Forbes Magazine announced the semi-finalists for their annual "Boost your Business" competition and ATDC member company SoloHealth was selected.
This is a big deal as the winning company gets $100K. And they are the ONLY Georgia company in the finals.
Help a Georgia company succeed by casting your vote and spreading the word.
Don’t miss entrepreneur and investor, Charlie Paparelli, speaking on "How to Get to the Second Meeting" on Thursday Aug 7, 2008 at 7:30am at ATDC’s 3rd Floor Hodges Room. After the presentation, entrepreneurs are invited to join ATDC’s team in a round table discussion to continue the discussion on this topic or to address other key issues in the fund raising process. If you want to learn from fellow entrepreneurs you should attend this event.
You’re about to get the skinny on technology industry analysts in the world of early-stage ventures. The contents below should provide you guidance on who, when and how to use both the research as well as the individual brains at firms such as Aberdeen, AMR Research, Gartner, Forrester, Frost & Sullivan, Yankee, etc. We may have left off a few of the generalists, and certainly the vertical market specialists, so if you’re looking for our thoughts on one we may have missed, just reply and let us know.
First and foremost, analysts can help your company if approached and engaged properly. You need to establish credibility with them and treat them just as you might a key customer. Keep in mind that most IT buyers look to the analyst community to do some of their vetting and that some of the largest customers of these analyst firms are Fortune 1000 companies – aka your customers (unless you’re dealing with consumers and SMB’s, that’s a different twist).
That said, it’s key to get your foot in the door and educate the analysts covering your space with who you are (your credibility) and what you’re doing (solving a verifiable market pain). It’s those two things that will open the door and keep it open. The other thing to remember is that analysts speak to A LOT of companies and executives. They get paid to learn, aggregate data points and write/speak about what they see and hear. This is essential. Remember, you’re getting feedback on your company as much as you are trying to leave them with interesting factoids to think about for the next time you chat.
So how do you make this happen? We’ll most firms will allow you to schedule a short intro-briefing session with an analyst. Keep in mind, that this is your first impression – so do your homework and stay on point. If you don’t know anyone in an analyst firm, it will most likely be a sales or account rep that helps you do this. Why??? Because they are a business and that’s just their process. So what happens after the first date? Probably nothing, unless you’ve got a break thru product that they fall in love with. However, what you will get is feedback. This is critical as you shape and re-shape your story over time and re-engage with the analyst community.
So, this leads us to the money conversation. Analysts are relatively expensive for an early-stage company and the prices for top-tier firms aren’t getting lower. That said, it’s smart to budget a small project (webinar, seminar, strategy session) to get the ball rolling if you can. It’s worth the money as it gets you time with the expert. That’s your master plan here… the more the analyst is on your turf, the less they are on your competitors. Ultimately, you’re able to afford an annual contract and retainer with the firm, but it just takes time and money (market traction).
Below is a quick snapshot of what the top analyst firms cover or are recognized by the industry for covering. Keep in mind that this is a people business, and as people move, so to does the expertise.
Aberdeen
Retail, Services, Manufacturing, Procurement, Supply Chain, HR
AMR Research
Supply chain, supply chain, supply chain
Gartner
No one ever got fired for listening to Gartner (…or have they)
IT across the Enterprise and SMB markets
Forrester
Consumer, Supply Chain, Outsourcing
Frost & Sullivan
Wide net that includes financial as well as economic research in addition to IT
Yankee
Communications and Mobility with some IT.
If you’ve never attended a TiE (The Indus Entrepreneur) event, you’re seriously missing out. TiE was founded ten years ago to serve the entrepreneur community and has grown into one of the World’s largest and most successful business / entrepreneur organizations.
TiE is presenting a panel with several successful Women entrepreneurs, which will be moderated by ATDC’s Cindy Cheatham, on July 30th at the Ashford Club from 6:00-8:30pm.
Topic:
A Candid Conversation With Successful Women Entrepreneurs: What they wish they had known and what they are still learning?
Panelists:
Genevieve Bos
Co-Founder & Publisher, PINK
Radhika Subramaniam
CEO & Chairman, Emcien
Karen Robinson
President, Prime Point Media
It should be an excellent program.
The ATDC Entrepreneurs Resource Center (ERC), is a must visit destination for entrepreneurs.
This portal is contains a vault of articles, tools and research resources to guide first time entrepreneurs as well as refresh veterans on some of the fundamentals of researching a market and pulling together a business.
Available through the ATDC website, the ERC is a gem that is sometimes overlooked, and thus my reason for posting what will be the first in a series highlighting key resources. Over the next several weeks, I’ll unearth a key resource or two in the following areas:
Feel free to reply if you’re looking for something I’ve overlooked, but this should get us going.
The ATDC is proud to welcome Global Crypto Systems (GCS) and its CEO, Todd Merrill to our family.
It’s been a busy several months for Todd and his team as they topped the charts in the 2007 CapVenture program, weaved their way through to the finals of the TAG/ GRA business launch competition, all while finding time time to raise some money, and even build and deliver product to customers.
So, what do they do? Global Crypto provides strong authentication software that helps protect businesses that deliver web-based services.
We can say this for certain, we’re glad to have them on board and feel even more certain that Todd’s energy and drive will help the company find success.
The call for presenting companies is officially open for Venture Atlanta 2008.
For those of you that may not be aware, Venture Atlanta is the next iteration of the ION Venture Forum, which the Atlanta CEO Council launched and had been hosting since 2002. This new event builds on ION and teams three organizations, The Atlanta CEO Council, Metro Atlana Chamber of Commerce, and the Technology Association of Georgia.
Companies interested in presenting should submit their application online as early as possible, as over 50 companies applied last year. There is NO CHARGE to apply or present for companies, so all applicants are welcome.
The pool of investors attending this event has always been pretty good. There will definitely be over 100 unique firms from across the East Coast as well as some from the West and Pac. NW on hand, so take advantage of this event.
The last two days at the Omni Hotel in Downtown brought the who’s who of the wireless world to Atlanta. And, by who’s who, I mean a serious gathering of real global players at a conference that combined both big names and depth to an agenda.
Hosted by the GSM Association, this conference was the first of it’s kind in the America’s. The other two events organized by this group are in Barcelona and Mcau. The agenda included a plethora of executives from the likes of Yahoo!, MSFT, etc., to leading VC’s, to innovative start-ups (most having raised close to $100m or more in funding) and the largest global carriers on the planet.
These two days alone highlight the volume of activity in the mobile space and where the industry players see things moving. All this, in addition to some specific opportunities that lay ahead.
It’s a great thing for Atlanta to have this event in addition to having the GSMA’s US HQ right in our backyard.
Red Herring added recent ATDC graduate Oversight Systems to their annual Top 100. As many of us know, this list comprises technology industry executives, investors, and observers regarded as an invaluable instrument to discover promising companies. Past award winners include Google, Yahoo!, Skype, Netscape, Salesforce.com, and YouTube.
Oversight has nine patents pending on its technology and is really starting to gain traction in the marketplace. From the early founding of Oversight, Patrick has had very big
aspirations for Oversight. I remember Patrick telling a group of
fellow entrepreneurs, “I’d rather have a small piece of something very
large than a large piece of a small company” when asked about why he
was choosing to partner with venture capitalists in building his
company. Patrick is the type of think big entrepreneur that is
helping Georgia continue its growth as a leading technology center
worldwide.
And a big BTW, a belated congratulations to Patrick for being ranked in Top 10 Nominees for Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year.
So it definitely served its purpose…
Startup Riot brought together a slew of early stage entrepreneurs, newly formed/evolving seed-stage companies, and angel investors for what seems to be another positive step forward for the Atlanta technology community.
There were definitely some "interesting" companies (I’ll just leave it at that) and some truly fund-able companies (Global Crypto, Purewire, and Zenda to name a few) as the cocktail party chatter would indicate. And, the sentiment walking away was overtly positive and optimistic from both sides of the stage.
Kudos to Sun-Jay for pulling together a well timed and orchestrated event.
And you thought last week was a busy one…
Capital Lounge is Wednesday.