6 ms·

Agreed, when I was at Tech (03-08) startups were all the rage and there were tons of them forming around campus. I think times have probably changed in Atlanta

by ghc 13y ago

Agreed, when I was at Tech (03-08) startups were all the rage and there were tons of them forming around campus. I think times have probably changed in Atlanta thanks to the financial crisis, and startups are no longer as common.

ja27 13y ago
He should look at the name on the Klaus building and realize that we'd actually heard of startups in the early 1990s and before. The ATDC has even been around for 33 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Klaus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Klaus
- timtamboy63 13y ago
  Klaus is a bit of a personal hero. Not saying that no-one had heard of/started a startup, more that the culture at Tech isn't particularly conducive to it.
timtamboy63 13y ago
Definitely didn't know this, and it's super interesting. Weird that they've died down so much.
rietta 13y ago
The Atlanta startup culture is a bit different from the Bay Area. Less consumer internet, more B2B. The investors tend to come from a real-estate, or similar background, and do not always understand technology. That's partly why the bootstrapping/lean startup approach is so critical around here. It's just not worth wasting time trying to get a permission slip from an old rich guy in most cases.
- kmassey 13y ago
  "investors tend to come from real estate" Yowza, you're about 20 years behind the times. Local angel group has 100+ investors, is 15 years old and has invested in probably 60+ companies in tech space by now. 4 GA VC firms are raising new funds, ATV has just created a new accelerator, state of GA has just created a state based $100M fund, Flashpoint has helped raise roughly $30M in 18 months and so on and so on.
  - rietta 13y ago
    Flashpoint is pretty great! I am going based upon what I have heard in various startup circle discussions. I am usually the "hacker" in the group of others. I have myself stayed as far away from raising funds as possible. I know I have watched friends in the startup community spend months or years courting the angel investment community, going to dinner theatre (pitch events) and come away empty handed and dejected. Most would be better off just building their MVP and marketing it with every ounce of passion that they put into attempting to raise an Angel round.
  - rietta 13y ago
    A few years ago, I had a SaaS startup in the ATDC but at just about every meeting I was one of the few people in the group capable of coding. One thing lead to another and I ended up bowing out of the full on startup myself and ended up creating a Ruby on Rails development consultancy instead. It has been growing steadily for the last two years and I am pretty happy with this direction given the massive opportunity to work with a variety of startups build their products to test their product/market fit.

by ghc 13y ago

ja27 13y ago

He should look at the name on the Klaus building and realize that we'd actually heard of startups in the early 1990s and before. The ATDC has even been around for 33 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Klaus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Klaus

timtamboy63 13y ago
Klaus is a bit of a personal hero. Not saying that no-one had heard of/started a startup, more that the culture at Tech isn't particularly conducive to it.

timtamboy63 13y ago

Definitely didn't know this, and it's super interesting. Weird that they've died down so much.

rietta 13y ago

The Atlanta startup culture is a bit different from the Bay Area. Less consumer internet, more B2B. The investors tend to come from a real-estate, or similar background, and do not always understand technology. That's partly why the bootstrapping/lean startup approach is so critical around here. It's just not worth wasting time trying to get a permission slip from an old rich guy in most cases.

kmassey 13y ago
"investors tend to come from real estate" Yowza, you're about 20 years behind the times. Local angel group has 100+ investors, is 15 years old and has invested in probably 60+ companies in tech space by now. 4 GA VC firms are raising new funds, ATV has just created a new accelerator, state of GA has just created a state based $100M fund, Flashpoint has helped raise roughly $30M in 18 months and so on and so on.
- rietta 13y ago
  Flashpoint is pretty great! I am going based upon what I have heard in various startup circle discussions. I am usually the "hacker" in the group of others. I have myself stayed as far away from raising funds as possible. I know I have watched friends in the startup community spend months or years courting the angel investment community, going to dinner theatre (pitch events) and come away empty handed and dejected. Most would be better off just building their MVP and marketing it with every ounce of passion that they put into attempting to raise an Angel round.
- rietta 13y ago
  A few years ago, I had a SaaS startup in the ATDC but at just about every meeting I was one of the few people in the group capable of coding. One thing lead to another and I ended up bowing out of the full on startup myself and ended up creating a Ruby on Rails development consultancy instead. It has been growing steadily for the last two years and I am pretty happy with this direction given the massive opportunity to work with a variety of startups build their products to test their product/market fit.