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I think Atlanta was very lucky to have Chris Klaus and ISS, but it also happened to have Jay Chaudhry and Michael McChesney. It happened to have Tom Noonan, Si
by rjurney 17y ago
I think Atlanta was very lucky to have Chris Klaus and ISS, but it also happened to have Jay Chaudhry and Michael McChesney. It happened to have Tom Noonan, Sig Mosely and John Imlay, who were visionary enough to see the potential of Chris's product. It happened to have MSA. It happened to have an existing workforce in network communications and finance with transferrable skills, and it happened to have Georgia Tech.
I think that all adds up to a good fit. I think Atlanta wanted to birth a security cluster. I think there were vectors in place, pushing Atlanta the whole way.
- tptacek 17y agoTom Noonan is a very good point. There were Chris Klauses in at least 3 other places at the same time, but only one ISS and only one Tom Noonan. ISS was also managed very differently than their mid-'90s competitors, in ways you can trace back to Noonan. Noonan is also definitely a product of Atlanta.
- rjurney 17y agoTom also invested in and advised many companies after ISS. The founders of SPI dynamics are doing the same thing. Lots of the founders of these companies that exited have done that, or gone on to found more than one company. Its what sustains the cluster.