I just read the blog post from Jeff Haynie explaining the move of his company from Atlanta to Mountain View, CA. It’s a good read for anyone in Atlanta involved in the technology scene. Here’s the link to that post. Over the past 10 years, it has become increasingly hard to form and launch a software/technology company in Atlanta. There is top rate talent for sure. I am working with Paul Freet at present developing a few entrepreneurial ventures. I am supremely fortunate as he may be one of the most talented engineers/business people/entrepreneurs on the planet. And Georgia Tech, Paul’s alma mater, is a breeding ground for ideas and talent.
But, without money and advice, all this talent has a hard time creating successful ventures around their ideas. There are local investors who understand how Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley. But, there aren’t enough to count. Even our past successful entrepreneurs don’t have the stomach to go back in and go through the failure/success cycles. This is a huge problem here in Atlanta. Our talent needs money, people and the experiences of those people to get out there, get things going, and learn from the failure/success cycle. Without people, the right people, and their money, you’ll never have a growing base of successful entrepreneurs. And those future entrepreneurs are the future investors. In other words, the perpetual machine doesn’t have the gas to put in the engine to even start the perpetual machine.
Well, got to go. I’m the VC AND entrepreneur for now. It would be nice to focus on just the gettin’ it thought up and done part.
