Start Atlanta: Bootstrapping A Community
Startup requisite: empty pizza boxes
Key take-aways from this post:
- Startup communities don’t always happen organically; they need direction and committed drivers.
- When possible, capitalize on existing infrastructure.
- Start Atlanta has the potential to serve as a model for other cities trying to reach critical mass for their startup communities.
This past weekend I attended the kick-off of Start Atlanta held in the Appcelerator offices in Buckhead.
The irony of the meeting location was not lost on many in the group of more than 20 entrepreneurs who came together interested in forging a stronger high tech community here in Atlanta. Appcelerator’s Jeff Haynie recently moved to Mountain View, California in the heart of Silicon Valley as part of a $4 million deal led by Storm Ventures.
Haynie has long been a leader in Atlanta’s high tech community and his departing blog post provided some of the inspiration for Start Atlanta.
Start Atlanta is another indication of a growing movement to deepen the area’s high tech’s roots, build a climate for investment and innovation, and attract and retain a younger generation of developers, designers and entrepreneurs.
It’s vencorps meets Y Combinator meets Kiva.
It’s recognition that there is no simple mechanism to fund companies. As one of the organizers described it, Start Atlanta is a breeding ground for community. It’s about sharing resources, cross-pollinating angel investors with entrepreneurs who in some cases have nothing more than an idea. It’s about facilitating connections, raising a collective consciousness and bootstrapping a community.
I first learned about Start Atlanta from Patrick Clements whom I met at a recent Capital Lounge hosted by Michael Blake and Scott Burkett. Patrick who began Big Web Apps, (blog ) is part of the Gang of Five (actually seven) that meets regularly over coffee. Its members also include:
Loren Norman who has started several companies including Snowcap Labs (blog ), Alan Pinstein, founder of Showcase Real Estate Web Sites, Wei Yang Co-Founder, Business Development at EasyAutoSales.com (blog), Matthew Sweezey, Duncan Freeman whose company Band Metrics (blog ) is in private beta , and Ray Abram (blog)
Part support group, part strategy session, the Gang of Five decided it wanted to give some permanence to the many events popping up around Atlanta.
And so for two days and three nights, a group of mostly entrepreneurs and some investors met and brainstormed. This week they hope to unveil a community site.
Among those who attended the first night was Jason Ardell, a 25-year old entrepreneur. He is looking to help build a community and get Atlanta more recognition. His company feedscrub.com (blog) is in alpha. Think of his company as a spam filter for RSS feeds, an algorithm that helps find relevant content.
Rather than starting from scratch, Start Atlanta elected to build a site based on code from recently launched Hackers and Backers.
Hackers & Backers (Beta) is a meeting place for entrepreneurs, technical specialists, and investors. It lets you post a project and invite others to join. It helps search for people with relevant skills in your geographic area and check out their connections and credentials.
As co-founder , Ho-Sheng Hsiao who was on hand this past weekend told me, “Hackers and Backers is a combination of a social networking site and classified ads.”
He said he had a hard time looking for other entrepreneurs and thought a social networking site could spark community. “Start Atlanta is doing the same thing I wanted to do with Hackers and Backers. I wanted to see if there was a way to work together.”
And so Start Atlanta is building off Hsiao’s platform. They are adding several features to support development of the community, including a mini-project called Badgely.
As Alan Pinstein emailed after day 2, “Badgely is a system we have devised to track individual participation in the community and attendance at community events.”
To understand Badgely badges, think merit badges for entrepreneurs. These badges are meant to increase visibility and reward participants who attend and actively engage in events around the city devoted to startups and the high-tech community.
Through the first weekend, Alan wrote me that they “decided to focus on first getting the core community-fostering infrastructure in place while we make sure that we get buy-in from anticipated funders.” Plus, he added, “it’s going to take us at least several weeks to get the legal issues sorted out.”
There will also be an offline component to Start Atlanta where investors and entrepreneurs will be able to interact. It will also leverage the many existing events in Atlanta to help educate entrepreneurs and investors.
And so now the really hard part begins – sustaining a movement. At least for now, Start Atlanta joins Startup Lounge, Startup Riot, and Startup Weekend in establishing a viable community for entrepreneurialism.
Let me get back to you.
Technorati Tags: Start Atlanta; Angel Investment; Atlanta; Badgely; Hackers and Backers; Startups; New South Media Buzz; Bernaise Source Buzz;
