Why Atlanta Should Be Your Next Startup HQ

As someone from Atlanta, I can confirm that there is a growing interest in start-ups (or at least at GT there was). My goal after grad school is to start a company; I just don't know in what yet :)<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

Costs are low enough in Atlanta that you can actually start your business without raising capital. Unthinkable, at least for an extended period of time, in most other cities.<p>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, <a href="http://davidcummings.org/2010/05/08/when-raising-money-makes-sense/" rel="nofollow">http://davidcummings.org/2010/05/08/when-raising-money-makes...</a>.

Here's the Google cached text-only version:<p><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MPoNN4tv4uYJ:miter.mit.edu/why-atlanta-should-be-your-next-start-up-hq/&#38;hl=en&#38;tbo=d&#38;gl=us&#38;strip=1" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MPoNN4t...</a>

I live in Atlanta and work with startups here.<p>Compared to where it was a few years ago it is doing a lot better.<p>With that being said it still isn't there yet. All of the points that the author made are valid ones.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.

I think Atlanta has much to recommend in terms of a startup destination: great access to smart engineers (Georgia Tech is in the city, Duke and UNC are not too far away), low cost of living, quite livable, etc.<p>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).<p>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.

Emory University is also in Atlanta. Definitely some smart people there.

&#62; Most entrepreneurs rightly consider San Francisco to be the #1 city for starting a company<p>Most consumer-tech entrepreneurs with a US passport, maybe.

Isn't Atlanta a place with "strong traditions and moral values"? Which is Paul-Graham-speak for "an awful place for innovation"?

The Crunchbase numbers of only 21 startups started since 2008 are grossly misstated, even based on Crunchbase data.<p>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.<p>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).

I went to Stanford, but picked Atlanta as the place for my startup. All the cons are true--less capital, difficult to find rockstar talent (particularly technical talent), but so are the pros (cheap, healthier business environment, etc). For me, I'm trying to build a values-based organization, and I think it'd be tough (or impossible) to do so effectively in the Bay Area.

Worth mentioning, the ATDC, the Georgia Tech incubator, is actually over 20 years old rather than a new thing as the article implies. They've recently done a lot to improve their handling of early startups, however. Amongst other things, Mindspring went through the ATDC back when they were in their early stages. More interesting things Georgia Tech has done recently include the InVenture Prize (<a href="https://inventureprize.gatech.edu" rel="nofollow">https://inventureprize.gatech.edu</a> ) that encourages students to create new inventions. Winners get patent filings and such. Additionally, they recently created Flashpoint (<a href="http://flashpoint.gatech.edu" rel="nofollow">http://flashpoint.gatech.edu</a> ), a startup accelerator.<p>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 (<a href="http://www.hypepotamus.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.hypepotamus.com</a> ). Atlanta Startup Village, a monthly-ish event to let folks share what they're working on, is also held out of Hypepotamus (<a href="http://atlantastartupcommunity.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/atlanta-startup-village-in-photos/" rel="nofollow">http://atlantastartupcommunity.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/atla...</a> ).<p>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 <a href="http://fluxprojects.org" rel="nofollow">http://fluxprojects.org</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_Farm_Arts_Center" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_Farm_Arts_Center</a> ). 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.<p>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).

St. Louis - I recommend St. Louis. Startup culture, associations and opportunities are blowing up.

did anybody manage to read this and have a summary of the point?

Red state. 'Nuff said.