Why Atlanta Should Be Your Next Startup HQ(miter.mit.edu) |
Why Atlanta Should Be Your Next Startup HQ(miter.mit.edu) |
I should mention that it's difficult to characterize all people in Atlanta under one sort of personality type. In my experience, it varies wildly. Atlanta is more of a commuter city where a lot of people from the suburban area surrounding it drive to work each day. Of those who actually live in the city, I believe liberal is more frequent (particularly in the Midtown area), but again, there is a wide variety.
Atlanta has a reputation for crime, but this has actually improved significantly since the Olympics and I don't believe Atlanta is any worse than other big cities now.
There's also a variety of things to do in Atlanta. Some examples including the High Museum of Art and many local jazz clubs. There's also a number of outdoorsy things. Two prominent bike trails (Silver Comet and Freedom/Stone Mountain trail) + a new one they're building through Atlanta called the Beltline.
But there have been many successful start ups through out Atlanta's history, such as Coke, Turner Broadcasting System(CNN/Turner/etc), UPS, and more. All of these were revolutionary start ups at the time, and now are massive corporations. I expect future companies like this to be founded here in Atlanta, because it is essentially the capital of the South East, geographically about a quarter of the country.
What makes me want to move away from Atlanta is the poor city infrastructure, the dependence on suburbs, and the lack of culture. In Atlanta there is possibly less muse than in San Fran or NYC, and the city as a whole can sometimes come across as anti intellectual, which is quite the opposite of most of San Fran and NYC. Beside GA Tech and Emory college students, networking would be relatively small when compared to NYC or San Fran. But for someone who already has their network built out, such as a start up from SF/NYC trying to cut costs, Atlanta could be the place. And it's also ideal for people moving from smaller cities who don't want the large city feel.
If Atlanta had a more walkable and livable environment, it's be quite amazing.
The Atlanta suburbs were awful for me. Bland, completely unplanned messes dominated by big box stores with massive parking lots and endless subdivisions of cookie-cutter houses.
But the city was pretty cool. The Midtown-Little 5 Points-Candler Park axis was quite livable, with plenty to recommend it day and night. If I ever moved back, it would be to that part of town. Most jobs, though, tend towards the suburbs. And most of the cheap housing.
Traffic is bad there, but nowhere near LA or DC bad. Maybe like Bay Area 101 bad.
There's some geeky culture there, particularly geeky pop culture. Dragoncon, big anime community. Science/Tech geekwise there's a fair amount. GaTech and Emory, of course, and the CDC draw their share of talent. Lots of my friends or spouses worked in places like that.
Art culturewise there's not a lot. A solid underground band scene, you could see good hardworking indie bar bands nightly if you wanted. A world-class but underappreciated symphony. So-so art museum. Great archaeology museum at Emory, better than anything LA has. Gallery scene is eh. Theater scene is eh. Some film culture, but spotty. Decent foodie culture, though not on the scale of a major foodie hub. A much, much, much more vibrant LGBT culture than you might expect.
A good number of outdoorsy people. Appalachian Mountains with tons of trails, rock climbing, kayaking, serious caving. Finding people to backpack with was never a problem. Hunting and fishing culture strong too, of course.
Crime wasn't all that bad. I spent a lot of time out and about in the city itself late at night. I never really felt unsafe, but then I knew the city intimately. Did some construction work in housing projects for a summer job, that was pretty sketchy at times. My brother saw a running shootout doing the same work. But that kind of thing was very limited to very specific areas.
For me it'd be the best place to live between DC and New Orleans, but there are a number of other places I prefer.
Atlanta's population swells by 50% during the day.
This causes massive crime rate distortion issues (aka, using night population figures, aka, people with the actual address of the city on their driver's license, when really day population figures are much more appropriate for daylight crimes during the week).
Most businesses shouldn't raise money either because they're not going to grow fast enough to fit the VC model or they're going to dilute the founders so much that the wind gets sucked out of the sails. For example, learn from an Atlantan that just sold his Pardot no-investor-raised-money business for $95 million, http://davidcummings.org/2010/05/08/when-raising-money-makes....
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MPoNN4t...
Compared to where it was a few years ago it is doing a lot better.
With that being said it still isn't there yet. All of the points that the author made are valid ones.
The plusses of being in Atlanta: 1. Costs are generally lower. 2. There are some good resources for startups if you know where to look. 3. We have had a few successful exits in this town and we are getting a better tech startup buzz. 4. You have a major airport hub and can get to anywhere in the country quickly and inexpensively. 5. We are beginning to get more traction with setting up hackathons and tech focused groups in the town. 6. There are a few quality companies that have recently come out of flashpoint.
Opportunities for growth: 1. Atlanta Has not traditionally been a tech focused town. Finance, Marketing, Retail and Media have been it's dominate industries. IT has been more of a support function of those industries. 2. Atlanta investors are not as savvy as investors from tech hubs like Austin, the Valley and New York which makes it more difficult to raise money locally (a lot of startups have gone to one of those cities to raise money). 3. The resources in Atlanta do not seem to be as focused on creating tech centered startups as they could be. If you look at the programs offered at the ATDC etc. they tend to be focused on business development, product development, operations (legal things etc.) and marketing. Many of the startup events are filled with non-technical people with no money looking for co-founders for their latest social/gaming/store based app. 4. The community feels like it needs to gel and circle around the quality startups in town to drive a culture of quality....there are some low quality (me too) startups in town with non-technical founders and no money who have received way too much press/buzz that predictably have or will fail.
Many of the opportunities for growth are not unique to Atlanta. This is probably also indicative of the small number of companies in Crunchbase that are out of Atlanta.
The trajectory is going in the right direction, and if we can reach the critical mass it could be great....so in a way Atlanta is still a startup of startups.
However, it's just so tremendously isolated. The closest real city with a real financial/tech sector is Charlotte, but the transit interconnection between the two is very weak and as a result there is very little cultural cross-pollination between the two cities (unlike say DC and New York which are about the same distance apart).
I think Philadelphia is actually a smarter bet. Low cost of living, like Atlanta, Penn and Drexel right in the city, and just 90 minutes on the train to either New York or DC. The amount of cross-pollination in the DC-PHL-NYC corridor is just phenomenal, enhanced by the fact that the three cities have very different cultures and host very different types of industries.
Most consumer-tech entrepreneurs with a US passport, maybe.
I think I personally know 21 companies started AND funded since then in Atlanta. When I search for individual companies, they show up as "Atlanta, GA" and "Founded 8/2010" (for example), but they don't show up in a search.
I'd expect there are probably at least 100 Atlanta companies in Crunchbase founded since January 2008, and probably over 300 companies founded in that time. A possibly unexpected trait of Atlanta is that our companies aren't super-focused on Crunchbase, Angel List, etc, so we probably under-report on most research like this. (Our own fault - Atlanta companies - spend 10 minutes to add your startup to Crunchbase and Angel List).
Meanwhile, right next to Georgia Tech campus (in the basement of the Biltmore) has sprung up a space that is rapidly becoming a common spot for entrepreneurs (at least those who live around there), Hypepotamus (http://www.hypepotamus.com ). Atlanta Startup Village, a monthly-ish event to let folks share what they're working on, is also held out of Hypepotamus (http://atlantastartupcommunity.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/atla... ).
Culture-wise, Tech itself is on top of Midtown which has plenty of nightlife. Other hotspots include the Old Fourth Ward/Edgewood areas (the sound table, noni's, Church), Virginia Highland (Dark Horse Tavern, Hand in Hand), Buckhead, etc. Old Fourth Ward, Little Five, Edgewood, and other places in Atlanta all have active arts communities (see for example http://fluxprojects.org and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_Farm_Arts_Center ). There are several bars to keep an eye on both up-and-coming and better known bands (for example, Smith's Olde Bar), and ~an hour and 15 minutes away is Athens, which has its own thriving arts and music scenes.
I think the trick with Atlanta is nothing is pervasive—you have to know where to look, and it's not necessarily obvious where to do so. But I think if you know where to look, you'll find there's plenty of culture to be had. The good news is, there are many very smart and motivated people working to increase the visibility of both the culture and the startup community of the city. I think we'll increasingly see the effect of these efforts in the near future (indeed, I think they've already begun to have a clear effect).
Downsides mentioned (in comparison to the more popular startup cities) are the lack of startup investment capital, not as many people with an entrepreneurship mentality, both of which lead to a less-active startup culture.
However, I wonder what the effects would be if Atlanta becomes a startup hub on par with NY or San Francisco. I rather like the fact that it's cheaper to live in Atlanta than most big cities.
An increase of capital to the local economy would result in rise in the cost of living, which (I believe) is one of oft-cited reasons for moving there. A 3 bedroom townhouse in a very nice residential area for ~$150k isnt unheard of.
I would be more concerned by the fact that traffic is a nightmare and there is not much hope the state of georgia would ever get their act together and build even a half decent transit infrastructure.
One of the strong counter-forces to the otherwise suburban cultural norm that exists in Atlanta, but does not exist in Silicon Valley, is the strong professional urban black community. It's a phenomenon you'll see in literally no other city in the country--upscale retail/entertainment venues whose clientele is dominated by upper middle class blacks. Quite a distinctly un-suburban phenomenon.
There seemed to be a lot of interest in business startups, but not the kind of scalable tech startups you would find in the Bay Area -- more like consultancies or other professional services. Still, a good way to a $200-300k/yr income. They may have been as much a "getting out of the Army" thing as an Atlanta thing, though.
The city itself? Please. It's probably the center of the hiphop universe, one of the most gay friendly cities around, and a fun place. It apparently also has some of the best strip clubs in the country, far beating LV. But I hate strip clubs, so just going to go by what friends/associates say.
The interest in professional services makes sense when you consider that Delta, UPS, Home Depot, etc, are headquartered there. Logistics services, consulting, legal services, etc, are all in high demand, and the city is the hub for that sort of work for the surrounding region.
I lived in Lexington, KY for 14 years and I believe we were among America's leaders in churches, strip clubs, and chain restaurants (per capita, that is).
There's a Portland joke somewhere in here...
http://www.austinemerging100.com/list.php
HomeAway and BazaarVoice both just had IPOs. Indeed got bought for likely ~1 billion this year too. Phurnace exited to BMC for ~500 million about 2 years ago, Convio IPO that year. Spiceworks and WhaleShark seem like they are doing pretty well.
SocialWare, AppSumo, Uship, UnboundID, Outbox, Mass Relevance, Boundless, BlackLocus, WPEngine, CopperEgg, SailPoint, etc. I'm sure I'm missing tons, but point is there are lots.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=google+maps+satellite+atlanta...
I don't think we have the potential even for severe housing cost rises even.