NewMe Accelerator is Coming to Town

Every now and then, an organization reaches out and shares some of the interesting initiatives they’re doing. When it so happens to include Atlanta, it’s definitely worth writing about/interviewing. Below is a brief 3-question interview with NewMe’s Accelerator’s Program Manager, X’Zavierr Garland.

1. What’s the NewMe Accelerator story and why should Atlantans care?

NewME is a nationally-recognized startup accelerator that empowers female and minority-led startups. We’ve accelerated over 30 startups who have raised almost $6 million in startup capital funding. We’re making Silicon Valley accessible. We’ve been recognized by CNN, TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal, and other major publications for the work we do to empower underrepresented minorities in the tech industry. Our mission is to educate, accelerate, and empower underrepresented tech entrepreneurs around the world.

NewME is a 12-week accelerator program in San Francisco that gives entrepreneurs unprecedented access to Silicon Valley through workshops, coaching, speaker series, and immersion into the program.

This year we’re taking our 12-week accelerator program on the road to 13 cities across the country for three-night PopUp events that are essentially a condensed version of our Silicon Valley accelerator.

2. How is the NewMe Accelerator different than all the other accelerators out there?

We make Silicon Valley accessible to entrepreneurs who might not have the opportunity otherwise. Our vast network of Silicon Valley talent plays a large role in empowering our startups.

We’re able to connect the everyday entrepreneur to Silicon Valley resources that wouldn’t normally be available.

3. You guys have an event coming up in July, what makes it a must-attend event?

The PopUps provide one-on-one coaching sessions, workshops from our world-class pitch coach, and the ability to pitch your idea to a panel of judges as well as local tech community leaders including VC’s. Startups have a chance to win $45,000 worth of prizes from our partners, as well as a spot in our NewME Accelerator in San Francisco.

Thanks X’Zavierr.

On Deck: Atlanta Startup Village – May 2013!

Atlanta Startup Village is upon us!

The companies involved this month are superb.

Besides, 170+ people have already booked their evening to spend it with you, the Atlanta entrepreneur; and the companies have not even been announced…until now.

RSVP here.

With no further adieu, we’re pleased to announce the presenters of May’s Atlanta Startup Village :

- VillageDefense - Turn your neighborhood into a network of awareness.
- NCrowd - Online customer acquisition for local merchants.
- DudeRanch.com - online home of the dude ranch vacation industry.
- SideWalk District – All your favorite local store in any category, in one place.
- Ionic Security - The unified data and mobility security platform.

Location: 5th Floor of the Atlanta Tech Village (Free Parking)
Starting Time:  Beer flows at 7:00 p.m. presentations start at 7:30 p.m.
Who: Anyone who wants to be constructive, respectful, pay it forward and learn about the Atlanta Startup Community.
When: Tuesday, May 28th.

Sponsors:

Trinet – your strategic HR business partner. They are buying the keg!
HPC - high-quality CPA services in a high-tech manner. They are buying the pizza.
Atlanta Tech Village is offering up their excellent space. Major major major thanks.
Hypepotamus is the eternal sponsor from their initial and continued support of Atlant Startup Village.

See you all there!

4 Shifts The Atlanta Startup Community Should Embrace

So much has occurred in the last 12 months of Atlanta’s Startup Community. Exits have been had, co-working spaces have cultivated a community, and entire buildings bought dedicated to Atlanta technology. New faces are showing up everyday to start real businesses. It’s never been more exciting to be in technology in Atlanta. I was conversing with some other Atlantans who are invested in this city about trends coming up. Nothing came to mind at the time but after some thought, there are four trends I predict occurring over the next 5-20 years.

First and foremost.

1. Atlanta’s Racial and Cultural Advances Will Be Our Greatest Asset 

Atlanta has a storied history when it comes to race relations. Bike over to Old Fourth Ward and take a tour in the house where Martin Luther King Jr. was born. Grace the halls of Atlanta’s Metro Chamber of Commerce and take-in the diversity of business leaders on the wall. It was always said in the 09′ mayoral election by one of the campaign leaders: “blacks and whites don’t go to church together, they don’t socialize together, but they do work together in Atlanta.” Georgia is the 4th best state for black business owners.

In technology, where you went to school or where your parents went to school don’t matter. What does is getting the job done. Whether black, white, American, non-American, male, female, straight, gay, graduate or dropout, it doesn’t matter. If you can code, sell, or market, you’ll have a job.

Compared to cities like Boulder, San Francisco, and even New York, our level of diversity puts them to shame — it really does.

In the next 5-10 years, expect to see even more diversity in technology in Atlanta. Embracing this will be huge.

2. Old Money Meets New Money

Last week, I had the good fortune to grace the fairways of Augusta National Golf Club for the Masters Tournament — definitely one of the South’s most prestigious and exclusive organizations. There’s a list on the internet somewhere of Augusta National Golf Club members including their industries of choice. There may be 2 or 3 members in technology and one of them is named Bill Gates. Old money is either inherited or earned in industries that takes a ton of capital to enter: railroads, steel, banking, insurance, etc. All are fantastic industries and have put Atlanta where we are today, but the next Coke, Home Depot, or UPS won’t come from those industries.

In the next 5 years, look for Atlanta’s Old Money to pay more attention and dollars to the opportunities and success of early stage technology companies.

3. Fortune 500 Companies Start Using What’s In Their Backyard 

Atlanta’s most successful startup, ICE, just recently bought the NYSE. There are 15 Fortune 500 companies in our state. Traditionally, innovation doesn’t occur from the slow moving 800 lb gorillas. Yet, the amount of frustrated employees just working for a paycheck aspiring to do something more impact-ful is high in Atlanta, Georgia.

In the next 5 years, expect many of these companies to keep an ear to Atlanta’s startup community. Who knows, if we can get some of the entrepreneurs in the same room as the executives, that’s a strong start.

4. High School Students Dive Into Tech 

There are very few high school students shown the opportunity of entrepreneurship as a viable career choice. In other communities, high schools are groomed to build the next Google.  This doesn’t happen anywhere I know of in the South.

In the next 5 years, expect more high school students to enter the Atlanta Startup Community and make a big impact.

These are four trends that will make Atlanta’s growth and prosperity accelerate even quicker.

Atlanta Startup Village #7 On Deck

Before we get to the next Atlanta Startup Village, it’s vital to share Techturized’s progress. Tomorrow night, 4/12 at Hypepotamus, their launch party is going down. Here is the official invite.  This company went through Atlanta’s accelerator, Flashpoint. They are the real deal. It should be a great night.

Onwards to the next Atlanta Startup Village.

You guys aren’t going to believe the line-up we have. From multi-million dollar cashcows, to the business processer of the hottest currency in the world (BitCoin), this ASV has it all!

Besides, 80+ people have already booked their evening to spend it with you, the Atlanta entrepreneur; and the companies have not even been announced…until now.

RSVP here.

With no further adieu, we’re pleased to announce the presenters of Atlanta Startup Village #7:

- Deductmor makes tax time a joy for the self-employed. Stage: Pre-revenue.
- QGenda provides scheduling software for physicians who are on-call. Stage: 20+ employees
- Kevy synchronizes data across your web-based applications that don’t currently talk to each other. Stage: launching this month.
- PeachDish delivers a box of fresh ingredients for dinner for two every week for $20. Stage: launching this month.
- BitPay is the world leader in Bitcoin business solutions Stage: seed round funded.

These are some powerhouse startups in Atlanta and definitely a must-attend Atlanta Startup Village.

Location: 5th Floor of the Atlanta Tech Village (Free Parking)
Starting Time:  Beer flows at 7:00 p.m. presentations start at 7:30 p.m.
Who: Anyone who wants to be constructive, respectful, pay it forward and learn about the Atlanta Startup Community.
When: Tuesday, April 30th.

Sponsors:

Jamie Hamilton of the BIP Early Stage Fund is kind enough to sponsor the beers.
We haven’t started looking for Food Sponsors yet, but if you know anyone who wants to sponsor food, please shoot me a tweet: @JonnyBird.
Atlanta Tech Village is offering up their excellent space. Major major major thanks.
Hypepotamus is the eternal sponsor from their initial and continued support of Atlant Startup Village.

See you all there!

Interview with NY Tech Day’s John Petersen

Not sure whether it was our mutual taste for local Colorado brews or our equal animosity towards each other’s home baseball teams — actually, it was definitely the ATL vs. NYC rap battle in the back of the bus during week one of TechStars Boulder with team SalesLoft. Regardless, we hit it off with biz-dev extraordinaire and Yankee-lover, John Petersen during our time in Boulder.

John is a good man doing note-worthy things in the Big Apple.

He, along with Alec Hartman, have built a one-day dynamo of an event call NY Tech Day and they want Atlanta companies to participate. NY Tech Day is a massive science fair for entrepreneurs to exhibit their startups to thousands of consumers, investors, first adopters, job-seekers, major companies, press and media.

We caught up with John to hear more about NY Tech Day

ATL: How did you come up with the idea?

NY: Startups are hard. Most of the time, you are totally heads down in your office working on the next big thing. We wanted to create an event specifically focused on giving the spotlight to these startups — giving them the ability to show off all the cool things they are building. The more we talked to our friends in the startup community, the more we realized that we had to make this happen.

ATL: Why has it taken off?

NY: This year, we’re expecting 450+ startups and 10,000 attendees. One of our main goals was to keep the event as open as possible, and the tech community really rallied behind the idea. We made it free to attend and we kept the price for startups to exhibit incredibly low. NY Tech Day isn’t about who has the biggest marketing budget — it’s about giving startups of all shapes and sizes the resources they need to grow.

ATL: What makes y’all different than all of the other demo days?

NY: NY Tech Day isn’t a demo day at all. We modeled the event after a science fair. You get a booth and you talk about whatever is most important to you. For some startups, they’re mostly interested in raising money. Others are looking to get some press and help to get the word out. Some are just looking to recruit the best talent. We focus all our efforts on bringing these resources under one roof to connect with our exhibiting startups.

ATL: What’s the make up of companies on the floor?

NY: It’s all over the map — literally. We have exhibiting startups of all shapes and sizes — from companies launching at the event all the way up to some of the biggest, most well-known startups and then everything in-between. Last year, our startups were mostly from the East Coast, but our furtherest was from Ireland!

ATL: Do Atlanta companies get a dirty south hookup?

NY: You mean the @jonnybird special? Of course! I’d love to put together an Atlanta Tech section as I know there’s a lot of great stuff going on down there nowadays. We could certainly do some fun stuff to promote the ATL tech scene.

ATL: If Chipper Jones had a startup, would his fee be waved?

NY: Absolutely not. That’s the beauty of Tech Day. All exhibiting startups pay the same nominal rate for a booth. You’d be on the floor right next to Chipper!

What’s the future of NYTechDay?

Last year was the inaugural NY Tech Day. We had 200 startups and 4,500 attendees. This year, our venue is over triple the size and we’ll have over twice the number of startups and attendees as last year. In order to achieve hockey stick growth in true startup fashion, we’ll need to get 40,000 startups and a couple million people. We’re gonna need a big venue

ATL: You’re a biz dev guy, what can you guarantee an Atlanta would get for going up to NYTechDay?

NY: Unlimited high-fives and a Biggie vs. Outkast rap-off at the after party!! Based on last year’s event, you can expect a massive amount of press coverage, VCs, angels, advisors, mentors, developers, designers, students, job seekers, early adopters and an overall amazing day filled with startup goodness.

ATL: Hank Aaron was the greatest Atlanta Brave, right?

NY: Gotta tip the cap to the Hammer. One of the best to play the game for any team. Distant seconds would be Bobby Cox and John Rocker.

Thanks John!

Atlanta Startup Village #6 On Deck! New Venue Atlanta Tech Village!

Cranking this out during Jeopardy so pardon any misspellings, sentence fragments, and you know, anything else that drove your English teacher crazy.

More importantly, we have some unbelievable companies presenting at this month’s Atlanta Startup Village…you won’t want to miss this. We’ve got hardware, software, b2b, b2c…it’s going to be a rocking time.

Wait. Before we get to the steak and potatoes, first get a sense of the sizzle and wander over to the Atlanta Startup Village MeetUp to see the 120+ other startup enthusiasts wanting to learn from some of Atlanta’s finest startups.

Now…

Announcing the 5 presenting companies:

This company just raised $500K from local fund, Hamilton Ventures. Welcome to Atlanta Startup Village #6 Ten Eight App!

When not writing his fantastic blog, Rocket Forge (great name), Michael Mealling is building Pipefish. Welcome!

Hardware, software, they got it all. Monitors trap data and pesticide records is just the tip of the iceberg. Welcome to Atlanta Startup Village #6, Spensa Technologies!

One of Atlanta’s standard bearers in the B2C world, definitely one of the coolest startups in the A, welcome to Atlanta Startup Village #6, Huge City.

Agency here, agency there, this company helps you find an agency anywhere. Welcome to Atlanta Startup Village #6, Agency Spotter!

Many of you know the format but for new readers here are the details:

- Where: NEW VENUE: Atlanta Tech Village - at the corner of Lenox Road and Piedmont. FREE Parking and free fiber WiFi! You read it right!
- Who: Anybody and everybody who wants to learn about the Atlanta Startup Community, be nice, and pay it forward.
- When: Tuesday, March 26th at 7:00 o’clock on the dot, in the drop top cruising the street…
- What: Atlanta Startup Village: We’ll have some beer and some food.

Sponsors:

Cresa Atlanta is helping with the beer! Thank you!
TiE Atlanta and Ashish Thakur are bringing some Indian food to the party.
Michael Mealling of Pipefish is helping with the beer as well. May you be blessed as well!
Atlanta Tech Village is tooooo kind to host this event for free.
Hypepotamus is an eternal sponsor…as always.

See y’all there. It’s going more fun than a day at Six Flags.

Greenville, South Carolina’s Startup Community is Rolling

Yesterday, the journey of building Rivalry took me 2 hours north on I85 to the city of Greenville, South Carolina. This trip was spawned by a serendipitous relationship from the Atlanta Tech Village.

Successful entrepreneur, Damien Stevens literally walked into my office as he visited the Atlanta Tech Village from Greenville this past January morning to talk sales process management. Damien is building disaster recovery software for MSPs and IT resellers called Servosity — they’re growing fast and hiring 30+ people this year.

I had no idea what to expect cruising up 85 and I couldn’t have been more surprised at what I found.

Brief History of Greenville, South Carolina

In 1917, Greenville, South Carolina was known as the “Textile Center of the World.”

Entrepreneurs, like Max Heller, helped build the city into a booming economy after the war, outfitting much of the South in quality shirts, pants, and more.

Read more about Greenville’s history here. 

“NEXT: The most advanced mixture of entrepreneurs, government, big business, and technology accelerators in one building.” 

That’s my quote above, not anyone from Greenville.

The ride was nice and I rolled into Greenville, SC around 10 a.m.. Took a quick right off their perimeter and faced the NEXT building: below is a picture of it a night.

This is more how I saw it:

It was a great vibe.

I walked in, and it was no different than any other buzzing tech hub. Everyone was very kind and the companies are all in there humming away on product and distribution.

The Background of NEXT

NEXT is the brainchild of the community. The Greenville Chamber of Commerce helped organized all the entrepreneurs starting in 2006 and titled the program “NEXT.” They met once a month to talk shop and strategy. They realized, what they really wanted was to work around each other. With the help of an adventurous commercial real-estate developer and an old-warehouse, NEXT Innovation Center was built. There is an office in NEXT that has someone from the Chamber of Commerce in there everyday.

How NEXT Works:

Offering entrepreneurs spaces to build companies. There are many types of working facilities in NEXT.

Co-working: where you can come in and share a desk with other co-workers.
Rent a desk: there are about 8 different cubes that you can rent a month (pictured below).

Small office space: on the lower floors there was enclosed office space for 2-5 people.

Full Spaces for 30+ people companies: these are the big companies on the 2 floor. Damien and Servosity just moved up to the 2 floor with into the office space picture below:

The offices are great but having a few rooms with wii, ping pong, and more make it much more relaxed and comfortable.

Accelerators: The Iron Yard

The Iron Yard is part of the global accelerator network. They just had their first cohort last year. The pictures below are of the space:

Here is the meeting area for gatherings and speakers.

Here are some teams from the last year’s accelerator working on their company.

Storm trooper with a mustache? Nice touch!

Big Business and Startups:

Not only does NEXT have a startup accelerator, flexibility for company growth, a Chamber of Commerce representative on staff, but they also have a representative from Michelin Tires in the office sourcing deals and making anywhere to $50k-$100k investments. Wow.

The Benefits of Startup Community Network Effects 

Greenville is scrappy. They’ve consolidated some of their greatest resources in one building and it’s something to admire.

As their startup community grows, making strong connections with them will help the Atlanta Startup Community – whether it’s through services, customers, or brain-share. The folks in Greenville are definitely folks we want to embrace and know better.

I recommend next time you’re in Greenville, to stop by and drop into the NEXT Innovation Center.