Village News

Celebrating Village Successes - IO Education Graduates

August 4, 2016

What makes an Atlanta Tech Village graduation? How does a startup join the alumni ranks with Bitpay,insightpool,yik yak, clockwiseMD, and SalesLoft? Well, growing from $1M ARR to $20M ARR in a year and a half certainly helps. IO Education began with a startup team of 5 people who joined the Village in November of 2014. They were working on building an ed tech data driven platform. A year and half later their software is in 5,136 schools, they support over five million students, and are achieving 5,000,000 monthly parent & student logins. They have acquired two companies and grown to a team of almost 100!That's something to celebrate, right? And we did. Champagne toasts, a community of 300+ people, and of course cupcakes.Every startup has it's own culture and story. IO Education is one that has flown under the radar but should not be overlooked. They are a team of quiet consistency, humble successes, and a leadership team of kind, smart, good people who are making big changes in our education system. We already miss having the IO Education team in our community.So what do they do? IO Education is on a mission to empower educators through data to improve education outcomes for every school in the U.S. They believe students will succeed when educators can identify and target individual learning needs and deliver a personalized success plan for each student. So they use data to improve those outcomes, and school districts are signing on like crazy. CEO Michael Williamson is excited about seeing student success stories thanks to their software. “It’s really all about early intervention, predicting which kids are going to drop out or which kids are going to fail and finding those kids early and intervening.”Eric Miller, Director of Marketing and Demand Generation shared- "We are so thankful for our time at the Village. We started out as a small team with 5 or 6 people in the office and all working like crazy to try and build a product that school districts would see the value of and want to use. We found many companies that we could learn from, and were able to establish some key relationships that provided timely advice on capital investment, corporate culture and accountability and even how to do sales. These relationships directly contributed to the significant growth of IO Education, including funding, acquisitions, our Inside Sales team and our approach on goal alignment and achievement. I can definitively say that we would not be where we are today without our time and the relationships formed at Atlanta Tech Village."And we couldn't do what we do without startups like them. The Village is so proud to be a small part of IO's startup story. Happy graduation y'all! Here's to many more successes.

The Atlanta Braves App Challenge

July 27, 2016

Calling all hackers, creative thinkers, entrepreneurs, and designers! You can't get much more all- american than baseball and the Atlanta Braves are a favorite in this city. Based in Atlanta since 1966, the Braves are the longest continuously operating franchise in Major League Baseball. Since 1991, Braves teams have earned two National League wild cards, 15 division championships, five National League pennants, and a World Series title. Which is why we couldn't be more excited to announce a collaboration between Atlanta Tech Village and the Atlanta Braves!

An Advisor Relationship - Getting Help For Your Startup

July 21, 2016

Every week a group of curated, successful professionals from all subject matters come to the Village, listen to our members, and offer free advice to help them succeed. These people paying it forward to our members and helping them make waves in the Atlanta tech scene are our Village Advisors. Some startup Founders don't always understand why they may need an Advisor or how exactly how they can help. So here is one story of how a Village Advisor has come alongside a Founder for a fruitful relationship.Yuri Eliezer is a Founding Patent Attorney of Founders Legal who began his time at the Village with a dream of helping startups with IP. As Yuri spent time at the Village, he started to build relationships and found that he was offering a lot of advice to them on planning for success. Random questions turned into bigger conversations, and every time Yuri left a conversation, he felt he had left them with something new that could benefit their companies. Yuri saw a unique opportunity to build community with other members while still offering valuable advice. With this in mind, he applied for and was accepted into our Village Advisors program. Shortly after, Yuri began working with a startup Founder, Carlo Martinez.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

July 14, 2016

Following up on last week's inside look at our Atlanta Tech Village team values, is the question- "How do we continue to build on our values to create a strong culture?" What actionable items do we take as a team to continue to build a community that supports and encourages living out those values?In my opinion, startups that not only work together but play together, stay together. The Village team is small, but serves over 1,000 entrepreneurs in one of the largest tech hubs in the United States. This takes a lot of hard work, and much of our time and effort is focused on building community for others. So, we also make a concerted effort to make sure that we take time for ourselves. Since all of our socials and events in the Village are our work, we have to make sure we don't get burnt out and intentionally carve out time for us to connect with each other. We do that in 3 ways:

An Inside Look At Our Village Values

July 6, 2016

Every organization stands for and believes in something. Ideally that becomes articulated into core values that create the foundation for your direction and company culture.There are four core Village values: Be Nice. Dream Big. Work Hard, Play Hard. Pay It Forward. We talk about them constantly, they are on a mural in our parking deck, on our key cards, and wall papered throughout the building. Because of this, we have a very kind, honest, and supportive community of over 1,000 entrepreneurs in one of the top startup hubs in the nation.Internally we decided to take it one step further. While living out the Village values, how could we further define them for our team specifically? I am obviously biased, but the Atlanta Tech Village team is pretty spectacular. I often get asked about how we created such a community driven culture, and our talented group of staff is at the heart of that success. We know that culture starts with us.So here is a sneak peek at three additional Village Team values that we live behind the scenes to intentionally create a culture of kindness and community for our startups. They are:

SalesLoft Graduates - Their Startup Story At The Village

June 29, 2016

SalesLoft joined the Village the day it opened in January of 2013 in a pre-construction office with Founder Kyle Porter, 3 employees, and $0 in revenue. Since that day, they've grown to 95+ employees, over $10 million in revenue, and raised 8 figures in their series A financing. The Village and the SalesLoft team grew up together, and we couldn't be happier for their success. With an an incredible team, strong leadership and a culture of positive, high energy folks- SalesLoft has officially graduated from the Village! SalesLoft joins fellow Village Graduates Bitpay, insightpool, Yik Yak, and ClockwiseMD.

Pitch Practice: 1 boardroom, 3 years, 1,000 pitches, and now a podcast!

June 22, 2016

Pitch Practice is a weekly meetup at Atlanta Tech Village founded by Kevin Sandlin. It will be 3 years old on June 27th. So on that very day he is launching a podcast to share all the pitches and great content that happens each week at the Village, and he needs your help. Here's more from Kevin:

America’s Largest Tech Entrepreneurial Hubs

June 16, 2016

From the beginning, Atlanta Tech Village's mission has been to fuel Atlanta's rise to a top tech startup center in the U.S. and we are well on our way. We have seen Atlanta’s tech scene grow tremendously in the past few years as tech hubs, coworking spaces, accelerators, incubators, and more have popped up. And in just three short years, the Village has seen multiple successful Series A rounds and graduated startups like Bitpay, Salesloft, insightpool, and Yik Yak. And as our footprint grows, the Village team continues to host hundreds of VCs and visitors from all over the US and the world. During those meetings we often get the question, "How do you compare on a national scale?" At 103,000 square feet, over 1,000 active members, and 290+ startups, we were confident we were one of the Top 10 largest tech hubs in the US, maybe even Top 5. So we decided to invest over 30 hours of research to find out exactly where we stand. It's good news. Atlanta Tech Village is currently the 4th largest tech entrepreneurial hub in the US! Here are some details from our search:

10 Types of People to Include in Your Life

June 9, 2016

This post was written by guest author Jason Young who recently ran a leadership workshop at the Village.There is danger in carelessly inviting people to speak into your life. Everyone has something to contribute, but it may not be qualified by time and experience. Some people, in fact, will do more harm than good. The key is to pick the right person so you can learn while you lead.Have you tried to identify the different roles people play in your life? For me, it always helps to have certain people around me. Here are 10 types of people to consider building into your community:Clarifier: Asks helpful and difficult questions.Specialist: Provides precision focus, moving you toward the intended target.Challenger: Implores you to act boldly.Creator: Brings an idea into existence by crafting workable action plans from just a few actionable points.Connector: Leads you to other people.Wise Elder: Lends experience and perspective.Friend: Shares life’s journey without judgment and loves youStrategist: Creates step-by-step simplicity from complex data and conversations.Dreamer: Motivates you to dream without fear.Coach: Builds on your strengths, corrects poor performance, and encourages when energy fades.Give it a go. See if you can name someone in each of these categories, and then intentionally pursue those relationships. It may make you a better entrepreneur.

Network Like A Boss

June 2, 2016

This guest post was written by Marc McDougall of Kilobyte Studios, LLC.In a startup, all bets are off. At any point in time, you’re making a decision that likely has not been made before, so it’s incredibly important that you have a framework in place to help you out.Local networking is one of those areas that startups do poorly all the time. It seems to intuitive that you’d just want to network to get the word out about your product or service, but that’s not always the case!This guide aims to dispel some of the rumors about local networking, as well as to give you an actionable framework for finding events, and (when you do attend) to get the most out of them.Let’s get started.

Meet ATLeaders: Metro Atlanta Chamber’s first young professional council

May 26, 2016

Hear about a big party at Ponce City Market last night? It was the official launch of ATLeaders, and a whole lot of the startup community was there.You’ve heard it many times before – the American workforce is shifting. With an increasing amount of baby boomers facing retirement age, companies and businesses must focus on attracting and retaining the talent of the two younger generations (Gen X and Millennials) to lead their businesses, and rely on many more of them to start their own.

Everyone Deserves the Best Chance of Survival- LaaSer

May 19, 2016

When an emergency occurs, you want to know and trust that someone can get to you as soon as possible to help. That used to be the case, but with the majority of calls being placed to 911 now coming from cell phones- location detection has become increasingly difficult. Even HBO's Tonight with John Oliver observes, nearly everyone takes the system for granted – unaware of its fatal flaws. Thousands of lives are lost each year due to incorrect location information being sent to 911 operators over existing mobile phone network technology. Calls are often routed to the wrong jurisdiction, address and latitude and longitude information are often wrong or not provided at all, and people lose their lives or suffer more than they had to as a result.Founder Fred White created LaaSer for the sole purpose of solving this problem. Learn more from our conversation below.

Spotlight on Innovation: Atlanta Startup Village #95 Welcomes Four Dynamic Tech Startups