship Criteria at the Atlanta Tech Village

    One of the projects we’re working on at the Atlanta Tech Village is setting up a scholarship program for entrepreneurs and startups. The idea is that internally as well as sponsors might want to support certain areas that aren’t as represented like social enterprises, student entrepreneurs, B2C startups, specific industry verticals, etc. We’re confident that our strength is going to be B2B/enterprise software but part of our overall mission is to support the entire tech and startup ecosystem.

    Besides the obvious question of how many scholarships will we have, which will be determined by sponsorships, the next question is: what criteria will we use to decide?

    Here are some criteria ideas we’re currently brainstorming (it would be a combination of attributes):

    • Startups that haven’t raised any money
    • Startups that have less than a certain amount of total revenue (e.g. $10,000)
    • Startups with specific founder characteristics (e.g. certain demographics)
    • Startups targeting a vertical desired by a sponsor (e.g. a large digital media company that wants to help other digital media startups)
    • Startups with a double or triple bottom line (e.g. a social enterprise that helps the community and makes money)

    Over time we’ll figure out what does and doesn’t work with scholarships. Right now, we’re looking forward to trying it out and learning as we go.

    What else? What are some other ideas for scholarship criteria?

  • 7 Ideas for Startup Metrics to Track

    With so many metrics out there, it’s easy for a startup to get bogged down looking for the elusive “perfect” KPIs to monitor. From a CEO perspective, I always like to focus on keeping it as simple as possible with no more than two high-level numbers for each department to report on weekly. Now, of course, there are many more metrics tracked behind-the-scenes, but a small number makes it easy to concentrate.

    Here are seven ideas for startup metrics to track on a weekly basis:

    1. Annual recurring revenue — the current run rate of the business, which represents the health of the enterprise from a top-line, financial vantage point
    2. Lost recurring revenue — the amount of annual recurring revenue that churned in the previous week
    3. Weighted sales pipeline — the amount of new annual recurring revenue expected to be added in the next 30 days, weighted by likelihood of closing
    4. New marketing qualified leads — the number of new leads that came in the past week that meet marketing’s definition of a qualified lead
    5. New marketing pipeline value — the dollar amount of sales opportunity pipeline added in the past week from marketing qualified leads (the marketing qualified leads don’t have to have come in the same week)
    6. New on boarded customers — the number of new customers that have finished the quick start/on boarding process in the past week
    7. Net promoter score — the percent likelihood of customers surveyed in the past week to recommend the product to a colleague or friend

    Bonus: if the startup is venture backed, another important metric is burn rate or number of months until the business runs out of money.

    Tracking metrics on a weekly basis, displaying them on a public LED scoreboard, and making sure everyone knows where the startup stands, is a great way to align the company and hit the goals.

    What else? What are some other startup metrics you really like to track?

  • 7 Ideas from Today’s Interview at the Insights with Entrepreneurs Series

    Earlier today I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Sam Williams of the Metro Atlanta Chamber in front of 100+ people as part of the Insights with Entrepreneurs series. We covered a variety of topics ranging from Atlanta entrepreneurship to Pardot to the Atlanta Tech Village.

    Here are a few notes from today’s conversation:

    1. Atlanta has all the natural resources to be a top 10 tech startup city due to Georgia Tech, a low cost of living, many young professionals, the world’s busiest airport, and great internet connectivity (Atlanta is the number one place in the country for data centers)
    2. Pardot’s success came down to culture, timing, and execution
    3. Pardot’s culture was defined by the following:
      Be the best place to work and the best place to be a customer
      Good work, good people, and good pay
      Core values are positive, self-starting, and supportive
    4. Most often, the original business idea isn’t the idea that ends up being successful — Pardot started as a PPC bid arbitrage platform before pivoting into marketing automation software
    5. Atlanta Tech Village’s goal is to be a rainforest where chaos and weeds ensue instead of being a planned farm with organized crops
    6. The Atlanta Tech Village, at 103,000 sq ft, is the largest tech entrepreneur center in the Southeast and the largest coworking space in the Southeast (25,000 sq ft)
    7. Atlanta Tech Village has sold over 100 memberships in the first 75 days purely through word of mouth, Twitter, and PR

    Bonus: I shared my work / life balance strategy.

    I enjoyed the Metro Atlanta Chamber event and it was fun to meet several new people.

    What else? If you were at the event, what are some ideas you took away from it?

  • 7 Ideas for X Blog Posts

    Last week I ran an experiment where I published seven blog posts that had seven ideas each on a specific topic. The goal of the exercise was to see if that style of post, with a specific number of items, was more successful in terms of visitors and retweets.

    Here are the seven posts:

    Now, I don’t know how the above content compares to the standard content, but the stats are dramatically different: the 7 ideas for X blog posts received an average of 25% more visitors and 3x the number of retweets. People like numerated lists and it drives more traffic.

    What else? What are your thoughts on using lists as a theme for content marketing?

  • How Important are B2C Startups in a Tech Ecosystem?

    Atlanta is strong at B2B startups and weak at B2C startups. Why is Atlanta strong with B2B startups? In the late 1970s Atlanta was home to the largest software company in the world, Management Science America (MSA), which in turn spawned many other B2B tech companies. Generally, there’s also a more conservative, pragmatic ethos about the region that results in a let’s-solve-a-problem approach to entrepreneurship. So, should much weight be put on growing the B2C startup community?

    Here are a few thoughts on the importance of B2C startups in a tech ecosystem:

    • B2C startups, when successful, generate significantly more press and media coverage, on average, compared to B2B startups, which in turn makes it easier to recruit talented people and highlights the city
    • B2C startups are riskier and more likely of a binary outcome, making it harder to raise capital, providing a virtuous cycle of few B2C startups (people successful in a B2C startup are more likely to invest in other B2C startups)
    • B2C startups are seen as cooler because they generally influence a larger number of people and have a greater chance of changing the world
    • Several of the largest tech success stories over the past decade are B2C: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Zynga, etc

    B2C startups aren’t better or worse than B2B startups but they do have different characteristics and fewer strong ecosystems. My belief is that B2C startups are important to support, yet overall, the best thing to do is accentuate the existing ecosystem strengths.

    What else? What are your thoughts on the importance of B2C startups in a tech ecosystem?

  • Atlanta Tech Village Observations After 10 Weeks

    The Atlanta Tech Village has been open for 10 weeks now and we’ve been having a great time. Real estate and community building, as an entrepreneur, are very different from enterprise software, but still the same regarding the need to constantly learn, talk with customers, and iterate.

    Here are some observations and lessons learned after having the Atlanta Tech Village open for 10 weeks:

    • Community support has been phenomenal and hundreds of people have reached out to see how they can help
    • 102 paying members have joined so far (a paying member is someone that has a membership with a desk)
    • To have greater density of people, and drive down the per person costs, parking is going to be the limiting factor (we can get to 450 members with our current parking deck and we’re going to have 600 desks once our renovations are finished — many parking decks are in the area)
    • Demand has exceeded expectations for people wanting a spot to go to one or two days a week (we thought more people would be in three to four days per week)
    • Companies with two or more people prefer a private room instead of being in a large coworking area (we knew that was the case but we didn’t realize to what extent)
    • High end, locally ground coffee has been a big hit
    • Super short contracts/agreements are a big draw for entrepreneurs
    • Serendipitous interactions are already happening and creating value for the community
    • Simple programs like Free Food Fridays, where we have catered lunch for everyone every Friday, are some of the best ways to bring the community together

    10 weeks in, the Atlanta Tech Village is exceeding my expectations and I’m looking forward to the continued enhancements and changes.

    What else? What are some other observations about the Atlanta Tech Village you didn’t expect 10 weeks ago?