Atlanta as a Top Startup Hub

Today's post is written by guest blogger, David Clements. David is a Village member who is currently working on his 4th startup, Restaurant Report – the first app that lets you pick restaurants with good grades on their health inspection before you eat out. Atlanta has the ninth largest Metropolitian Statistical Area in the United States. It has the world’s largest airport. Big companies like The Home Depot, UPS, Coca Cola, Delta Air Lines, and Aflac have their homes here.Atlanta is also a startup hub; and when it comes to startups the place to be is Atlanta Tech Village (the Village). There isn’t anything like the Village in the southeast. Established in 2013 by David Cummings, the Atlanta Tech village is a community of 138 companies and 373 members (as of January 20, 2014) inside a 103,000 square foot building in Atlanta (Buckhead).Almost all of the members are startup founders or early hires and most of the operations in the Village are tech oriented. The Village is really a campus of like-minded individuals designed for technology and technology-related companies.The Mission of Atlanta Tech Village is to support and inspire entrepreneurs to achieve success through a community to at promotes faster connections between talent, ideas and capital. David Cummings recently posted pictures of the new Standard Floor at the Atlanta Tech Village. It’s worth a look for anyone interested in seeing why it will be this type of innovation that moves Atlanta above other cities in the startup world.I think that Atlanta has a solid shot at making the top five list of cites for tech startups. But we’re going to have to earn it. To give you an idea of who we’re up against and what we’ve got to accomplish, I just got the 2013 numbers from Channa Brooks at NVCA before they were published anywhere else. The data below is from Thomson Reuters and the Money Tree Report by PwC.Top Cities for Tech Startups 2013 (based on number of deals)RankingTop Cities for Tech StartupsNumber of Deals1San Fran/Berkeley4912San Jose4733New York Metro3574Boston2005Los Angeles1466Great Lakes1277Washington Metroplex1258Seattle899Philadelphia7310Chicago7211Austin6012Denver5213Pittsburgh/Tristate5114San Diego Metro3415Atlanta32 Top Cities for Tech Startups 2013 (based on sum of equity invested in USD Mil)RankingTop Cities for Tech StartupsSum of Equity invested (USD Mil)1San Jose4,826.632San Fran/Berkeley4,380.553New York Metro2,494.144Boston1,254.165Washington Metroplex990.766Los Angeles848.727Seattle617.428Dallas540.059Atlanta375.8410Chicago362.72 So, depending on which of following two metrics you want to use, Atlanta was either 15th in the US or 9th in the US in 2013 for Tech Startups. Either way, to get into the top 5 we really have to increase the number of deals and the amount of equity invested. Atlanta is more than capable of this.