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I could not agree more, I've been prompted to move to the West Coast by several Angel friends, really considering it now. It will all depend on how the venture

I could not agree more, I've been prompted to move to the West Coast by several Angel friends, really considering it now. It will all depend on how the venture I'm in now goes. It's GreenTech and getting funding in the Atlanta area is like trying to find hen's teeth. We had to go to the west coast Angels and VCs to find it.

rjurney 17y ago
I didn't write this to encourage people to leave - but the fact is that if you are unable to change the type of startup you launch, or shrink the scope of your initial product vision to fit our landscape - you may have no choice but to leave if you want to succeed. I would encourage you to take advantage of what our city has to offer, instead of leaving. Learn customer development. Build something our local economy wants to buy. I'll talk more about that in the next article. The fact is that the improvement in our startup business environment in the last four years has been overwhelming. Things have improved, they are improving, and they will continue to improve. Please, get connected with the community, and help us grow it to be even better. That being said, if you do leave - come back! Atlanta is an overwhelmingly great place to start your second company, no matter what it does.
- Kestrelhunter 17y ago
  The only problem I have with one of the start-ups I'm working on is the fact that it's a complete first mover advantage play. We would have to go big fast to capture and hold the market before other "larger" market players get involved. I've been told two polar opposite things to do by two seasoned entrepreneurs, one says, bootstrap and go a year, the VC's will treat you very well after 50 contracts (should be very easy to get, I have two lined up with only concept and Accenture is interested). The other says, go west young man, the idea is a market changer and it will go big fast but will needed to be well funded to keep from hitting the cash wall. That's were I'm torn at the moment. PS: As you can guess by my previous tweet, I can't sleep tonight)
  - rkischuk 17y ago
    You're essentially saying that the market is too big to take on without big funding. In the vein of what rjurney said, is it possible the niche you're filling isn't small enough? If you try and capture the whole market with big funding and the big guys come in and take your lunch, you still fail. If you learn how to meet the needs of a niche, even if the big guy comes in and chases the whole market, you'll still meet the needs of your niche better than anyone, and can grow into an adjacent niche.

rjurney 17y ago

I didn't write this to encourage people to leave - but the fact is that if you are unable to change the type of startup you launch, or shrink the scope of your initial product vision to fit our landscape - you may have no choice but to leave if you want to succeed. I would encourage you to take advantage of what our city has to offer, instead of leaving. Learn customer development. Build something our local economy wants to buy. I'll talk more about that in the next article. The fact is that the improvement in our startup business environment in the last four years has been overwhelming. Things have improved, they are improving, and they will continue to improve. Please, get connected with the community, and help us grow it to be even better. That being said, if you do leave - come back! Atlanta is an overwhelmingly great place to start your second company, no matter what it does.

Kestrelhunter 17y ago
The only problem I have with one of the start-ups I'm working on is the fact that it's a complete first mover advantage play. We would have to go big fast to capture and hold the market before other "larger" market players get involved. I've been told two polar opposite things to do by two seasoned entrepreneurs, one says, bootstrap and go a year, the VC's will treat you very well after 50 contracts (should be very easy to get, I have two lined up with only concept and Accenture is interested). The other says, go west young man, the idea is a market changer and it will go big fast but will needed to be well funded to keep from hitting the cash wall. That's were I'm torn at the moment. PS: As you can guess by my previous tweet, I can't sleep tonight)
- rkischuk 17y ago
  You're essentially saying that the market is too big to take on without big funding. In the vein of what rjurney said, is it possible the niche you're filling isn't small enough? If you try and capture the whole market with big funding and the big guys come in and take your lunch, you still fail. If you learn how to meet the needs of a niche, even if the big guy comes in and chases the whole market, you'll still meet the needs of your niche better than anyone, and can grow into an adjacent niche.