Archive for the 'Startups' Category

Startup Riot - New News!

Published on May 5, 2008 in Events, Startups and Venture Capital. 0 Comments

Startup RiotOkay folks, there is new news for the upcoming Startup Riot which is only 2 weeks (!) away.

First, I’ve opened back up applications to present. There are still limited slots remaining but I’ve had a lot of people asking me to look at this company or that as a favor. So to be fair, I’m opening up the application for everyone on the site. One change though - along with your application you must submit your four slides (details below) along with your application. Based on those slides I’ll decide if you get a slot to present or not.

So if you want to submit slides to possibly present here are the rules. Your slides can’t have any animation, audio, video, or anything else to make them anything but static slides. They also must be submitted in Powerpoint (PPT, not the new PPTX) format. My suggestion is to cover your team, your product/service, and what you’ve accomplished and/or what you plan on doing.

Second, details will be coming soon (next day or so hopefully) about the after-party. Yes, there is going to be an after-party for Startup Riot. It’ll start right at the end of the event at 5pm and probably run until 8pm or later (depending on the final venue). Regardless of where we hold this, it will be somewhere in Atlantic Station so everyone can walk from the conference to the party.

So plan on attending the after-party if you come to the event or even if you don’t. We’ve got an awesome sponsor for this part of the day and this should rock.

UPDATE: fixed my suggestion above to include what I actually suggest for your slides.  It was cut off before.  Whoops!

ATDC Pushes Six Out of the Nest

Published on April 15, 2008 in Events and Startups. 1 Comment

ATDCI got the heads up on a press release coming out tomorrow from ATDC (thanks Lance!).  If you haven’t heard, ATDC and VentureLab is doing an Entrepreneurs Showcase on May 15, 2008.  This will be a chance to mix and mingle with a lot of entrepreneurs as well as folks from ATDC and VentureLab.

Of the six companies that are graduating ATDC, I think I know three of them decently well.  It’s good to see these companies get moved out of ATDC so that space (and more importantly, attention) can be focused on the new companies that are already moving in (folks like Suniva and Clearleap among the many others announced recently).  None of these companies strikes me as being as huge as MindSpring yet (MindSpring was also an ATDC graduate prior to merging with EarthLink).  But then, MindSpring wasn’t a huge success right when they graduated either (although they were definitely on the right path).  If even one of the graduating companies goes on to make it big, then this year’s class will have been a success.

There are also five companies that are graduating from VentureLab - three of which have already moved to ATDC.  Personally I’m surprised this number wasn’t all five of the companies but perhaps the other two (Verco Materials and Zenda Technologies) are in a space that doesn’t make sense for them to be at ATDC.  On a quick glance, this seems to be the case with Verco working in materials technology and Zenda in neurological testing.  Given ATDC’s company composition as of late, these don’t seem to be a good fit.

Once registration opens up for the showcase, I know I’ll be signing up to go.  It’s being held at the Biltmore (just down the street from ATDC) which was in the running to host Startup Riot this year.  Speaking of which, I just hope I’m not too frazzled from planning Startup Riot which will be four days later.  Make sure you go to that too!

Startup Riot - Where Are We At?

Published on April 14, 2008 in Events, Jobs, Startups and Venture Capital. 0 Comments

So I’ve been extremely busy trying to line up everything for Startup Riot (5 weeks away!) which has kept me away from blogging.  I thought I’d give a quick update as to where things are at right now.

First, there is a nice site that is up for Startup Riot.  You can see the agenda (which is already wrong - see below) as well as info on the keynote and how to signup to attend and/or present.

As of right now, there are 55 companies lined up to present on May 19th.  This is way more than my 45 company target I initially hoped to hit.  At the rate things have been going, I suspect we’ll end up with 60-70 companies for the day.  This will require a shift in the schedule but it is totally doable.  Anyone (nearly) who signs up will have a slot to present.  I say “nearly” because there are a couple of companies who I’ve had to say no to due to lack of fit or other issues.  Not to say these aren’t good companies, just they don’t really fit with the other presenting companies.

Along those lines, there are also over 100 registered participants for the day (including representatives from presenting startups).  There are a number more waiting in the wings I suspect.  I haven’t discussed when registration will stop but I’m planning on stopping accepting new applications about a week before the event (so on May 12th).  So if you’re still contemplating signing up - better do it soon.  If there is a surge of registrations, attendees will be accepted on a first come first serve basis.

Presenting companies should get some info in the next day or so about parameters for the presentation.  I was thinking about having uniform icons for companies to use in their pitches (to make it easy to identify companies hiring people, etc.) but I think I’ve decided against that.  As an audience member, it’s your responsibility to figure out which companies you want to approach.  And even if a company says they aren’t hiring, if you’re a rock star in their field you should approach them (same goes if the company says they aren’t raising money but you love their business).  So to make sure good interactions happen, I’m dropping this “feature” of the presentations so that I don’t inadvertently prevent something good from happening.

Remember, I’ve got two Open Coffee events this week (soon to be renamed).  Feel free to swing by if you want to chat with me about Startup Riot or anything else.

Finally, remember to spread the word about this event.  We need more entrepreneurs, job seekers, big companies, non-profits, and investors at the event.  In this case, more is better for everyone involved!

Startup Riot Registration Open

Published on March 31, 2008 in Events, Jobs, Startups and Venture Capital. 2 Comments

I still don’t have a pretty looking site up yet (it’s coming) but I’ve decided to go ahead and open up registration for Startup Riot. I still have slots available for startups to pitch although those are going pretty quickly. This is going to be a fun event and I am way looking forward to this. If you have questions, post in the comments or find me during the two Open Coffee events I’m doing this week (I should really call them Open Coffee-like events).

Startup Riot Update

Published on March 30, 2008 in Events, Jobs, Startups and Venture Capital. 0 Comments

Startup RiotSo someone posted a request on my Skribit widget for an update on Startup Riot. So here we go.

A new site is in development (what, you don’t like my manual HTML hacked site?) and should go up in the next day or two. Along with that you’ll see all the details for the event which I’m pre-announcing here. Namely, it is going to be held on Monday May 19, 2008 from 9am until 5pm at Twelve Hotel in Atlantic Station. The goal is to get 45 startups on stage to present their three minute pitch on themselves.  Already half of those slots are taken by companies who have pre-registered to pitch for the event. If you want to pitch, better act fast and sign up quickly. Companies may be from anywhere (not just Atlanta), may be in any industry (not just technology), and may be at any funding stage (or may not even be raising money). The audience will be made up of job seekers (potential co-founders, fresh grads, and others), potential clients (large companies and non-profits), and investors (angel investors and venture capitalists).

There are a couple of sponsors who have already agreed to support this event. I’m still looking for a few more to help pay for the overhead of doing this. After I secure those final sponsors, the event will be closed off to new sponsors or attendance by service providers. I’m going to manually approve each and every attendee to the event. Yes, it’ll be tedious but I’m willing to do that to ensure a high quality mix of attendees.  Each group of attendees will have a controlled number of slots available so that there is a good mix of folks for the event.  And yes, I will turn away folks based solely on my judgment as to their suitability for this event.

Finally, I’ve mentioned this to a few people but haven’t made a public announcement. We are going to have a keynote speaker at the start of the day’s events. That keynote speaker is now fully confirmed and will be Drew Curtis of Fark.com. Although a lot of people know Drew as the guy that has caused a lot of commotion, he’s also a serial entrepreneur. His talk will likely be an interesting and funny take on doing a startup. If you don’t know of Drew or Fark.com, just go read some stuff about him.  Oh yeah, Drew also owns Fark TV which is hosted by SuperDeluxe.com which is a part of TBS.

I’m still working out the fees for registration but don’t worry - they’ll be far more reasonable than other events that supposedly cater to startups. There will be an option to pre-pay for a box lunch at the event as well. There are plenty of local restaurants that you can walk to if you want to do that instead. My goal is to have as few sponsors for this event as possible and one way to do that is to have each of you pay for your own lunch.

This is going to be a fun event and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing all the startups come out and do their three minute pitches.  You can help by spreading the word about this event.  The more high quality people that show up to the event means a better event for everyone.

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